Launching Architecture Through the Image

Contemporary architecture seems seduced by the image and has in many ways taken on the casual vanity of fashion and make-up. Yet the image can be a powerful source of imagination and suggestion and holds potentials for adressing aspects of  the world, which seems hard to approach through other medias. Through phenomenological education–based research a workshop with architect students in Copenhagen in 2013 investigates these potentials. How can the image – here as the model photograph – become an active and intergrated tool in the architectural process – and in this case as the very launch pad for its creation?This paper describes the course of the workshop and the vivid dialogue the images initiated concerning the perceptual, embodied experience of an architecture to come. A dialogue on aspects of architecture often neglected but surprisingly spurring to the students personal architectural process and courisously accessible for broad and common debate. A personal dialogue made possible by the correlation of the senses and a common dialogue based on the fact, that we share vast common, cultural grounds making it possible to discuss the images and their possibilities – despite their personal and singular being.