Written in collaboration with the student editors 1990/91

We want to explore our architectural landscape in the spirit of Gulliver, who in Jonathan Swift's tale of an incredible frolic, is both a witness and a participant in imaginary nations. The satire inspired us with its playful inquiry into tangible worlds of shifting perceptions. Swift shifts the parameters of space and gravitational pull so that Gulliver not only bursts through the horizontal x-y travel, but is also hoisted onto the z axis in an extension outside of normal experience. Conditions of scale are shifted to a degree that transports the reader into a different state of knowing. Gulliver's Travels is an inspiring reminder of architecture's inherent strengths. Like Gulliver we embark upon a journey. Ours is a, journey in, around, about, through, and for the notion of making. We hope, as Swift did with his novel, to illuminate and comment upon our situation by redirecting our focus. We are concerned with architecture which is tangible, which reaches into three dimensions to touch, to shift the ground, to reorient, and to direct. We find reassurance in Vico's proposition that we only know that which we have made or are capable of making.

Making is a cognitive act and a mode of knowing through direct intervention and participation in the world as opposed to an act of distancing. By focusing on the notion of making we hope to avoid the tautological traps and paradoxes of such classic oppositions as action vs thought, object vs subjects, rationalism vs empiricism. For our purposes, it is important to emphasize that language relies heavily on experience from the world of space and objects to describe and categorize concepts of cognition. For example the words and phrases, understanding, vast knowledge, to know inside and out, (in)sightful, in the know, feel close to, field of knowledge, all make reference to spatial relationships. The notion of illumination can be better understood if one remembers that to cast light upon any object means that others are left in the dark. The physical qualities of light inform and enrich the notion of illumination. We propose to make language transparent for a while, and continue the search for meaning in the world of matter and space.

We propose to replace the word design with the word make. This action is mainly symbolic but remains important as such. Design describes the activity of architecture with an implicit bias, the mental model is favored and the physical qualities minimized. Making, on the other hand, refers to both the realms of mental and physical construction, and acknowledges the dialectic quality of the process. Meaning and ideas are shifted - mixed -cut - fitted - tailored and burned in a manner which is in some sense both in and out of our hand at the same time. We do not want to simply disregard the distinctions between the terms mental and physical -they undoubtedly have their merits. Rather, this emphasis on making more accurately describes our relationship to that which we construct. The objects that surrounds, the physical reality which we make, to a large extent, defines us as modem or post-modem. How history has been named up to now is indicative of the importance that we put in our tools and objects: paleolithic neolithic iron age, industrial, postindustrial..... Our revolution is the history of our objects and tools, or the evolution of our tools and objects is our history.

We do not want to reduce making to a process, methodology, craft, ritual, or a formula for production. Predictability is not a goal and often accident contributes to invention and magic. Making is as important for other areas of human endeavor, as it is for architecture. Making can serve as a common ground; it makes possible the inter-subjectivity of those who "share the intimate knowledge of an act, skill or experience ...homo-faber.

Pratt Journal of Architecture Volume III