Leon van Schaik AO, LFRAIA, RIBA, PhD, is Professor of Architecture (Innovation Chair) at RMIT, from which base he has promoted local and international architectural culture through practice-based research. Writings include monographs compiled on Edmond and Corrigan, Ushida Findlay, Guilford Bell, Tom Kovac, Poetics in Architecture, The Guthrie Pavilion, The Practice of Practice, and Sean Godsell (Electa 2005/6). His latest books are Mastering Architecture (2006) and Design City Melbourne (2007) both Wiley Academy who are also publishing his next book 'Spatial Intelligence' in 2008. A chapter in Volume, the John Wardle monograph published by Thames and Hudson in 2007 and a monograph on Denton Corker Marshall published by Birkhauser (2008) continue his investigations into practice, which are also pursued through numerous reviews in professional journals.
Day 3: Sunday 5th October, Session 3: Strategies for Urban Regeneration
'Spatial Intelligence'
Spatial intelligence is the most under-appreciated of the human intelligences because it is non-verbal, difficult to quantify, and - using all of our senses - is more than visual. Spatial intelligence is early to be deployed, mastered as we learn to navigate in the world, and is soon relegated to our unconscious. I therefore think architectures must reconcile canonical experience with our specific mental space, individual and communal because - prisoners of ourselves - when we export our work we export our mental space, and thus we export - to those who have not lived them - "the drawings that we have lived..."
