And now you know it too: It was pretty quick and probably faster than I thought before all 10,5 participating students understood that Gonzo architecture was just a luring feed (agn). It was good to see that in the mean time they kept the hunting for it a serious matter till the last day and hopefully continue to do so. And this is not so obvious at it seems. One of the influencing factors was that, until shortly before the start of the actual project week, I had no idea half of my group would exist out of visiting students from Mumbai. It took some improvisation and adjusting to make it work. But it did work. This process actually contributed to some totally new and unexpected views on the matter we were dealing with. We are all equal but every single person is equal in a different way. The five hunters from a fast growing giant city in an emerging power country gave definitely a twist to it all and some surprising finds and views on school building architecture, open form education, the smell of umbrellas, enrichment of fast-food, priorities in global issues, compatibilities of tools, gravity of rain, similarities in needs, relativity of statistics, consumerism of time and lingual crossovers. I had my first encounter with the city of Bombay by smelling an umbrella. This already happened in the first half hour of the work and was a major influence on my following pedagogic approaches.
The seemingly obvious needs to be questioned over and over again all the time by everybody but especially by oneself. The meaning for instance of the word ugly, a keyword in the first two days of the course, formed and changed into an essential different outcome. Ugly is not just not pretty but also experienced as depressing or badly looked after and surely to be taken care of.
The BAS students tended to focus mainly on public building and housing while the KRVIA students had a much more concerned eye for the private and single constructions. Why? The workshop anticipated in having plenty of exchanging questions and answers. Fusing the two groups was a task in itself and looking back at it now we all really did the up most which is however never enough. We should not stop here.
The road was more important than the end results. A personal new discovery was more wanted than a common and general outcome. Therefore I deliberately kept all tasks extremely simple so all attention could be focused on the process. I just wanted them to look at some obvious things in an non obvious way: getting a little high enthusiasm without using any outsider drugs. By introducing them to a stream of old and new images and points of views I did not expect to change their position of thought but dealt with at least a small gateway clarifying the particular ground they stand on: I might be an ugly building but I have a clear view! But it is not all sunshine or in the contrary a little bit too much of it. The world out there is in trouble and the hunters seem to be well informed but not so much aware as one would like or at least a little bit deadly concerned. Global warming is not a new Google gadget that just provides more sunshine to Hordaland in the rainy season. Students at BAS should be continuously on the root of a rainbow. Just takes some eyes to dig it. All the hunters understand their task.
For tomorrow and the day after the VG weather forecast has predicted: MONSTER RAIN with 200 mm water within 24 hours on Bergen. Makes you think.
