“Scientists try to identify the components of existing structures, designers try to shape the components of new structures.”
Starting in our 8th year of teaching the ALICE y1 first year design course in architecture, we have invited a philosopher to be part of our team. Why? And why are we editing a publication that we chose to name codex, in an allusion to the French Petit Robert dictionary (a codex being an official collection of authorized medications, but also an ensemble of sheets of paper ‘stitched’ together)?
(...)
This codex offers a view into the various ways language itself can dissect and be dissected. In itineraries of thought and their articulation, believed truths are mounted on test beds, put under stress and tested upon their firmness or depth, their coherence or intrinsic contradiction, their situated meanings and his- torical transformations.
The ALICE codex is not aimed at explaining our teaching or clarifying predetermined goals. Rather, we are using it as a further tool – just as we are working with our time-map as a structural grid to encompass the events and production of one year of teaching. For us the codex is as much a tool as the Japanese wood saw that we distribute to students at the beginning of the year, or the screw-drill that will serve us in constructing our projects in the forthcoming summers. It is not intended to give answers, but to show how to construct questions. Because it is through questions that we open up the potential of things, making them accessible to new analogies, syntheses and configurations. The description of a spatial or a material condition may shed light upon possible nodes for new cohesions, or unbind contained forces. In these translations between the realities of ideas, languages, and space, we may get lost and subsequently discover new doors.
The codex will follow the main structure of the ALICE y1 program built around the phases Measures, Elements, Planes, Gardens, Rooms and Houses. Parallel to the lectures that initiate each phase it will consist of sheets ‘stitched together’. These sheets will expand or reflect upon terms that we use to construct an argument – in this case in the form of our projects – in collaboration with 250 people over 9 months. In this we will need all our tools, our intellect, our emotional intelligence, our capacities for analysis and synthesis, and most importantly:our curiosity for the not-yet-known: the new worlds,new things and new beings yet to come.
The sphere of Alice is one of exploration and investigation of the real and the fictional. It is about narratives, materials, and the dreams we project with tenacity, resilience and the obsession for experimentation through our drawings and modelled worlds. Like Alice in Wonderland, it is the search for answers more than the answers them- selves that guide our path.
The ALICE codex is an attempt to codify structures of comprehension that can navigate between two arenas: the physical and the imaginary. These structures aim to decipher our world and translate it into operational tools. What are these tools for? What purpose do they serve? Why is there a need to decipher, to understand this world? After all, most of us can live quite well in the realm of non-rationalised feelings, thoughts and attitudes, as long as we do not need to communicate and share them with oth- ers. Yet the urge for definition sits parallel with that of communicating with others, and both constitute a collective effort. It is only then that transmittable codes that a large number of people can comprehend become necessary. It is thus to operate collectively that we find the need for developing common and exchangeable languages. If we ask ourselves, then, why we do need to understand the world, one response is that we are aiming at understanding it in order to share the experience of living in it with a given community.
(...)
We like to picture the geometric configuration of a viewpoint exterior to our discipline – that of a philosopher – to construct a picture on the canvas of our imagination. We imagine that this external viewpoint will provide new perspectives into our projections, associations, hallucinations and constructions.
The codex is a Looking Glass.
We are looking forward to what we will find there.
Editorial
Elena Chiavi
Dieter Dietz
Sébastien Grosset
Daniel Zamarbide
Proofreading
Aurélie Dupuis
Emma Jones
Teresa Cheung
Design/Concept
Shirin Pfisterer
Jonas Voegeli
(Hubertus Design)
Contact
EPFL/ENAC/IA/Alice
Batiment BP, Station 16, BP4120
CH-1015
T +41216933203
F +41216933225
ALICE Team
Quentin Andreotti
Raffael Baur
Arthur Blanc
Laurent Chassot
Teresa Cheung
Elena Chiavi
Dieter Dietz
Aurélie Dupuis
Camille Fauvel
Stéphane Grandgirard
Sébastien Grosset
Patricia Guaita
Clarisse Labro
Julien Lafontaine
Victor Maréchal
Agathe Mignon
François Nantermod
Dario Negueruela
Laura Perez Lupi
Jaime Ruiz
Myriam Treiber
Rubén Valdez
Camille Vallet
Daniel Zamarbide
Printed
REPRO-EPFL
Edition 0
September 2018