Brief outline

Brief outline
The conference invites architectural drawing studios, practicing architects and theoreticians to enter into a discussion about the notion of context, because context can be a key to architectural strategies, and that an active dialogue between theory and practice is a prerequisite to this kind of strategic development.

Why "context"?
Because it is clear to see that many of our day's new buildings and building projects do not take their situational context into account. Let's consider the construction that has been underway on the shoreline of Copenhagen's harbor area. In all too many instances, it appears that the formal idiom has been chosen rather arbitrarily. It often appears that the buildings could just as well be situated someplace else; it seems that they could be built, well, anywhere! Even when there does appear to be some basic understanding about the context as something other than - and something transcending - the immediate surroundings, it is frequently difficult to make out what kind of context we are dealing with. Context can be understood not only in the restricted sense of 'the physical surroundings', but also in a much broader way: as a complex of cultural, intellectual and programmatic relations, which can be influenced and elucidated by the architect him/herself.

Why architectural strategies?
Because we can no longer take for granted that there is a commonly shared and commonly accepted frame of reference for the architectural craft. For this reason, architects are necessarily obliged to explain their aims and reflect on their own practice within a larger context. A tacit knowledge will simply not suffice. Contextual awareness, which revolves precisely around thinking in situational connections, is the central point of departure.

Why 'complex ordinariness'?
Because a contextual architecture has to enter into dialogue with the surrounding culture of everyday life. In the middle of the twentieth century, Danish architecture was acknowledged and respected for this very capacity - especially due to an unspectacular but nonetheless modern and distinctive architecture. If one wants to find something on the same order of excellence today, however, it is necessary to look abroad, to the invited keynote speakers, for example. They are preoccupied with creating an ordinary and simultaneously complex architecture that sharpens the senses instead of anaesthetizing them in the confrontation with a radically new idiom.