Description

‘Communities of Tacit Knowledge’ is an innovative and newly EU-funded research and training network initiated by ten major academic institutions in Europe. The aim of this project is to train young scientists to analyse, understand and apply the specific knowledge used by architects in the design of buildings and cities. It focuses on the individual and collective implicit treasury of experience and insights of our discipline, which are materialised in buildings and spaces, drawings or models, but often times are not expressed verbally. In collaboration with three cultural architectural institutions and nine international architectural offices, a unique PhD training program is offered to a group of young academics, encouraging them to explore the very character of tacit knowledge (in architecture) and its potential in addressing current and future issues in the built environment. Three years of intensive research and transdisciplinary exchange within the TACK project will result in 10 parallel PhD projects, grouped in three clusters: (1) Approaching Tacit Knowledge: Theories and Histories, (2) Probing Tacit Knowledge: Concrete Cases and Approaches and (3) Situating Tacit Knowledge.

The individual Research Project in Hannover guided by Prof. Dr. Margitta Buchert and the a_ku- team is allocated to the third cluster and focuses on the specifics of knowledge genesis and performance through reflexivity. Tacit knowledge is related to ways of doing. It is part and parcel of the practice. Design can also entail reflexive dimensions, as practitioners take stock of their groundings, potentials and actions and of the effect of these actions. The IRP will examine how reflexive dimension of design is to be understood, and how it can be conceptualised, strategically positioned and treated to trigger innovative practice and research.