Pedagogy of poetics of architecture in contemporary Georgia

Abstract

The idea of using poetry and literature as channels to contemporary architectural design dates back to the last years of the 1980s when the poetics of architecture was recognised as an academic discipline. In the West, the first publication on the subject was released in 1990. Concurrently, although independently, the studio-workshop bearing the same title of this discipline was set up by Shota Bostanashvili at the Technical University of Georgia. Paper architecture, a movement developed in the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, was the preferred medium utilised to teach architecture at the studio-workshop. This workshop, which is still run today by David Bostanashvili, introduced metacultural discourse in architecture. The Bostanashvilis’ poetics of architecture is based on a triad, namely Image-Name-House. For Shota Bostanashvili, poetics of architecture meant the relationship between ideas, words and things. For David Bostanashvili, it meant an interdisciplinary theoretical framework wherein the concept of Image refers to phenomenology, that of Name refers to semiotics, and House infers the philosophical reflections on architecture.