Proto-research: processes of spatial emergence.
Proto-structures, proto-figurations, proto-choreographies… with this series of neologisms, several PhD projects at ALICE laboratory, as well as their implementation in design studio programs, have helped trace in the last few years a specific line of research focused on processes of spatial emergence. The prefix proto-, from the Greek πρῶτος, “first” or “earliest form of”, superlative of πρό, “before”, allows us to focus on the movement where the immanent and undifferentiated fabric of nature actualizes itself into specific material forms and organizations. In this sense the proto-concepts work as catalysts between concept, idea, or imagination and their physical actuations, where Architecture is both an expression and concretization of this becoming condition, and our acting on space needs to attend to this motion, learn from it and articulate from and with it. This means taking into account and developing tools to work not only with the immediate and visible contexts, but also with the potentialities present in any given situation, as well as paying attention to the diagrammatic role of structures, figurations, choreographies, drawings or narratives, to activate, order and give concrete form to those fields of potentialities’ emergent outcomes.
Related areas of research:
– Virtuality and architecture.
– Architectural diagrams, gestures and traces.
– Becoming and motion in architectural processes.
– Collective imaginaries and spatial (con)figurations.