Architecture CommunicationHybrid: the Many Faces of Architecture

[Modul AR0000004413] Architecture Communication / Layout-ing Architecture

with: Flavia Crisciotti

The term ‘Hybrid’ has occurred often in times of covid 19, describing a mix between the digital and the analogue sphere in teaching. Yet, hybridity remains a confusing word in architectural history and theory. On the one hand, it overlaps with the grotesque and indicates an ornament fantastically absurd, even sickening – which rings with modernist allegations of impurity, ambiguity and lie. On the other hand, the hybrid is also essential for stimulating creativity. “I like elements which are hybrid rather than pure, compromising rather than clean […]” wrote Robert Venturi in his landmark Complexity and Contradictions in Architecture in 1966.  Colin Rowe and Fred Koetter proposed also a hybrid model, the Collage City, as solution for future urban planning. Ever since, the concept has been widely interpreted, from Steven Holl’s definition of hybrid buildings to the postcolonial examine of cross-cultural encounters. The issue of hybridity has thus many faces, challenging the students of the seminar Architecture Communication to provide a broad range of reflections on disciplinary boundaries and influences.

The following seminar papers have been developed:

González Corbí, Ángel: Analog and Digital in Architecture

Heider, Vanessa: How to hybrid?

Krakovská, Ema: Architect, a Hybrid Profession

Krupa, Zofia: Inside the Walls

Magliozzi, Marco: Spolia. Fragments of Disruption and Continuity

Tushev, Darko: Skopje: Deja Vù City

Zeman, Anika: The Time of Shopping Malls. An Ever-changing Role