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Notes around the Doppler Effect and Other Moods of Modernism
... Thus, the article is in line with those works such as the one by Hilde Heynen, who via the term "domesticity", studied the relationship between housing and modernity, showing its tensions and contradictions [7] (pp. . Moreover, the design of this investigation aims to achieve a "projective" analysis, which has resounded since the beginning of the XXI century and which authors such as Sarah Whiting and Robert Somol were the first to introduce [8] (pp. 72-77). ...
... It happens in "Heterotopia and the City", edited by Michiel Dehaene and Lieven De Cauter, where they replace it as a crucial concept in the current debate concerning the transformations carried out in both architecture and cities today [25] (pp. [3][4][5][6][7][8][9]. Hilde Heynen also supports the idea that "pursuing the idea of heterotopia offers a productive strategy" to investigate the conditions of urban and social contemporary life [26] (pp. ...
... It could be said that this investigation started off with two projects Koolhaas carried out in his training phase as an architect at the Architectural Association School in London: The Berlin Wall as Architecture (1971), and Exodus, or the Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture (1972) [29,30] (p. 212-232, p. [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21]. According to Koolhaas, the predominant architectural culture of those days had moved away from "real architecture", and he wanted to change that. ...
This article focuses on the project for the renovation of a Panopticon prison in Arnhem, the Netherlands (1979–1980), designed by Rem Koolhaas/OMA. The analysis of its reception shows that, despite being well known, it has been little studied and discussed, and although it was not built, it had an impact on prison architecture. It seems appropriate to tackle it now because the Koepelgevangenis (dome prison) of Arnhem has gained current relevance due to plans for it to be turned into a hotel. The renovation project for the Koepelgevangenis explicitly shows the presence of Foucault’s ideas on power and how these ideas exerted significant influence on the works carried out by Koolhaas. For Foucault, the Panopticon prison, such as the Koepelgevangenis, was the paradigmatic example of what he called the “disciplinary society”. Domesticity “behind bars” suggests that prisons can also be understood as domestic spaces. Moreover, it could be said that for Koolhaas, this Panopticon prison was a social condenser or a hotel for voluntary or involuntary prisoners. As a prison or as a hotel, it can also be interpreted as Foucault’s heterotopia, the intervention thus acquiring a new meaning which anticipated the future of this unique building.
... More specifically, Robert E. Somol explicitly alluded to the project for (1999); since, as this prison had been built originally in line with the principles set out by Jeremy Bentham in 1787, they had had the chance of directly to engage the panopticon diagram in the study, "not since Piranesi have prisons provided such an opportunity for extreme architectural speculation" (Somol, 1999). Short after, along with Sarah Whiting, he alluded once again to Koolhaas/OMA's diagrammatic work and referred to it as "projective", this time, with the example of the section of the Downtown Athletic Club (Somol and Whiting, 2002). ...
... p. 23. Frontiers of Architectural Research xxx (xxxx) xxx + MODEL 15 of collectivity" (Somol and Whiting, 2002). Moreover, as Somol and Whiting argued, the "skyscraper-machine" allows to "project" dinfinitely upwardsd "virtual worlds within the world", and in this way, is an extension of the reflections by Michel Foucault on heterotopias and prisons. ...
Rem Koolhaas/OMA carried out the study for De Koepel prison throughout a decade (1979–1988). However, only its initial stages (1979–1980) were disclosed and have been investigated. The hypothesis presented in this article suggests that Koolhaas implemented his —then— recent thesis present in Delirious New York (1978) on “life in the metropolis” and the “Culture of Congestion” in the conception and design of this project. Thus, this article has the aim of examining —by means of the documents compelling the entire period of the study— how the project suggested transforming the domesticity of De Koepel prison into a “social condenser” of the contemporary metropolis. By doing so, it makes it possible to consider the role of this project within the first decade of Koolhaas' career as an architect (1978–1989), and to establish that Delirious New York is, in fact, the theory on which it was based on when first conceived. This project anticipated the strategy and the methodology he implemented, at a later time, in other projects, offering a different perspective. On this occasion, this diagrammatic investigation took place in Bentham's Panopticon; reason why, he was then able to develop the reflections on heterotopias and prisons carried out by Foucault.
... Este complejo posicionamiento, fue leído en términos arquitectónicos como la simple necesidad de desaparición de toda crítica, de todo aspecto negativo, en favor de términos vagos como productividad (Zaera and Van Toorn 2003), coolness o performatividad (Somol and Whiting 2002), inteligencia (Speaks 2006;[2002] 2010), etc. ...
... 14 Recordemos, el autor con el que cerraba Hays su antología, aun a pesar de no entrar en temas posteriores al deconstructivismo, y que será poco después coautor del seminal Notes around the Doppler Effect and Other Moods of Modernism (Somol and Whiting 2002) ya citado, y que figurará desde entonces en toda antología sobre la postcrítica, empezando por la de Sykes. La subsiguiente antología de Sykes (2010), escrita más de una década después, ya a la sombra de la crisis, se convertirá en un extraño artefacto, al ser el debate sobre la crítica su principal temática conductora, con numerosos ensayos en ambos bandos sobre el tema. ...
... In the wake of insightful theorization efforts and discussions of the death of theory, atmosphere and materiality are within the themes of projective practices in the last two decades (Somol & Whiting, 2010;Speaks, 2010). Projective theory deals with the sensual qualities of architectural space and is associated with scenario writing, alternative reading strategies, atmospheric elements, effect, and performance-based spaces (Somol & Whiting, 2010). ...
... In the wake of insightful theorization efforts and discussions of the death of theory, atmosphere and materiality are within the themes of projective practices in the last two decades (Somol & Whiting, 2010;Speaks, 2010). Projective theory deals with the sensual qualities of architectural space and is associated with scenario writing, alternative reading strategies, atmospheric elements, effect, and performance-based spaces (Somol & Whiting, 2010). Somol and Whiting (2010, pp. ...
This paper explores how to begin interior architecture education and provides a fertile ground on which students can tackle design departures. Narratives are studied as a vehicle and an opportunity for self‐expression and discovery for first‐year students to explore and produce atmospheres. The project Staging Poe draws its narrative inspirations from Edgar Allan Poe's poems. It proposes to approach atmosphere through a narrative method, by translating words into materiality. Narratives of literary works are proposed to novice students as starting points while stepping into the not‐yet‐familiar ways of the design process. Staging Poe further envisions a first‐year design studio rooted in ongoing contemporary debates on the theory and practice of atmosphere and materiality in tandem with technology. The objective is to inspire a new generation of interior architecture students. This paper begins by discussing the theory of atmospheres and the potential role of narratives in exploring atmosphere within the Basic Design studio. Next, we examine Poe's The Philosophy of Composition as a guide to translating narrative into atmosphere before discussing the design of the Staging Poe project and the two consecutive phases of its methodology. Student progress is reviewed through an analysis of weekly reports and followed by an examination of the students' overall performance in the course. The findings of the analysis demonstrate how the structure of the studio advances student design thinking and performance in relation to their understanding of atmosphere and its material and quasimaterial agents. The study concludes that there is room for the exploration of alternative and field‐specific methods in the education of interior architecture discipline.
... Hays 1984), or "post-criticality" (see e.g. Somol &Whiting 2002, andBaird 2004), has little to do with ontology in either of the senses I have invoked here, being focussed instead on the political and discursive positioning of architecture. Such discourse may well be productive in a variety of ways, but it has little directly to do with any increased insight into matters ontological. ...
... Hays 1984), or "post-criticality" (see e.g. Somol &Whiting 2002, andBaird 2004), has little to do with ontology in either of the senses I have invoked here, being focussed instead on the political and discursive positioning of architecture. Such discourse may well be productive in a variety of ways, but it has little directly to do with any increased insight into matters ontological. ...
... Este complejo posicionamiento, fue leído en términos arquitectónicos como la simple necesidad de desaparición de toda crítica, de todo aspecto negativo, en favor de términos vagos como productividad (Zaera and Van Toorn 2003), coolness o performatividad (Somol and Whiting 2002), inteligencia (Speaks 2006;[2002] 2010), etc. ...
... 14 Recordemos, el autor con el que cerraba Hays su antología, aun a pesar de no entrar en temas posteriores al deconstructivismo, y que será poco después coautor del seminal Notes around the Doppler Effect and Other Moods of Modernism (Somol and Whiting 2002) ya citado, y que figurará desde entonces en toda antología sobre la postcrítica, empezando por la de Sykes. La subsiguiente antología de Sykes (2010), escrita más de una década después, ya a la sombra de la crisis, se convertirá en un extraño artefacto, al ser el debate sobre la crítica su principal temática conductora, con numerosos ensayos en ambos bandos sobre el tema. ...
Las antologías tratan eficazmente el conocimiento, proporcionando significado para una colección de fragmentos. No solo la Antología es un género que, como señaló Sylvia Lavin una vez, crea una genealogía para el presente, sino que este tipo de inventario seleccionado del pasado siempre reclama una agenda determinada para el futuro.
... See the debate on critical and projective cultures outlined inSomol and Whiting (2002). ...
Starting from the late 1980s, the advent of digital design—the possibility to ideate, develop, and generate projects via computers—has progressively pushed the disciplinary discourse to rethink architecture’s role in society, as well as its formal manifestations. The contemporary evolution of digital architecture has taken different directions, which are sometimes contradictory and ambiguous in their intents. This paper especially focuses attention on one of those directions—the opportunities that artificial intelligence can offer in the future production and communication of architecture. Recent episodes are analysed and contextualised within the historical antinomy between two diverging worldviews that, since the fifteenth century until the end of the twentieth century, have informed the architectural discourse. These worldviews can be exemplified in the dichotomy between the dodecahedron and the basket of fruit.
... This pragmatic critical approach focuses on performance and propositive action, and it channels critique as a creative attitude, fostering design approaches that prioritize vitalist affirmative change over passive commentary and negative criticism. This evokes a projective methodology (Somol and Whiting, 2002) that focuses on sensibility, affect, ambience and atmosphere. Moreover, it introduces the idea of projective criticality as a design approach that questions the socio-spatial context in which it operates and problematizes disciplinarity through practice. ...
This text addresses the architectural methodology developed
during the first term of the 2019 academic year at the Design
Studio I-II, School of Architecture, San Sebastián University,
Chile, in response to the XIV Corma Competition: “Theatre:
timber and edge”. In the Design Studio, ways of making forms
in art were transferred to architecture through the adoption of
strategies taken from Land Art to design a theatre built in timber
at the edge between land and sea in Lota, Chile. A theatre from
where it is possible to contemplate both the shows held within
and the landscape itself by means of a simple and regular
geometric shape placed in nature that is capable of turning
topography into a place. An artificial shape that turns nature
into a new landscape.
Este texto recoge la experiencia de docencia arquitectónica
desarrollada en el primer semestre del curso 2019 del Taller
de Proyecto I-II de la Escuela de Arquitectura de la Universidad
San Sebastián, Chile, como respuesta al XIV Concurso
Corma: “Teatro: madera y borde”. Una experiencia en la que se
produce la transferencia de formas de hacer la forma propias
del arte a la arquitectura a partir de la aplicación de estrategias
empleadas en el Land Art —el arte de la tierra— para la
resolución de un teatro construido en madera en el límite entre
la tierra y el mar en Lota, Chile. Un teatro desde el que poder
contemplar tanto los espectáculos celebrados en él como el
propio paisaje gracias a la inserción en la naturaleza de una
forma geométrica simple y regular capaz de transformar el
terreno en lugar. Una forma artificial que construye un nuevo
paisaje natural.
... Eisenman veya Hays'in öncelikli bulduğu mimarlığın özerkliği meselesi eleştiri, temsil veya anlamlama (signification) içeriyordu; fakat tasarımsal, edimsel ve uygulama açısından işlemiyordu. 17 Ancak, bu tartışmaları bugün başka türlü yorumlayanlar da var. ...
Bu metin Türkiye mimarlık ortamında mimari eleştirinin iki ayrı kanadı olduğunu iddia ediyor. Bir tarafı mimarlığın düşünümselliği ile ilgileniren diğeri kapitalist üretim ilişkilerine, yani mimarlığın sosyo-ekonomik koşullarına odaklanıyor. Bu iki kanat arasındaki kopukluk, eleştiri pratiğini sınırlıyor. İki eleştiri kanadını bir arada düşünme yolunda, bu metin, iki mimari eleştiri metnini karşılaştırıyor. Neşe Gurallar’ın “Nef İlkokulu Aracılığı ile Ulusal Mimarlık Ödülleri’ni Yeniden Düşünmek: Gültepe ve Ortabayır Mahallesi içinde ‘Ortabayır’, ‘Zafer’ ya da ‘Nef İlkokulu" ile, Ali Artun’un “Mimarın Şöhret Düşkünlüğü - Emre Arolat ve Guy Debord” metinleri bir arada düşünüldüğünde, bu kopukluğun uluslararası mimarlık ortamında uzun bir tartışmanın izlerini taşıdığını görmek mümkün.
... The proponents of new architectural pragmatism, such as Robert Somol and Sarah Whiting (2002), questioned K. Michael Hays and Peter Eisenman's "critical project" since "disciplinarity is understood as autonomy (enabling critique, representation, and signification) but not as instrumentality (projection, performativity, and pragmatics)". Against Eisenman, Somol and Whiting (2002) introduced Koolhaas to support their alternative position as a shift from disciplinarity as "autonomy and process" to "force and effect". Somol and Whiting set forth architecture as an instrumental practice by moving away from the criticality of the 1970s and 1980s autonomy discussions. ...
Two major formal approaches have governed architectural discourse over the last century: formal autonomy and formal engagement. While formal autonomy disengaged architecture from its social, political, cultural, and physical context, formal engagement of current architectural new-pragmatism hardly offered a critical evaluation of these contextual features. Another approach is possible, which we will name here as third formalism alluding to Anthony Vidler’s seminal article “The Third Typology” (1998). This third formalism discusses the possibility of an architecture that realizes both the separation from and engagement with the external contextual conditions via the form. Without naming it as such, this alternative approach has been articulated by Pier Vittorio Aureli in his book The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture (2011). This paper aims at discussing this third alternative by analyzing the Arter building in İstanbul. Designed by Grimshaw Architects and opened in 2019, Arter’s new building is located in Dolapdere, Beyoğlu, which witnesses a rapid urban transformation. Arter is a good example of the third formalism since its finite and definitive form neither directly follows the external forces of its urban surrounding nor disregards its context by solely focusing on the intrinsic formal elements of architecture.
... The common basis of the 'post-critics' lies in the dissatisfaction with the 'negation' of the critical theory of the Vitruvian imperative towards the construction of architecture that aims to create a better world. The question is how long critical architecture can delay the inevitable moment when its hermetically sealed framework of opinion will open under the influence of increasing social disparity, wars of choice and the unfolding environmental cataclysm [8]. ...
In this paper, we will consider the issue of climate discourse, which is consistently connected with the emergence of the meteorological approach in the theory and practice of contemporary architecture and urban design. Thermal modernity appears as a contemporary space of critical debate that expands the possibilities of architectural thinking, positioning it in a transdisciplinary knowledge framework. The concept of meteorology is the result of research on biological and ecological causes and processes, thermal factors, actions, and interactions to establish a sensory connection of users with space. Therefore, invisible spatial qualities, atmospheres, are recognised as ontologically important elements of spatial experience. The new paradigm opposes visual dominance, formalism, and semiological interpretations, establishing a new way of social and environmental responsibility.
... Somol and Whiting (2010) proposed the projective architecture that focuses on the "possibility of emergence" as an alternative to the critical architecture; the newly proposed architectural paradigm, projective architecture, was based on the theory of Deleuze, because of offering "diagrammatic becoming" of possible realities instead of self-referential and territorial indexical structure. With the respect to Somol and Whiting's (2010) argumentation, it is significant to recall how Deleuze and Guattari (2011, 142) describe the diagrams; "That is why, diagrams must be distinguished from indexes, which are territorial signs, but also from icons, which pertain to reterritorialisation, and from symbols, which pertain to relative or negative deterritorialisation. " From the standpoint of the definition of diagrams in the Deleuzean sense, it is possible to claim that projective architecture proposed to focus on possible multiplicities (Somol and Whiting, 2010, 196) that became visible in diagrams to develop a "rhizomatic" program that is non-hierarchical, non-centred and unrepresentative. Projective architecture contains fluidity and dynamism instead of fixity and stability; ambiguousness became a fundamental feature of architectural praxis that coincides with current conditions in the definition of both ideology and the subject. ...
The fundamental aim of the article is to scrutinise the transformations and yet pseudo-disappearance of architectural theory with an archi-theoretical gaze. It is an attempt to reread/ write the architectural theory of the 21 st century in the shade of the claim that architectural theory was dead. It is obvious that not only in architecture but also in all social-life structures, free-floating meanings began to invade the totality; every concept that constitutes societal life was dislocated after the digital turn. Concepts began to be depicted with the prefix 'post'; such as post-historical, post-humanist, post-political, post-ideological, post-theory, and even, 'post-truth'. Under these circumstances, the main argument of the article is that architecture could be run as a 'point de capitone'-in Lacanian terminology-, between the subject-described as the sublime object of ideology by Zizek-and the ideology; the role of architecture is to work as a stabiliser on/between the liquid surfaces/grounds. In the context of the main argument, the article is structured on three conceptual domains, which are that ideology, subject and architecture. Architecture as a point de capitone has a significant role in the reconstitution of incommensurable dialectic in the 'redoubling procedure' , which works for both recreating the lost otherness, and providing social antagonism.
Cite this article as: Çavdar RÇ. A neo-structuralist perspective on architectural theory of post-truth era: Reconstructing the architect-subject. Megaron 2022;17(2):235-244.
... Somol and Whiting (2010) proposed the projective architecture that focuses on the "possibility of emergence" as an alternative to the critical architecture; the newly proposed architectural paradigm, projective architecture, was based on the theory of Deleuze, because of offering "diagrammatic becoming" of possible realities instead of self-referential and territorial indexical structure. With the respect to Somol and Whiting's (2010) argumentation, it is significant to recall how Deleuze and Guattari (2011, 142) describe the diagrams; "That is why, diagrams must be distinguished from indexes, which are territorial signs, but also from icons, which pertain to reterritorialisation, and from symbols, which pertain to relative or negative deterritorialisation. " From the standpoint of the definition of diagrams in the Deleuzean sense, it is possible to claim that projective architecture proposed to focus on possible multiplicities (Somol and Whiting, 2010, 196) that became visible in diagrams to develop a "rhizomatic" program that is non-hierarchical, non-centred and unrepresentative. Projective architecture contains fluidity and dynamism instead of fixity and stability; ambiguousness became a fundamental feature of architectural praxis that coincides with current conditions in the definition of both ideology and the subject. ...
... This pragmatic critical approach focuses on performance and propositive action, and it channels critique as a creative attitude, fostering design approaches that prioritize vitalist affirmative change over passive commentary and negative criticism (Allen 2000, 60). This evokes a projective methodology (Somol and Whiting 2002) that focuses on sensibility, affect, ambience and atmosphere. Moreover, it introduces the idea of projective criticality as a design approach that questions the socio-spatial context in which it operates and problematizes disciplinarity through practice. ...
Abstract
This paper focuses on the use of art-based research to enrich active methodologies in design curricula. Based on the analysis of two case studies, it argues the need to further explore a hybridisation of methodologies and disciplines to foster disruptive and innovative design practices within academic programmes in the expanded
architectural field. The case studies articulate temporary spatial design with artistic practices through a radical approach to materiality, which is posited as the starting point for each project. Rather than seeing materiality as a second-tier decision addressed after a design concept has been formulated, materials are tackled directly, and the working process then defines the design concept and its detailed resolution. A crucial result of the case studies is the active enactment of new forms of authorship, straddling the space between the autarkic author of post-romantic models and the dissolution of authorship of some contemporary collaborative models.
Keywords: art, design, disciplinarity, materiality, authorship, projective criticality, agency of matter, strategies of indeterminacy.
... Proposed in the early 2000s as an alternative to the "dominant paradigm of criticality," Somol and Whiting were concerned with constructing a practice-oriented theory for architecture, focused on "the diagrammatic, the atmospheric and cool performance." 15 Projective architecture allowed room to venture out of the unproductive autonomy formulated by the high architecture theory into other fields without claiming expertise in any of them; the act of design ultimately delineated its fluid boundaries. 16 Indeed, for Whiting, to be effective, progressive architects must freely "slip in and out of critical theory's rule." ...
The paper explores the theoretical grounds for recalibrating architectural practice in weak market cities. Situating the argument in the ongoing debates on alternative and expanded practices, the paper proposes two concepts as the tenets of effective practice to confront volatile urban conditions—moderate autonomism and projective analogism. The paper then points to the institutional landscape of middle-out practices as an important area of engagement to cultivate new audiences. Drawing lessons from the strategic actions of New Urbanism advocates, it concludes by urging architects to participate in the processes of crafting urban policy through effective coalitions, designed to empower urban communities.
... The intertextual relationship can only explain the similarity of theories in their narratives under the background of times, but deepening these theories in the way of cartographic diagnosis could gain a new structural understanding, such as the efforts by Koolhaas and Tschumi. The diverse practices and post-criticisms on "projection" and "Doppler effect" proposed by Robert Somol, Sarah Whiting, and other scholars [46] (Fig. 6), as a reflection on how criticality has become "architecture in the boudoir," advocate the return of productivity. Similar to the thinking about transcending the disciplinary contradiction in Diagrams Diaries [32] , this partial, individual, and pluralistic theory has gradually replaced with the holistic historical narratives since the 1960s, and the focus on the departure from the original criticism is no longer confined to the shackles of "anti-criticism" propaganda. ...
The analysis of desire related to subjectivity is one of the subjects of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis theory is frequently cited by the theorists of design criticism, but there are few works introducing the cartographic tools used in psychoanalysis and the later developed schizoanalysis. This paper makes an intertextual correspondence between the
developments of design theory and psychoanalytic cartographies, and proposes its philosophically diagnostic essence and the theoretical promotion from psychoanalysis. It is concluded that the interdisciplinary influence between psychoanalysis or schizoanalysis and design criticism has witnessed over 4 stages—which are also the primary application categories of psychoanalysis and schizoanalysis—including: 1) metaphors in literary criticisms; 2) analytical tools in ontology; 3) genealogical narrative tools in ecology of systems; and 4) synthesis operators for interdisciplinary research. The process from dualism to pluralism and the process from metaphorical representation of mirror to interdisciplinary synthesis operator experienced by psychoanalytic cartographies are consistent with the history of professional discourse and criticism paradigm development, and in fact are an epitome of philosophical theory in the second half of the 20th century. The design theory is also a part of the shift, so the graph of desire could be a way to represent the very discourse of critical history and relevant text. Lastly, possible applications of psychoanalytical and schizoanalytic cartographies in the design theory discourse are proposed.
... Holding all such relations in a comparative frame does not so much serve to generate a synthesis (or validate Fitzgerald's "first rate intelligence") as it does to generate a more developed composite sign that indexes the presence of yet 8 My purpose in doing so is not to suggest that parallax modeling is the best or only alternative; nor is my intent to privilege the visual modality over others. As Somol and Whiting (2002) suggest, aural models, based, e.g., on the doppler effect, can provide complementary insights. more deeply buried dynamic objects to be searched out through still further collateral experience. ...
If comparative modeling is necessary for semiotic inquiry, a reflexive turn is in order: comparative modeling needs comparative modeling. In search of experientially grounded analogies better suited for understanding, validating, scrutinizing, and accounting for the situation of the semiotic inquirer, this paper applies insights from Peircean process semiotics and Göran Sonesson’s extended theory of cultural semiotics toward two ends: one theoretical, the other applied. First, I undertake a critical review of recent scholarly and creative works that attempt to adapt concepts of “parallax” as a source domain for comparative modeling activities. I do this in order to continue laying groundwork for a more complex, systematic theory of reflexive semiotic modeling in human inquiry, building on my earlier work. Second, I explore a specific case study of comparative intercultural modeling: namely, nationalist ethnic classification strategies in China and Vietnam. While many researchers have considered the onomastic and geopolitical dimensions of state-sanctioned ethnic categorization programs in these two countries, little has been done to unpack the powerful visual and narratological strategies employed by both; and little has been done to compare the intercultural categories these strategies serve to legitimize. The Vietnamese classification program is clearly modeled on its Chinese counterpart historically, but important categorical mismatches emerge between the two that indicate the presence of hidden diversity. Comparing the two systems also leads to a number of discoveries with implications for further developing the theory of cultural semiotics. Ultimately, the function or purpose of parallax modeling is shown to both comprehend and point beyond nascent intercultural and intracultural models toward more complex blends, by holding all such relations in a comparative frame, not as irreconcilable positions but as a more developed composite sign indicating the presence of yet more deeply buried dynamic objects to be searched out through further collateral experience.
... The concept of the atmosphere is very much on the agenda of contemporary architectural debates revolving around materiality and immateriality through projective theory [1,2]. Even though all attempts at re-sensualizing architecture, there are multiple approaches to presence and production of atmosphere in design disciplines. ...
In an attempt to bridge the gap between architectural/interior design practice and education, ‘atmosphere’ as a prolific contemporary architectural debate in practice and theory is covered by the experiment of ‘Staging Poe’ carried out as a first year Design Studio through the study of Edgar Allen Poe’s selected poems. Poe’s 1846 text of ‘The Philosophy of Composition’, unfolding his analytical method of writing and emphasis on “effect” in poetry, provides a ground for experimenting with facets of materiality and structuring the studio. Aiming to cultivate intuitive design experiments of students into informed processes in hybridizing conceptual/textual and material/sensual aspects, studio is structured in two phases. In the first phase, “materialization”, idiosyncratic interpretations of students from words to materials with a focus on tectonic experiments and haptic experiences are sought in between materializing and dematerializing processes. In the second phase, the “atmospheric”, emphasis on dematerialization of the perception of materials through tools, such as light, color and sound is exercised to transform the object into a performance stage. Outcomes of the studio on aspects pertaining to material and materialities in creation of the immaterial that is the atmosphere is followed and evaluated through responses of students’ weekly reports.
... See book introduction ( Leach 1997, xii-xx) 14 We should remember this was the author chosen by Hays to close his anthology, in spite of not dealing with themes after deconstructivism, who would be co-author a bit later of the already-cited seminal Notes around the Doppler Effect and Other Moods of Modernism ( Somol and Whiting 2002). This would be included ever since in every anthology about postcriticism, starting with Sykes's. ...
The desire to historicize called upon by Lavin was not fulfilled. Quite the opposite, the convergence of anthologies that she analyzed can almost be read today as the swan song of a genre. The best known anthology on the next period (Sykes) is a strange device filled in with its own emptying as its strongest guiding thread was the debate about the extinction (“once and for all”, as Kipnis pointed out with unusual rage) of t theory. The historical facts of such anthology cluster, i.e. the end of global capitalism, the generalized computerization, the triumph of the French Theory (Cusset), or the Deleuzian turn of the theory (Spencer), will help us to describe how the anthology’s desire to historicize ended up in its object’s death. In 20 years, the economic cycle has turned around. The competitive, assertive, publicity-oriented apologetics which, after replacing criticism, drove the most unscrupulous period of postwar architecture, was followed, the theory left behind, by a sheer simulation of criticism as a sort of historical combinatorics, which is an outcome of the closure of Capital, at least as much as its opponent And when a new cycle was seemingly starting, a call to anthology, a new desire to historicize. Needed, almost urgent to assimilate both the exultant positivity and the disabled negativity of the recent periods, how can un-thology (inescapably negative, fractional and critical as shown by the deconstruction of the term) re-establish the lost bonds between the irrational, autonomous, symmetric exuberance (Greenspan) of practice without a discourse and a discourse without practice? How to sail on that abundance of emptiness? But, above all, how can un-thology know that its new desire to historicize, periodized on a point parallel to the previous one, offers any chance of escaping an equally parallel destiny? Maybe un-thology’s true desire (this is why it bounces back against itself, mutates into its opposite) is to be able to run away from its own dangerous historization.
By the late 1990s, the once fruitful alliance between architecture and continental philosophy was perceived as being responsible for the apparent schism between architectural theory and practice. In that context, some saw Pragmatism as a potential alternative for reviving the architectural discourse. This paper first considers how this enterprise was actually more of a continuity than rupture with former philosophical affinities. The introduction of Pragmatism in architecture was discussed in the same breath as previous developments based on Deleuze and Foucault, mostly around the ‘diagram’. Architectural thinkers were then following the recent revival of Pragmatism in American philosophy, carried out by figures like Rorty, and based on a reconciliation between American Pragmatism and Continental philosophies. This might explain why they favoured Pragmatism at the expense of contemporary analytic philosophy. This also explains why their initiative was not as successful as they expected: the alternative did not appear as offering enough of a contrast. In the second part of the paper, I take this non-fulfilment as an opportunity to explore – to speculate – what Pragmatism could have contributed to the ‘post-critical’ scene that followed in the early 2000s. The main post-critical move is a shift away from ‘meaning’ towards the material, sensuous ‘effects’ of architecture. Pragmatism appeared relevant, as its main gesture is to consider effects rather than causes and to dismiss all discussions that have no practical bearings. But Pragmatism has more to offer than just a refocus on practice. My hypothesis is that Pragmatism expands the obligations of architecture. It doesn’t just bring to the fore concrete, seductive ‘effects’ of buildings; it also insists on considering their broader ‘consequences’ on the environment – physical as well as social and cultural – and on inventing ways of dealing with them.
The professional opportunities and ethical implications of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on design are yet to reveal themselves fully. Nevertheless, Architecture's thirty-year project against postmodern iconography exemplifies how pre-existing concerns precondition AI's impact on design. Admittedly, there were pronounced conceptual and procedural differences in the methods developed during this period. However, a common belief in a pragmatic, instrumental approach to production has instigated a fundamental change in how one translates ideas into objects. This change, coinciding with the increasing use of the digital interface, now sees drawing as something one subscribes to rather than a set of techniques one uses to transcribe ideas. Contextualizing AI within a more extensive history of Architecture's experience with the digital environment, this paper will describe how pragmatism in Digital Architecture and Activism has encouraged designers to believe digital drawings enable an axiomatic translation of abstract ideas into real objects. At the same time, the most rudimentary of AI processes already contest this belief by presenting the disciplinary oddity of a digital technique based on images. AI not only reinvigorates architecture's often-problematic relationship to the semiotics of depictive imagery. It also problematizes issues of precedent and model by hiding how its algorithms select and combine sources. In raising questions around authorship and legitimacy, AI questions this thirty-year effort to recast disciplinary agency through instrumental drawing methods. Crucially, AI makes claiming authorship an issue again, while also asking whether axiomatic drawings can ever achieve prescribed socio-political goals.
Bu kısa çalışma aslında mimarlık öğrencilerinin çok fazla karşılaşmadıkları bazı teorik
kavramları onlara tanıtmak için kaleme alındı ve küçük bir el kitabı niteliğinde de tasarlandı. 20. yüzyıldan günümüze mimarlık teorilerinin hangi şartlar altında oluştuğunu anlayabilmeleri ve teorinin toplumsal ve ekonomik koşullara bağlı olarak aslında nasıl güçlü bir alt yapı ile mimarlığı şekillendirdiğini görebilmelerini
istedim.
Rem Koolhaas's theoretical and practical production his writings, statements, projects and built works have received the attention of the press and specialized critics, and have been study object by the academy, in a more or less constantly way; especially after the success of publications such as Delirious New York (1978), S,M,L,XL (1995) and iconic buildings such as the Seattle Library (2004), Casa da Música (2005) and CCTV (2012). However, despite the constant use of diagrams, evident in the projects produced by his office the OMA (Office for Metropolitan Architecture) , there is still no in-depth research on this architect that emphasizes the importance attributed to these graphic devices in his work. This dissertation, therefore, based on the exploratory method, seeks to eliminate this gap. Our work proposes to investigate the role of diagrams in the work of Rem Koolhaas, relating, through an extensive bibliographic review, the actors and events that, directly or indirectly, contributed to the adoption, by OMA, of these instruments as a heuristic platform in its work process. Throughout its chapters, this study presents a seam between theories, projects, interviews and statements collected indirectly to build a historiographical account of twenty years of the architects production 1972 to 1992 centered on four paradigmatic diagrams for the understanding of the relevance of these elements in the development of OMAs work: Exodus (1972), La Villette (1982), Trés Grand Bibliothéque (1989), Yokohama Masterplan (1992).
The introduction of pragmatism in architectural discussions in the early 2000s caused fierce objections by those who thought that abandoning critical theory and adopting pragmatism instead would take architectureArchitecture adrift. This chapter highlights moments within this debate when pragmatism was presented as a forceful alternative to critical theory in terms of the political engagements it requires from practitioners and thinkers who adopt it. Among those who did that most convincingly were two female architectural historians and theoreticians. Joan OckmanOckman, Joan organized a major conference on pragmatism and architectureArchitecture in New York in 2000. Gwendolyn WrightWright, Gwendolyn was part of that event and published in its wake a series of texts connecting the influence of pragmatism with socially-oriented architectural practices. Tracing the role of these two protagonists, the chapter also touches upon the fate of feminism within this intellectual history.
Performance Architecture is a term that emerged from my creative practice to suggest that the architectural activities endeavored within it are influenced by concepts and histories from performance studies. This writing takes aspects of my artistic activities and recontextualizes them as academic research to develop concepts shareable across its fields of inquiry that enable new ways of evaluating it. Particular attention will be given to my performative renovations, in which domestic spaces are renovated by changing its actions rather than materials. In so doing, this thesis discovers the potential of my interdisciplinary practice to be the possibility of encountering unfamiliar subjective affects that emerge as subjects and spaces interact. Following arts-based, practice-led and practice-based research precedents, this thesis articulates a methodology for practicing architecture through performance. Judith Butler’s writing, suggesting that subjectivity is formed performatively by iteratively enacting social norms, is the philosophical point of departure of this new methodology. However, for the formation of subjectivity to become intelligible as an outcome of architectural practice this thesis qualifies, critiques, and problematizes Butler’s performative concepts by putting them in tension with the thinking of other theorists and selected projects from my artistic practice. Analyzing these works through both theory and critical self-reflection observes performative subject formation also occurs somatically. Acknowledgement of this addition is noted when term performance architecture is nuanced by the term performative space making as the thesis develops. Tracing the arc of this shift reveals how migrating attitudes and concepts acquired during my education and professional experience in architecture were detrimental to practicing architecture through performance. Using language developed by this thesis, hierarchical ways of working and assumptions about both the architect’s abilities and the client-participants’ needs are critiqued in comparison to collaborative approaches of theater. Refining performance architecture’s concepts also portray the profession’s object oriented metrics of success as a mainstay of architecture that has not been serving users of space as well as it might. Indeed, these ways of working are found to stymie the emergence of certain kinds of subjectivity that performance architecture as a methodology seeks to liberate and nurture. Further theorization of concepts from performance practices, such as the everyday, agency, renovation, and role-play, allows critical engagement with six performative renovations newly developed for this research. Scrutiny of these performative renovations discovers qualities of practicing architecture performatively and expands the discourse connecting performance and architecture. A key insight invigorating thoughts on future practice is that performance architecture operates emergently along non-linear routes around what this research calls unperformable acts. Additionally, significant revelations show that outcomes of this new practice are most compelling when power relations between architects and clients are equalized and that new subjectivities are encountered through a flow of attention between somatic and symbolic experiences.
Der US-amerikanische Architekturdiskurs der 1990er Jahre ist entscheidend von den Theorien Gilles Deleuzes geprägt. Die Aneignung seiner philosophischen Konzepte und jener, die er gemeinsam mit Félix Guattari entwickelt hat, findet vor allem innerhalb des architekturtheoretischen Netzwerks der »Anyone Corporation« statt: In ihren Diskursen wimmelt es von glatten Räumen, organlosen Körpern, Rhizomen, Falten, abstrakten Maschinen und Diagrammen. Frederike Lausch zeigt auf, wie sich die »Anyone Corporation« durch die Bezugnahme auf Deleuze als intellektuelle Elite der Architekturdisziplin inszeniert und wie im Zuge der Entpolitisierung seiner Theorien die »Post-Criticality«-Bewegungen entstehen.
Der US-amerikanische Architekturdiskurs der 1990er Jahre ist entscheidend von den Theorien Gilles Deleuzes geprägt. Die Aneignung seiner philosophischen Konzepte und jener, die er gemeinsam mit Félix Guattari entwickelt hat, findet vor allem innerhalb des architekturtheoretischen Netzwerks der »Anyone Corporation« statt: In ihren Diskursen wimmelt es von glatten Räumen, organlosen Körpern, Rhizomen, Falten, abstrakten Maschinen und Diagrammen. Frederike Lausch zeigt auf, wie sich die »Anyone Corporation« durch die Bezugnahme auf Deleuze als intellektuelle Elite der Architekturdisziplin inszeniert und wie im Zuge der Entpolitisierung seiner Theorien die »Post-Criticality«-Bewegungen entstehen.
Tracing the origins of “experimental criticism” in China’s postre-form architectural production, this essay interrogates the archi-tectural criticism revolving around experimental architects that was formulated in China’s academic community during the early 2000s. Influenced by the Post-Cultural-Revolution liberal art movements, experimental architecture emerged as a marginal critique on political totalitarianism and cultural rigidity through installation-like, small-scale and conceptual projects. Despite its peripheral position in the state-regulated production system, experimental architecture was discovered and reframed by Euro-pean curators as a revolutionary pioneer of contemporary Chinese architecture. While criticism has always been central to China’s architectural development since the early twentieth-century, exper-imental architects and their works were the first to be evaluated through the lens of criticism in the academic discourse, marking the emergence of architectural criticism in Chinese scholarship in the early 2000s. The hasty recontextualization of the Anglo-Amer-ican paradigm of architectural criticism and the absence of an architectural theoretical framework in China have left cultural dif-ferentiations unelaborated, resulting in a heated debate over the political implication and social commitment in experimental archi-tecture’s critical attitude. This essay argues that the specificities of experimental criticism are fundamentally shaped by the exper-imental architects’ deep entanglement with postreform art move-ment. And experimental criticism only became problematic after the quick and mediatized generalization of their works across cultural borders. Tracing the postreform origins and elaborating the conceptual nuances of experimental criticism that were lost, distorted and reconstructed in the cross-cultural appropriation of contemporary critical discourse to China, this essay further evalu-ates its specificities in a local context.
Claims on critical positions in architecture are common ground in contemporary practice and reflection. This article probes into the critical capacity of the architectural project by returning to the notion of 'typological criticism' that Manfredo Tafuri introduced, as well as to the concept of the 'semi-autonomy' of architecture as theoretized by Louis Althusser. The article argues that the criticality of the architectural project resides in its mediation between autonomous and heteronomous aspects and proceeds through the entity of the architectural type.
Viewed from the 'Southern Europe', the theoretical/critical debate in the Anglo-Saxon world, in particular the ongoing debate at the American universities is perplexing. It is a world of opulence and loftiness, not in this case on the level of material wealth, but intellectual wealth. If we understand that the omnipresence of 'critical theory' has an inhibitive effect on a sensory relationship with architecture, and that dichotomies such as critical/projective are schematic, the truth is that we need to leave behind atavisms that diminish the approach in 'Southern Europe': the local against the global; the space against the images; the young against the old. Theory and criticism have much to gain from allowing themselves to be provoked by the unknown. I would like to concretize these ideas by revisiting two recent experiences: to the South, Cape Verde, and to the East, Macau. They are border situations of wealth and material prosperity in Macau; and of poverty and obstruction in Cape Verde. How are these territories read and criticized? The architecture we find there is outside the history based on the MoMA. In China one hears the echo of echoes, increasingly. In Africa, one can hear the distant resonance of those echoes. Where are we beyond 'post-criticism'.
Stacked-Plate Framing takes a projective stance on conventional American construction. By challenging the exclusionary lens of the timeworn axiom “Cheap, Fast, or Good,” a pragmatic and optimistic approach to vernacular building emerges. Stacked-Plate Framing uses off-the-shelf materials and deploys unskilled labor to elaborate an expedient, novel, and simple architectural response to two structures commissioned by a single client. By exercising a reductive approach to fabrication, Stacked-Plate Framing demonstrates a means to achieve work that can leverage the everyday and readily available to generate an economical and sustainable new construction typology.
This doctoral thesis offers a critical theorization of architecture’s shifting orientations towards the lives that it inevitably shapes and molds. The fourteen essays that comprise this thesis address a range of seemingly superficial transformations in architecture’s disciplinary landscape, which occur in Sweden in the second decade of the twenty-first
century. When viewed in aggregate, these transformations point to a decisive shift in what architecture does, evidencing phases of withdrawal (through deregulations and
enclosures) and facilitation (through exercises in projection and connection), ultimately suggesting the arrival of a condition that I refer to as the unbuilt environment, wherein the project replaces the building as architecture’s primary outcome.
Through this doctoral research, architecture is also examined as a key technology in the neoliberal project. A discipline that is vested in the production of subjects and environments, architecture is shown here to draw, write, and dream forth a vast range of “container technologies” that enclose, move, shape, support, and produce us as subjects, facilitating certain kinds of lives and not others, from the interior out.
Seductive, famous and published to the point of saturation, the 8 House in Copenhagen, designed by Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) and completed in 2010, is a paradigmatic example of an architecture that is oriented towards the reproduction of its own image and thus of its own “project.” From the initial marketing video and press photography to amateur post-occupancy photographs shared online, we trace the ways in which a seemingly simple project (“happiness”) begins to sprawl, positioning its users as fans, and thus as co-producers of a pre-determined narrative. Temporarily inhabiting the positions of visitor and critic, we explore the risks and potentials of giving oneself up to an architectural project, mining that experience in order to arrive at a proposal for the development of a “projective critique.” Ultimately, we conclude, an architecture that requires unconditional surrender (however pleasurable) is incompatible with positive societal transformation. In place of happiness, we therefore suggest the development of an architectural project of hope.
Helen Runting & Fredrik Torisson, “Yes Boss! Towards a Projective Critique of BIG’s 8 House,” Drawing On 1 (2015), 128-137.
Güneşe yönelim/erişim ve kent formu soru, sorun ve önermelerinin bir arada ele alındığı söylemlere son yıllarda sıklıkla rastlar olduk. Konunun “yeni” olduğundan söz etmek elbette mümkün değil. Buna mukabil, etkileşimli olarak değişen, evrilen ve gelişen ekoloji ve kent anlayışlarına paralel ve dolayısı ile oldukça güncel olduğunu söyleyebiliriz. Harvard Tasarım Okulu Kentleşme Ofisinin “Heliomorfizm” başlığıyla katılıma açtığı tartışıma ortamının temel sorularını anlamak, bu konunun şimdi ve yeniden gündeme gelişinin sebep ve önemini olduğu kadar olası vaatlerini anlamlandırmak bakımından da oldukça açıklayıcı olabilir. Bu metin, buradan hareketle, Ekolojik Şehircilik yaklaşımlarına önemli bir gelişme ve genleşme alanı sunması muhtemel ve güneşsel performansa dayalı gelişmekte olan karmaşık ve çelişken yeni bir ekonomi ve kent formu arasındaki ilişkiyi konu alan bu güncel alanın öncül bir okumasını okuyucuyla buluşturmayı hedefliyor.
Architectural theory – the collection of theoretical approaches by which the aesthetic, technological and societal challenges of architecture are defined and challenged – has only recently come to define itself as a field that is to play a major role in the education of future architects. This study explores the formation of architectural theory as an academic discipline in the second half of the 20th century. It focuses on Belgium, and more specifically its northern part Flanders as an excavation site. This field is not scanned or mapped in its totality, but rather explored by making deep drills into the educational landscape. In doing so, this study reveals a specific culture of architectural education, which drastically transformed in the period between the 1960s and 1990s. Rather than studying the publications or written accounts produced by canonised historical figures, this contemporary past is examined through the lens of four architect-educators or ‘gatekeepers’ who produced, adapted and contested new ideas on architecture in the studio and the classroom.
In this study, one methodological challenge supersedes all others: how to respond to the ‘haunting silence’ of the teacher’s work in historical documents and consequently, to the inaccessibility of past classrooms? To cope with these challenges, the study relies on the notion of ‘the materi- alities of schooling’ which was advanced by scholars in the fields of Visual Studies and Educational History. Hence, it asks how, in addition to more conventional oral and the textual materials, objects such as diagrams, paintings, maps and thumbed manuscripts circulate meaning visually. As a result, images and objects function as gateways into the black box of the classroom and into past schooling practices. These objects are bound together by illustrative actions or gestures of the gatekeepers under study.
Each chapter in this study addresses three main questions. Firstly, they look into the ‘means’ by which architectural knowledge or theoretical insights were disseminated to a student public. Which visual tactics and gestures the gatekeepers used to generate, launch, contest or disseminate new ideas? Secondly, this focus on the means of theory shines light on the different discourses and theoretical paradigms that were introduced in the classroom or the studio. A last question then addresses the institutional agenda of all figures. Was the implementation of theory in the curriculum a strategic move? And, how did theory support broader institutional directions? These three interconnected lines of enquiry offer a more nuanced and situated account of architectures different ‘intellec- tions’ in our period of study.
The first chapter looks at the lit- tle-known educational project initiated by Belgium’s acclaimed socialist and modernist architect Renaat Braem, (1910–2001) who taught at the Antwerp National Higher Institute for Architecture and Urban Planning (NHIBS) from 1947 till 1975. When Braem was appointed interim director in 1962, his first action was not to change the curriculum but to reconstruct the physical configuration of the school. By adding an eye-catching staircase painting, he accentuated an important passage in the school building. Claiming a central position in the institute, the staircase functioned as a stage and an auditorium on which an ideological and educational program was enacted in an implicit, yet very physical manner. This staircase provides the basis for a historical reconsideration of Bream’s ideologi- cally inspired body of work.
Paul Felix (1919–1981), a Catholic architect-educator, who was affiliated to the KU Leuven from 1952 till 1979, is our second gatekeeper. This chapter neither focuses
on his pioneering modernist architectural designs, nor on his limited published work, but studies his day-to-day work of reading, teaching and reforming. The latter remains
a relatively untapped and yet immediate
context in intellectual history. By developing a textual exegesis of a thumbed key text of Felix’ course, the 1968 text La fonction et le signe written by the Italian thinker Umberto Eco (1932–2016), this chapter redirects the predominant focus on canonical texts of architectural theory to the work of those actors who were not foremost producing, but consuming theory.
A third protagonist is Alfons Hoppen- brouwers (1930–2001), a flamboyant friar
and educator who was associated with the Sint-Lucas Institute in Schaerbeek from 1957 till his death in 2001. This chapter takes as its starting point the abstract painting series that Hoppenbrouwers produced at the end of the 1990s and carried into the theory classroom. It writes a ‘social biography’ of these paintings by tracing them back to their three sites of production: the street, the studio in a Catholic brothers’ house and the theory classroom
in the Sint-Lucas Institute for Architecture
in Brussels. Following this trajectory reveals Hoppenbrouwers’ multi-layered educational project. His paintings were pedagogical vehicles through which he taught his students not only how to perceptually understand space, but foremost how to read architectural history.
The last chapter then looks at the pedagogical experiments of Koen Deprez (*1961) at the Sint-Lucas Institute in the course of the 1980s and 90s. This chapter traces
how a military logic of strategy and tactics infiltrated Deprez’s architectural design pedagogy. Central to this investigation is a burned map, which functioned as a pedagogic tool for Deprez. This chapter looks at how
a military exercise, once transported to
an educational context, became a tool for promoting a user-oriented design practice.
It will look at how Deprez developed design tactics that blended military theory with Situationist ideas, and, how this was part and parcel of a pedagogical mindset cultivated at the Sint-Lucas Institute.
Architectural images operate through convention to depict, describe or identify a building as a means to communicate the content of a building. Competition images eschew this relationship slightly because they are staged images – images that act as a promise of a possible built future. Although there is a growing body of work looking at the interactions and transactions between different mediums, the architectural discipline is still focused on a critical reading of images. Our contribution is to give serious attention to the process of image production for architectural competitions, in particular the shift from a rationally driven logic of these images towards an amplification of affect. In this article we examine the affective logic of winning competition images by the architects Morphosis as well as Reiser and Umemoto’s RUR Architecture P.C. to explore how these images are staged through composition, colour and cinematic expression. Based on these examples we argue critically that these images demonstrate a shift in image making in architecture which speaks of its intersection with media culture. Importantly, the images are also telling of a shifting expectation that architecture is not just a rational object or carrier of symbolic meaning but also a space that amplifies and stages experience.
This thesis discusses how different paradigms within contemporary
architectural discourse ground different approaches to users. It reveals certain limitations of the dominating conceptual positions (postpositivism, critical theory, constructivism), and argues in turn for a need of adopting a paradigm that could support a more user- and context-sensitive approach. The study suggests that phenomenology, beginning and extending from the perspective of lifeworld and lived experience, provides comprehensive foundations for a socially and culturally responsible architectural practice.
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