to understand anything in a city. „The tangibility of the concept (of architecture)” is both a crucial characteristic/ability to understand anything and a linguistically sensual turn of phrase that poses its own challenges as well. Language and its rules allow us to write about „intangible concepts.” Is this phrase merely a linguistic expression, lacking a referent, devoid of content existing beyond words? These are the kinds of questions we probably ask ourselves all over Poland – not only in Łódź. And, of course, not only in Łódź they remain unanswered.
The most sensible thing to do would be to raise such imaginary problems in „Hunting Club”. Such a Hunting Club has been created in our city by local architects. They set up their hunting boxes under a lamp post (that’s where it’s the darkest), at an abandoned tram stop. And, of course, they immediately became inaudible (invisible). We liked this action very much. Although there’s a good chance that the annoying elusiveness will be recognized and described as simply „not yet caught.” And hunting down, hitting such elusive notions simply requires better night vision, higher maintenance on training, etc. And time is in short supply… Elections!
The position of Łódź hunters is shared by those we usually call pragmatic technocrats. Surprisingly, this identification is often used in politics and rather as a positive category. Architects must strongly intuit this.
If we carelessly ask not a hunter, but, for example, a sincere existentialist-modernist architect, about the „tangibility of concepts”, we may learn that in addition to abstract „elusiveness,” we sometimes experience – on our own skin – the touch of concepts (even those seemingly abstract ones).
„Touch” is a polite and subdued word. We sometimes experience the crushing touch of concepts. And surprisingly different concepts from Justice, through Fear, Common Sense to Love.
And what’s worse, there are still no commercially available, tested drugs or dietary supplements on the market to enhance resistance to such a kind of touch. Go figure! Fortunately, this statuary requirement only applies only to baccalaureate. It should no longer concern those with somewhat too lengthy title for our times – Master Engineer of Architecture.
The latest reports from the Northern Hunting Box are encouraging. By night, it is now possible to hunt the City Architect. By night, the headquarter of our Foundation on Włókiennicza will also come to life. Artificial light animates the models. Architectural models. We have as much as 21 of them to assemble in our Modeling Shop.
