Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the paradoxes of two opposing branches of thought concerning the relation between time and place - the 'genius loci' and the 'utopia'. In what follows there is a critique of the use of oversimplified frameworks, that ignore the project as an in-between in places' time.

Paper long abstract:

The 'genius loci' (Norberg-Schulz, 1980) is the permanence of the place's 'character' over time - from past to present. Reversely the 'utopia' is the projection of an idealized future. Pastness vs futurness? The utopic has neither place nor time: the "Utopia has no future, the future has already come as its present (which is why it has no place, but also, even more ironically, no time (...)" (Grosz, 2001).

The paper considers the extent to which the genius has no past, as the past has already come has its present. The past is fixed in one genius, obliterating the several geniuses that exist within one place (which is why it has no time, but also, even more ironically, no place).

The 'Utopia' and 'genius loci' share the same absence of time. They freeze time. And by freezing time they freeze place. They both belong to the same world: "a world in which there is no time. Only images." (Lightman, 1993). Only static images without people. In so doing they ignore that extent to which "people make places".

Finally the paper presents an alternative way of thinking architecture as a 'creative research practice', which works across both places' uncertainty and the places' time traces. In the openness of both past and future, it works positively with the endless changing of human needs. To bring ideas to existing ground, are given samples of projects made in the diffuse territory of Vale do Ave, from our research practice in the School of Architecture.