Architecture Is All Over

The transdisciplinary symposium held at the new TIFF Bell Lightbox was a mixed affair. The format appeared promising; three sets of discussions, two presentations and a one on one dialogue each, followed by audience questions. The roster of US and Canadian speakers from leading institutions (of the K. Michael Hays and Sanford Kwinter variety) and their provocative lecture topics seemed a sure hit. Perhaps it was the breadth of topics without designated opportunities for the speakers to address each other that rendered the whole affair overbearing. As the lecture came to a close, one audience member leapt from his seat to broadcast his frustration at not being able to field questions to the speakers, which spawned the exchange of a few sympathetic but souring impressions in the foyer afterwards. Moreover, the uneven depths of the speaker's experience meant that the ideas flowed from delight to bewilderment in fits and starts. The first two speakers were nearly incomprehensible for the speed at which the presented. Others, particularly on the 'agonistic potential of a forgetful, generic architectural interface' were just as inaccessible. K. Michael Hays in discussion with Andrew Payne and in particular, D. Graham Burnett in a game of oral tag with David Gissen, proved that complex issues need not be obscure. Hays and Payne spoke to Lacan's tripartite dimensions of man: imagination, symbol and the real. Hays argued that Mies was keenly aware of the symbolism that Modernism would replace. Free of encumbering the building itself as a symbolic gesture, Hays argued that the ribbed facade may in fact be merely a screen to hold the voided symbolism. Like Heiddiger's jug that is significant for the void that it forms rather than the material surrounding the void, Mies' tower holds the void or loss of symbol/essence in the expansive plaza in front of the screen-tower itself. Content aside, the mixed delivery of lectures during the conference left a glaring impression: that the ideas discussed were compelling but that presentation either obscures or enriches the idea.

Jointly hosted by the University of Toronto John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design and OCAD University, Office of the President.