ENCOUNTERING ECHOES: ECHOING ENCOUNTER
Following Rolf Hughes’ notion of exposition (2015) as the act of creating a field of encounter, this inaugural issue reframes exposition as a space of echoing—a resonance between the seen and unseen, the said and unsaid. To encounter is to come up against what resists assimilation—an idea, a material, a history, a theory, or another being. To echo is to let that encounter reverberate and transform. Between encountering and echoing lies an ethics of care, speculation, and reciprocity—a willingness to stay with what is incomplete, uncertain, or even misread.
In line with the Arts of the contact zone (Pratt 1991), encounters are never neutral; they unfold in zones of tension, translation, and transformation. Similarly, Studio Note treats encounter and echo as creative and critical forces that shape our practices, pedagogies, and therefore our identities.
We invite contributions that explore encountering and echoing as speculative and performative acts of research.
Studio Note Journal Nº 1
Editors-in-Chief | Alphabetic Order:
Niloofar Amini
Gareth Jones
Jorge Valdovinos
Laura Yuile
Associate Editors | Alphabetic Order:
Eman AlHabashneh
Francesca Brunetti
Ruehl Muller
Mohammed Ali Sharieff
Raynal Somiah
Yvan Tina
Zihong Yue
Typeset in:
Editorial Team
Copy Editing:
Editorial Team
Proof Reading:
Editorial Team
Design:
Editorial Team
Published by:
University for the Creative Arts | ICI
Publication location:
Farnham, Surrey, UK
Xiamen, Fujian Province, China
Online publication date:
Summer 2026
ISSN: 2978-8080 (Print)
E-ISSN: 2978-8099 (Online)
studionote@uca.ac.uk
www.studionotejournal.org
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Prof. Bart Verschaffel - bart.verschaffel@ugent.be
The Chinese word shān chuān, which literally stands for 'mountain—water' or 'mountain-river', is usually translated into English as 'landscape'. The fact that the two words are used in comparable contexts in both cultures does not, however, mean that they mean the same thing and can simply be substituted for one another. Visiting and appreciating the Xiqiao Mountain differs considerably from stopping at a point de vue in the Alps. Mountain-water refers, it seems, to a moving, changing whole, to a dynamic relationship or dynamic equilibrium of opposites (Jullien, 2014). The Western 'World Landscape' image tradition, since the 16th century, depicts an orderly world, preferably seen from a height, stretching into the distance toward a vague horizon, within which all movement and life shrink to a detail and comes to a standstill: a landscape is a static image. The difference between both visions, and the particular meaning of the terms, gets lost in the translation. The translation error is difficult to correct, and even the literal rendering as 'mountain-water' is likely still not accurate. An untranslatable rest persists. What matters, however, is that we recognize the irreducible difference. Recognizing the inevitable misunderstanding and clarifying it only partially through circumlocutions and attempts at an alternative translation, yields at least, as a collateral insight, the important realization that there are at least two — and very probably many more — ways of looking at 'places in the world'. And what holds for the proximity and difference between the Chinese notion 'mountain-water' and the Western 'landscape' certainly applies as well to the way in which the basic vocabulary for talking about architecture in general — such as 'place' or 'access', wilderness, house, window, roof, bridge or grave — is usually translated into Chinese.
There is the dream of a perfect, transparent language: without ambiguity, clear, so that we can know precisely what we are saying and what others mean. One that fits language exactly to things. There is the suspicion, or the wish, that such a language once existed but has unfortunately been lost, that the 'first and pure language' has given way to a multiplicity of different languages, which are moreover — to varying degrees — all 'mixed' and impure. (Every people, every culture, will probably tend to consider their own language as better than most). The Babel-like multiplicity and impurity of languages, with all the misunderstanding and violence that entails, is usually seen as a misfortune or even a punishment for human arrogance — humanity wanting to design and build its own world, a world that would reach to the heavens. For the Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin, though, the variety of languages is neither a punishment nor a misfortune. The 'pure language' (reine Sprache) for him is not a 'perfect' or original language that precedes or stands above the multiplicity of languages. The 'pure language', for Benjamin, is not an 'unmixed', unique language, but rather that which can be carried over from one language into another — thus making contact between languages and connecting all languages (and cultures) (Liska, 2014). This means that the 'pure language' cannot be reached, it can only be pointed to, and this occurs most strongly in translation. When one translates — as literally as possible, as Benjamin demands — and lets two languages collide, it brings the irreducible differences between languages to light, but also that they are all complementary and have a common Art des Meinens (way of signifying): mountain-water is simultaneously equal and not equal to landscape (Benjamin, cited in Liska, 2014).
It has been the case for several decades now that architecture is internationalizing and that the architectural culture is internationalizing. English dominates. The architectural idiom — both of what is built and of what is thought and said about it — is becoming more homogeneous. Global tourism formats the way we look at the world. But the multiplicity of languages remains real nonetheless, and the differences are cherished, simultaneously stereotyped and cultivated. (What, however, when soon, with the help of AI, instant translation becomes possible and, regardless of which language the other person speaks, I automatically hear only my own language? What of a world in which there are no ‘encounters’ between languages anymore, misunderstandings are no longer perceived, and can therefore never again be even partially clarified?)
If all architectural traditions are like languages, what is the 'pure architectural language' — or: what is it that can be translated and understood as its common cause? What is it that can be passed on from one architectural language to another, and within each tradition, from the very beginning, from earlier times to the hypermodernity of today and the hybrid, virtually expanding world of tomorrow? Before the German philosopher Hegel (1970) discusses in his Lectures on Aesthetics the humanized, 'serving' architecture — which provides 'enclosure' and makes temples for divine images, tombs for ancestors, and houses for people — he discusses its beginning: the most elementary, primordial architecture, which is merely symbolic, meaning it transforms nothing, but simply marks the strange, inhospitable universe. A scratch on a rock. The beginning of 'presence,' of the life of the mind, of architecture, its irreducible core that can be passed on, is what remains after a touch: it is the trace of a contact, a hand-sign.