The Form of Knowledge――The Prototype of Architectural Thinking and Its Application

As a late starter in architecture school, I needed to study architectural design more consciously. I soon learned that architectural design is about repeating a process of "prototyping", or quickly transforming what one currently knows into a form, and "feedback", or translating the form into words to create new knowledge. Christopher Alexander once defined design as an "act of eliminating misfits between form and context." Given the current situation of constant flux and unexpected circumstances, one of the ways to find a more reliable solution today would be to return to the basic approach of collecting more knowledge –– because "two heads are better than one", as the saying goes.
It is possible to find solutions that would go way beyond ideas of a lone genius by collecting sufficient amount of opinions, even if some of them may seem banal. On the other hand, under the current situation where architecture vacillates between democracy and populism, it remains a great and difficult challenge for architects to find creative and universal solutions while withstanding the severity of public opinions and impacts of fluctuating markets. However, we architects should acknowledge diversity, convince ourselves that we can realize a more tolerant society, and declare that we can achieve much better results by collecting more knowledge in today's society where we can directly handle a much larger amount of data using highly advanced AI technology.
This exhibition presents architecture as a "form of knowledge" or a creative relationship between knowledge and form. We intend to develop a methodology formulating collective knowledge that aims to produce better results through involvement of more people in the design process and redefine architecture as a creative tool of knowledge for solving various social issues.