Architectural creation, its representation, interpretation, and associated activities more often than not are seen as processes of revelation. However, one can argue that architecture hides as much as it reveals. The Purloined Letter, a detective story written by Edgar Allen Poe, describes the chase to look for a stolen letter with confidential information. The story revolves around the search for a letter hidden by being left out in the open. Allen Poe highlights a complicated relationship between visibility, revelation, clarity and its complementary hiding, concealing, camouflaging.
In the realm of architecture, are there examples of ‘hiding’ in teaching, representing, knowing, writing and building architecture? If so, how do those manifest themselves? How is hiding practiced under other terms that obscure the practice of concealment? What does it result in? What sources does it emerge from and who operates behind it?
This symposium explored processes of hiding that can take representational, material and theoretical forms.
Architectures of Hiding is the inaugural event in the series of biennial symposia called Agora, organized by Carleton Research | Practice of Teaching | Collaborative (CR|PT|C).
CR|PT|C is formed by PhD candidates and students, Post-Professional Master students, and faculty members from the Azrieli School of Architecture & Urbanism, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada.
Held on September 24–26, 2021, the symposium was organized and coordinated by Rana Abughannam, Émélie Desrochers Turgeon, Pallavi Swaranjali and Federica Goffi; with the advisorship of Monica Eileen Patterson.
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