319 research outputs found
Architecture in the Age of Apparatus-Centric Culture
No full textArchitectureArchitecture and The Built Environmen
Beyond the typological discourse: The creation of the architectural language and the type as a project in the western modern city
No full textThis thesis considers the city and its architecture the extreme condition under which the endless discussion around the human being way of thinking takes place. More precisely, the research assumes the city as the place where the displacement of mindset principles, categories and catalogue of objects is materialized into Form, becoming inhabitable. This radical definition of Form is therefore the subject matter of Urban Morphology and Building Typology and justifies the seductive uniqueness of the city with respect to any other possibility of existence of the above mentioned discussion. At least since its original inception, the greek polis, to discuss about the architecture of the city therefore implies to discuss about the ground of the thinking which made the city possible. The thesis identifies two main conditions under which the existence of the city is made possible. The former is the identification of the agents ( i.e. the driving forces) who reciprocally recognize claiming a role in the city coming into being and therefore decide to engage within the related discussion. The latter is the existence of a language as the result of the discussion about what the city should be. The type definition encompasses both the aspects, becoming the specific embodiment of the city collective project. Since the “conditions of possibility” of the discussion are neither neutral nor universal but historical, this thesis analyzes the city and its architecture as the place of an harsh conflict among different positions developed through space and time. The conflict not necessarily occurs within the existing city, putting into question its achieved certainties and implicit rationality. Sometimes it happens that the discussion leads to the crisis of the city itself and its architecture, demanding for a complete renewal of its principles, categories and related catalogues. Assuming the perspective of the crisis as a challenging one, the thesis starts questioning the Enlightenment revolution discussion around the city as a symmetrical discussion on the principle of the Enlightenment itself, in order to get rid of the Ancien Régime and to abruptly enter into the realm of Modernity. Furthermore, the thesis analyzes the way the city reacted to that revolution, as a mean of better understanding the way the western society coped with the subject matter of the Modern way of thinking itself. Through the transformation of the city, its principles, its categories and its catalogues, the thesis follows the transformation of the human being mindset as a reaction to the introduction of Modernity and its meaning. Towards that perspective, it recognizes an important threshold in the discussion occurred around the ’70 of the XX century. In fact, a crises of a new kind appeared at that time. It was not anymore under discussion an historical specific form of the city, but the possibility itself of existence of the city as an embodied displacement of that discussion was radically put into question. This is what Post-Modernity was deeply prompting. As an immediate consequence it was put into question the possibility of existence of the type itself. The thesis identifies in that aporia the main struggle put at stake nowadays, which is still unresolved and too often remains unquestioned. The thesis concludes that the crisis of the type identifies with the sunset of the western civilization, and that renouncing to the type definition as the subject matter of the discussion implies to renounce to those principles upon which the civilization process is grounded: to lead the discussion to a necessarily materialized conclusion, however provisional and partial it should be, of course to be discussed again and again. Moreover, the thesis concludes that to renounce to the type project means to renounce to the city, blurring its entity into a generic space of living.ArchitectureArchitecture and The Built Environmen
Place-time discontinuities: Mapping in architectural discourse
No full textArchitectureArchitecture and The Built Environmen
Fascism-qualunquism-neofascism: The rise in the first post-war period, until the foundation of the neo-fascist political party
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System-embedded Intelligence in Architecture
No full textFounded on the imperative to understand, evaluate and consciously decide about the use of digital media in architecture this research not only aims to analyze and critically assess computer-based systems in architecture, but also proposes evaluation and classification of digitally driven architecture through procedural- and object-oriented studies. It, furthermore, introduces methodologies of digital design, which in-corporate intelligent computer-based systems proposing development of prototypical tools to support the design process. Bijlagen op DVD in TU Delft Trésor collectie, TR diss 5272ArchitectureArchitectur
Camp of Faith: On Political Theology and Urban Form
No full textThe dissertation explores the political foundations of the city. It positions itself around a definition of the idea of the political, which is determined by the specific constitution of opposed entities; a dichotomy between a sovereign body and movements. Subsequently, the research suggests a dialectical reading of the idea of Urban Form, which is built upon the relation between norm and exception, between friendship and enmity, inclusion and exclusion. Departing from this definition, the dissertation stresses on the (constructive) dynamism of opposing forces which motivate or shape a creative tension: the state of antithetical, which becomes spatialised in the form of the city. This political understanding of the concept of the city has always been entangled with theological polemics. In this dissertation, the very notion of separation, that is embedded in theology, becomes the core concept when an ideological power aims at defining itself through the act of exclusion. Walls, enclosures and boundaries are the architectural elements that represent this action. However here the idea of separation does not imply a form of rejection but rather an association. Camp of Faith rereads these peculiar urban forms as political repercussions of theological ideas, when the city’s architecture establishes a relationship between power, inhabitants and territory. These spatial configurations mediate the moment of conflict, when opposing forces collide and projects are initiated in a dialectical process. Cities become laboratories of projects and counter-projects. Nevertheless the research’s ambition rests in the architectural quality of such phenomena, not only reading the architecture as an outcome of a deliberate political act but also when political ideas and ideologies emerge from the very architecture of the city. Camp of Faith relies on the close reading of paradigmatic examples that unfold the theological idea of city beyond the limits of time and geography. Therefore, here, the concern is not so much changing stylistic periods, but rather the issue of continuity; a specific conception of space which has remained constant despite the advent of technological and economic development: reading the city as series of inhabitable walls.ArchitectureArchitecture and The Built Environmen
The fourth typology; dominant type and the idea of the city
No full textArchitectureArchitecture and The Built Environmen
Architectural Contestation
No full textThis dissertation addresses the reductive reading of Georges Bataille's work done within the field of architectural criticism and theory which tends to set aside the fundamental ‘broken’ totality of Bataille's oeuvre and also to narrowly interpret it as a mere critique of architectural form, consequently presenting it either as the negation of all form of architecture or as the critique of 'classical' architectural forms. Against this ‘appropriation’, i.e. this reductive reading and the subsequent misconstruction it initiates, which violently abridges the relevance and pertinence of Bataille's oeuvre to architectural theory and criticism (and which similarly betrays a very weak definition of architecture as principally occupied with the generation of form), this dissertation argues that Bataille's oeuvre forms a 'whole' or 'totality' which, although disrupting and disrupted, should be considered in its entirety in order to reveal the peculiar function of expenditure, it contends, architecture and architectural criticism are – if carried out non-hypocritically – sharing. Commencing from a deep analysis of the different attempts made to ‘appropriate’ Bataille’s thinking within the discipline, the dissertation seeks, inversely, to ‘release’ (in the sense of issuing it into the open as well as freeing it) Bataille’s ‘use value’, while arguing for an insurgent comprehension of architecture and a radical enactment of its correlative assessment as non-hypocritical expenditures that pervade Bataille’s ‘take’ on the subject. To these ends, it contextualises Bataille's oeuvre in the wider context of pre and post-War intellectual history, by discussing its author’s influences, groups, reviews, polemics and legacy. It considers the manner in which Bataille, acknowledges his personal experience of the excess, evidences his reading of Hegel, Nietzsche, Mauss, and Sade, consciously engages with notable intellectual figures of his time such as Andre Breton and Jean Paul Sartre, and influences several major post-War thinkers. While this dissertation does attempt the recovery of Bataille’s relationship with those philosophers and intellectuals, it also looks to his published and unpublished books, novels, and articles to grasp how his ‘writing’ is paradoxically a theorizing of expenditure as well as a practice of the excess (hence an expenditure in itself). Subsequently, it proposes to read Bataille's ‘take’ on architecture from within the 'context' of this 'paradoxical philosophy'. From this scholarly angle of investigation, it demonstrates that Bataille's texts on architecture appear to be not just a critique of architectural forms but rather a contentious elucidation of the political, social and economic function of architecture: a means of 'exchange' or ‘communication’ between what Bataille sketches as the heterogeneous and homogeneous realms. To put it differently, Bataille, the dissertation reveals, perceives architecture as a device allowing a leaking of the sacred back into the profane. Before these findings – hence following Bataille – this dissertation advances a thesis of architecture as an expenditure – either real or symbolic, either productive or in pure loss – functioning on a dual mode. On the one hand, architecture is imperative: it serves the hegemony of the 'high' heterogeneous elements while it structures and preserves the homogeneous realm and its order. On the other hand it is 'impure': it allows a leaking of the 'low' impure heterogeneous elements back into the profane (homogeneous realm), disturbing as such its order. This function of expenditure, the dissertation concludes, logically appears to be not limited to the architectural object. Indeed, as Bataille suggests it, the very function of the architectural assessment seems also to be expenditure. A ‘project’ having no further ends than to be a radical squandering in and of itself. Bataille’s ‘take’ on architecture is not a mere renewing of architectural criticism but a radical architectural contestation.Public Building / CompositionArchitectur
Shoes, Cars, and Other Love Stories: Investigating The Experience of Love for Products
No full textPeople often say they love a product. What do they really mean when they say this, and is this a phenomenon that is relevant to the field of design? Findings from a preliminary study in this thesis indicated that people describe their love as a rewarding, long-term, and dynamic experience that arises from a meaningful relationship built with products they own and use. Inspired by existing approaches to the experience of love from social psychology, research tools are developed for the closer study of person-product love. Using those tools the research in this thesis investigates how person-product interactions are linked to the experience of love and how these influence love over time. The findings reveal how the experience of love arises from person-product relationships, how love relationships develop over time, and which factors can provoke change in the love experience and love relationships over time. These findings present opportunities for design researchers and designers to foster rewarding experiences and long-lasting person-product relationships. Person-product love relationships can bring emotional rewards that benefit people’s wellbeing and stimulate sustained efforts to keep loved products for longer.Industrial DesignIndustrial Design Engineerin
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