Issue # 1 | Autumn 2007 | Trans-disciplinary

This inaugural issue of Footprint aims at understanding today’s architecture culture as a negotiation between two antithetical definitions of architecture’s identity. The belief in the disciplinary singularity of architectural objects, irreducible to the conditions of their production, is confronted - in discourse and design - with the perception of architecture as an interdisciplinary mediation between multiple political, economic, social, technological and cultural factors. With the concept of trans-disciplinarity, the negotiation between these two positions is investigated here as an engine of the ‘tradition of the present’ of contemporary architecture - the discourses and designs which emerged in the 1960s and defined orientation points for today’s architectural thought and practice.

The contributions to this issue of Footprint include Wouter Davidts’ analysis of architectural design and discourse as a condition for art; Michael Hays’ examination of narrative as a form of understanding the object of architecture within the forces which it reflects and opposes; Patrick Healy’s reconstruction of Max Raphael’s project of an empirical theory of art and architecture; Mark Jarzombek’s questioning of architecture as a philosophical project; Ákos Moravánszky’s mapping of the multiple interchanges between theory, design, history and education of architecture; Jean-Louis Violeau’s account of the collaborations between architects and sociologists on architectural research in France since the late 1960s.

Issue's editors: Tahl Kaminer and Lukasz Stanek