citeXture introduction

Her first experimentation is in Barcelona made within her sevral times short visits.

*
This gallery of pictures puts forward two issues of relevance to architecture and urbanism - the roles of cultural difference and subjectivity in architectural and urban design-research.

**
If each city is the text open to diverse readings, here is a reading of urban spaces of Barcelona in the code which comes from a culture radically different from that of Catalonia. Dr Davisi uses the universal language of architectural sketches, with a subtle dialect, consciously rooted in another urbanity. What does Barcelona say to an architect from a far-away culture? How does that architect say “Barcelona”? Those are the questions we all need to ask when trying to comprehend other cities and other cultures. The language of architecture seems to help in spanning many boundaries.

***
In architectural and urban research we tend to go for methods which objectify reality. Those methods claim to expose the facts, the “truth” about the places we investigate. But, as we all know, in architecture analysis and synthesis blur, the subjective often leads and never really leaves the design process. It is the architectural drawing again which help capture qualities that go beyond the measurable, which combine understanding and feeling, the personal and the commonly shared.

****
The architectural drawings have their own artistic integrity. At the same time they are architect’s recordings of reality, and often urbanist’s reaction to the potential of certain spaces in Barcelona. Davisi Boontharm puts her subjective recordings of the urban spaces and situations of Barcelona at an equivalent standing with the results of the “research proper”. These drawings are here to both ask and answer questions. In the context of her exploration of cities some of them demand further analysis, while some confidently stop endless scientific talk.

Introduction of CiteXture Barcelona by prof. Darko Radovic cSUR Tokyo University, University of Melbourne.