Dialogy as an act of architectural interpretation

Abstract

This paper addresses the definition of dialogy as a way of understanding the relationship between the architect and the place, through the variables that come into play in the process of design. The purpose of the discussion is to evaluate the attitude that the architect, as the author of an architectural project, takes to discover and articulate those variables. In this relationship, originality comes from opening the designing act to historical, physical and social variables of the context, but also to the architect’s memories, experiences and perceptions. The architect is, thus, a subject-author who engages and actively participates in the recognition of the project site and all that it contains. Dialogy, therefore, corresponds to an attitude in which the architect understands the context by putting himself in the place of the “other” and simultaneously interprets, based on his own presence and experience, what he contemplates.

Key words: dialogy, experience and architecture, memory.