Architecture is immobile as a form of art as a matter of course, but at its core, it is only alive as a conversation between form, function, materiality, and creator from the moment the first shelter was raised against the sky. “Conversation in architecture” is a philosophy that redescribes buildings as social conversation rather than monologues of steel and stone. This narrative essay discusses how architecture converses through its formal idiom, materiality, relations of space, as well as processes of adaptation, with both precedents in history as well as contemporary examples as testimony regarding how design becomes conversation.
Theoretical Foundations
The dialogue nature of architecture is first conceptualized as Christopher Alexander develops the argument that all built form is imbued with a “pattern language” for adaptation with, and responsiveness to, humans (Alexander, 1979). Bernard Tschumi extends it a step to contend that architecture is conditioned less by stable places than by events and moments of encounter between people that “speak back” against the designs of the architect (Tschumi, 1996). Juhani Pallasmaa foregrounds sensory interactivity, with buildings that speak through touch, sound, as well as sight, addressing users through a multisensorial dialogue (Pallasmaa, 2012). All of these positions refigure the architect from author to interlocutor, creating environments that initiate and respond to action.
These perspectives distinguish between designed interactions and spontaneous responses. The intentional conversation—a form actively constructed by architects—guides social rituals and choreographs experiences. The unintentional emerges from appropriation, repurposing, and reinterpretation, extending the building’s relevance beyond its original script.
The Language of Form
Every piece of architecture, a stately colonnade or cozy alcove, is a sentence of a conversation. Saarinen’s Miller House (1958) offered the “conversation pit,” a sunken seating area designed to foster closeness for conversation with its occupants (Reggev, 2024). This intended move created a new typology for informal social discourse. The U-shaped enclosure reinvents the classical exedra of the ancient Romans’ half-moon benches for gathering, clarifying the way the formal archetypes can be reinterpreted to enable social interaction (Financial Times, 2024).
In contrast, involuntary conversations are brought on the plate through adaptive use of the Salk Institute (1965) by Louis Kahn since the users bring their own rituals like sunset gatherings, silent walks contributing new layers of meaning. It has become the space for quiet contemplation and intellectual exchange. Louis Kahn’s dance of solid and void, as offered by the Salk Institute, choreographs a conversation between monolithic walls of concrete and an open courtyard, placing a human presence against the sweep of the Pacific Ocean. Louis Kahn skillfully delineates space in the Salk Institute by means of light and shadow, casting an aura of seriousness and contemplation. As one moves along its travertine courtyard, they feel themselves drawn to the ocean by a tight linear channel of water, guiding movement and sight in subtle and unobtrusive form. Natural light reflected off of profound recesses in concrete gives the impression of quiet rhythmic movement-walls seem to oscillate as the sun travels across, rendering heavy form light plane. Kahn doesn’t just construct buildings; he orchestrates an emotionalizing experience, in which light is as much of a building material as concrete or stone.(David Bruce Brownlee and
The Theory of Materials
Materials narrate place, technology, craft and culture. Rem Koolhaas’s Seoul-based metallic façade for the Prada Transformer (2009) creates a mirror that reflects as much of the city as it reflects the city back upon itself, creating a constant feedback loop of identity with building and context (Coffeewithanarchitect.com, 2024). Hassan Fathy’s regional earth walls of New Gourna Village (1946), conversely, narrate regional crafts of clay and environmental awareness and urge citizens to take part in the maintenance and continuation of their homes. Such material conversation announces power relations as well: widespread utilization of marble within classical palaces previously declared dynastical power, but naked concrete can announce democratic transparency today.
The Spatial Interplay
Aside from buildings, the city’s punctuation marks are the interstitial spaces such as avenues, plazas, and alleys. Superkilen Park (2012), a work of BIG, Superflex, and Topotek1, interweaves objects from over 60 cultures as a continuous “wedge” through Nørrebro, inviting residents to identify and speak with global as well as local identities simultaneously (The Urbanist, 2023). New York City’s High Line similarly reuses a redundant rail viaduct as a linear park, where pedestrians can interact with the city’s industrial history while enjoying new views of its skyscraper skyline (Lennard, 2014). Such projects depict how the city “speaks back” when the users reinterpret forgotten infrastructures.
The activation status of the user
A conversation necessitates a response. As Bernard Tschumi suggested, architecture is animated by action; it is activated by the unexpected application of its users (Tschumi, 1996). If the office lobby is utilized as a pop-up art fair, a university courtyard as a place for student gathering, design, and function is immersed in a co-creative conversation. Tate Modern’s Bankside Power Station conversion of function demonstrates how residual industrial volumes can be conversing with current practices of art to involve the visitors in a conversation through decades of the city’s development (Sudjic, 2001).
Parametric discourse and technological voice
New voices enter into architecture through the advent of computing. Parametric software can “speak back” to the architect with form-finding answers according to parameters of performance such as daylighting, energy efficiency, or structural optimization (Fraser, 2019). At Al Bahar Towers, Abu Dhabi, a responsive facade system opens and closes its “mashrabiya” lattice in real-time to mitigate solar gain, conversing with building envelope and environmental conditions (Koolhaas, 1998). While algorithms can pose suggestions, there is still a need for the judgment of humans so that numeric data can be translated with richly meaningful experiences of space.
Conversation with Heritage and Adaptive Reuse
Heritage buildings facilitate centuries of conversation. At Venice’s Fondaco dei Tedeschi, a medieval trade center restored by OMA in 2016, glass and steel insertions from the contemporary period have a respectful conversation with centuries-old stone arcades, reconciling past commercial cultures with present ones through a sustained conversation (OMA, 2016). Restoration work through the 2015 earthquake incorporates traditional timber-brick construction techniques with contemporary seismic reinforcement within Nepal’s Patan Durbar Square, enabling Malla-era courtyards to remain as places of communal ritual and market life (UNESCO, 2025). The way communities reclaim courtyards for the festivals, markets, protests and jatras shows how fortutious interaction keeps heritage spaces alive.
Future of Architectural Dialogue
Future directions must be directed by environmental imperative and social inclusion. Co-designing initiatives, such as Medellín’s revitalization through participatory workshops, enable people who form the immediate community to articulate needs and aspirations, creating a dialogue of two directions (Brand, 2014). Sustainable approaches, by contrast, bioclimatic architecture, the circular economy of materials, and landscape urbanism, engage buildings with the environment as a whole, where buildings are actors upon carbon loops and biodiversity webs (Van der Ryn & Cowan, 2007).
To experience architecture as conversation reworks each curve, joint, and plaza as an open-ended entreaty to pause, to transform, to interact. From Saarinen’s conversation pit to Superkilen’s intercultural tapestry, the built form makes many statements: formal, material, spatial, and technological. As practitioners and users of architecture, we are charged with listening intently, reading these statements within the place, and reacting with designs that heed past conversations while scripting new volumes of social and environmental conversation. By doing so, architecture is neither a silent monument nor a dead letter but a vibrant articulation of commonality.
References:
- Alexander, C. (1979). The Timeless Way of Building. New York: Oxford University Press.
- Reggev, K. (2024). The Conversation Pit: Everything You Need to Know About the Sunken Living Room. [online] Architectural Digest. Available at: https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/conversation-pit-everything-you-need-to-know.
- Brand, P. (2014) ‘Participatory Urban Planning: Lessons from Medellín’, Journal of Urban Practice, 22(3), pp. 45–60.
- Coffeewithanarchitect.com. (2024). Architecture is a dialogue | Coffee with an Architect. [online] Available at: https://coffeewithanarchitect.com/2012/02/09/architecture-is-a-dialogue/ [Accessed 24 Apr. 2025].
- Financial Times (2024) ‘The Conversation Pit: Retro-nostalgia in interior design’, Financial Times. Available at: https://www.ft.com/content/conversation-pit (Accessed: 26 April 2025).
- Fraser, J. (2019) ‘Parametric Design and Architectural Dialogue’, Journal of Architectural Education, 73(2), pp. 200–215.
- Koolhaas, R. (1998) S, M, L, XL. New York: Monacelli Press.
- OMA (2016) Fondaco dei Tedeschi, Venice. Rotterdam: Office for Metropolitan Architecture.
- Pallasmaa, J. (2012) The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses. Chichester: Wiley
- Sudjic, D. (2001) ‘Tate Modern: Dialogue Between Art and Industry’, Architectural Review, 29(4), pp. 22–29.
- Tschumi, B. (1996). Architecture and Disjunction. Cambridge, MA: MIT
- UNESCO (2025) Patan Durbar Square Restoration Report. Paris: UNESCO World Heritage Centre.
- Van der Ryn, S. and Cowan, S. (2007) Ecological Design. Washington, DC: Island Press.
- Wikipedia. (2020). Superkilen. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superkilen.
- Wikipedia. (2023). Conversation pit. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversation_pit.
- David Bruce Brownlee and Gilson, D. (1997). Louis I. Kahn : in the realm of architecture. New York, Ny: Universe Pub. ; Los Angeles, Ca.
