Working Within the Generic

Working across built practice and digital representation, this session explores how architecture engages the ordinary as a critical ground rather than a limitation. Economic constraint, generic building cultures, and mass-produced environments are treated not as deficits but as conditions that shape contemporary spatial thinking.

One perspective reflects on economic efficacy and the pragmatic landscapes emerging from technological transfer and rapid development; another revisits modern architecture through the tension between banality, rationality, and the possibility of lasting “surprise.” In parallel, digitally generated images operate as speculative misreadings of familiar environments, exposing hidden assumptions embedded in contemporary spatial culture. Together, these approaches examine how attention to the everyday — whether built or simulated — can produce new architectural meaning without relying on exceptionality or spectacle.