Architecture and the Psyco-Social Development : The Dialogical Turn (A Homage to Paul Ricoeur)

Abstract

First of all, the paper intends to describe the state-of-theart in the interdisciplinary field between architecture and social sciences. A brief historical background of the discussion follows, going from the pioneer definitions by David Canter and Amos Rapoport until the recent works by Jaan Valsiner and others. Secondly, the paper analyses the «dialogical turn» in the psycho-social development of the mind, from the theories of sociological and cognitive view points. The connexion with architecture is then established either at the prefigurative, or at the configurative and refigurative levels of the architectural performances, according to the theories of Paul Ricoeur, who himself applied these concepts to architecture some years before he died in May 2005. This article tries to be a homage to this extraordinary and generous French philosopher. This «dialogical turn», both in cognitive sciences and in social sciences, has direct links with a «sustainability» in architectural design, since it is an articulation between psychogenetic and sociogenetic developments. The third, and last chapter of my paper will show some data from recent psycho-social genetic empirical analyses of children’s conceptions of places to live in, considered as materializations of what Mikhail Bakhtin defined as the «architectonics» of culture (following the philosophy of E. Kant) and also as a striking example of psychosocial architecture. The paper concludes with some ideas about the theoretical renewal this approach could represent for the future of the interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary articulations between architecture and social sciences.