Understanding Architecture
by José Laborda Yneva (translated by John Francis Kinsella)
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Understanding Architecture is the work of José Laborda Yneva, renowned professor of architecture who taught at the Universities of Cartagena and Zaragoza, member of the Real Academia de Bellas Artes in Spain. This book, translated and presented by John Francis Kinsella founder of Banksterbooks, describes the history of architecture, how it is taught, how before the advent of television and internet architecture was found on the street, as far as the eye could see where people could see and touch things as they liked. There were endless streets, all filled with visual and tactile models. Because, on the street, in addition to architecture and detail, is feeling, the certainty that one exists. It is not the same thing as the images on our screens, where it is impossible to smell things, where sounds are unreal, perspectives and lighting artificial. Architecture is not visible on screens, it cannot be touched, we do not know whether surfaces are smooth or textured, or how the elements interact with the structures, our screens do not take into account living people, an essential part of all architecture. Architecture as seen on a screen is abstract, unreal, a concept of its creator.
Excerpt:
TEACHING AND LEARNING
Any apprenticeship, including that of architecture, needs as a principal the explanation of non-specific issues, validated by addressing the relevant references. A little later, when we have become acquainted with the method, we can get more involved in learning architecture, as we intend to do. For the moment, we can agree that perhaps the concept of learning is much more far-reaching than that of teaching. Teaching techniques are so often overtaken by events that no one could have imagined, let alone explain, how therefore could learning be accomplished unaided. It seems possible, of course, to say that in any learning process, method together with opportunity can obtain better results than through any other means. But we are already aware of the principle whereby the sum of the different elements involved in learning require a further condition, the will to learn, because anyone who is unwilling to learn cannot learn, there must therefore be a willingness to do so. And perhaps, if we are to find the reason for things, we could say that this will is a preamble to the approach and the approach is a prelude to the act of learning. We must therefore incorporate this third component, will, which is essential for any approach to learning, this is a personal contribution that cannot be transmitted and without it, neither method nor opportunity can function. Perhaps architecture is one of the most evocative attitudes of man vis-à-vis himself. Architecture links behaviour, transformation, proportion and appearance, and each of these concepts offer immense opportunities for teaching and learning. In architecture there exist methodological components: approach, transformation, correlation and action, and each of theses concepts offer immense possibilities for teaching and learning. How do you teach architecture? Surely we can agree that it is much easier to learn architecture than to teach it. Especially when we know that architecture has existed for more than six thousand years. How can we teach something that is visible to everyone?
Maybe that is why, with prudence, we can insist on assuming that teaching architecture is before anything else a question of organisation, one might say the organisation of ideas. Since it is not entirely necessary to teach what everyone can see, we can suggest a timely order of looking at things*, we can propose a way of looking and relating to things, establishing degrees of intensity when we look at things, so that little by little we can determine the criteria necessary, in this way what is seen is what architecture proposes and not the contrary. This same method will inevitably to lead us to originality, the indispensable opportunity required to extend knowledge through this specific relationship. And it will be our own approach towards teaching which will reinforce the will of those wishing to learn; the logic of the approach.
