1,721,080 research outputs found
Giants in the lab: Model conservation and the anaphoric progression of design
Full text linkHow is an architectural model consolidated and re-assembled in conservation to be able to continue to communicate a design concept? How does the work of care and preservation of models reveal knowledge about the often taken-for-granted dynamics of creative processes? To provide answers, this article draws on Etienne Souriau’s philosophy of creativity and follows how the ‘modes of existence’ of creative works are re-enacted in the anaphoric progression of conservation. Basing her findings on ethnography at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, the author examines the epistemic complexity of specific situations of assessing, preserving and assembling large complex scale models. Unpacking the specificity of model conservation, it is argued, allows us to challenge two established beliefs on creativity: the myth of the stable ontology of historically valuable cultural objects and the myth of teleology of creative processes. Conservation-in-action demonstrates the subtle mechanics of crafting historiographic knowledge in the arts
Choreographies for the Laboratorized City
No full textAs the invisible killer "Covid-19" marched through continents and caused major disruptions over the past few months, we began rethinking the conditions through which to design cities, to practice and to study architecture. Yet, what exactly makes this virus so interesting for architectural scholars? How does it transfigure the epistemic formats of design and architectural research? What new reflexivity on architecture does it entice? Addressing these questions, the article makes four observations: first, the pandemic led to a new spatial choreography of daily life and a radical laboratorization of urban space; second, the new material settings of practice triggered new epistemic habits and raised awareness of the complex socio-spatial machinery of architecture making; third, this situation affected how architecture itself is studied and shifted the direction towards a "localist" perspective to knowledge production; fourth, the crisis made us rethink the methodological repertoire of Architectural Theory. A programme of action is offered
Jak budynki nas "zaskakuja" Renowacja Alte Aula w Wiedniu
Full text link Can old buildings faithfully transmit social meaning? Conservation studies have taught us for decades that buildings are valuable for their historical substance and symbolic value gradually acquired with time. Drawing on an Actor-Network-Theory-inspired perspective to tackle buildings, this article questions the philosophy of preservation studies and their definitions of building and agency. Following the process of renovation of the 17 th century Alte Aula in Vienna, I explore its dynamics and unpredictable drifts. Renovating is not about transforming a passive and subservient object; it rather offers an experimental situation in which one can witness the building recalcitrance, i.e., its capacity to manifest itself as disobedient as possible to the protocol of renovation, to resist the attempts of control and to 'surprise' its makers. A building is, I argue here, a complex mediator that skilfully redistributes the agency among human and nonhuman participants in renovation, provokes contextual mutations and transforms social meanings. </p
Latour for Architects
Full text linkBruno Latour is one of the leading figures in Social Sciences today, but his contributions are also widely recognised in the arts. His theories ‘flourished’ in the 1980s in the aftermath of the structuralism wave and generated new concepts and methodologies for the understanding of the social. In the past decade, Latour and his Actor-Network Theory (ANT) have gained popularity among researchers in the field of architecture.
Latour for Architects is the first introduction to the key concepts and ideas of Bruno Latour that are relevant to architects. First, the book discusses critically how specific methods and insights from his philosophy can inspire new thinking in architecture and design pedagogy. Second, it explores examples from architectural practice and urban design, and reviews recent attempts to extend the methods of ANT into the fields of architectural and urban studies. Third, the book advocates an ANT-inspired approach to architecture, and examines how its methodological insights can trace new research avenues in the field, reflecting meticulously on its epistemological offerings.
Drawing on many lively examples from the world of architectural practice, the book makes a compelling argument about the agency of architectural design and the role architects can play in re-ordering the world we live in. Following Latour’s philosophy offers a new way to handle all the objects of human and nonhuman collective life, to re-examine the role of matter in design practice, and to redefine the forms of social, political and ethical associations that bind us together in cities
Making the Social Hold: Towards an Actor-Network Theory of Design
Full text linkthe article illustrates the potentials of an Actor-Network theory (ANt) perspective to design. Drawing on ANt’s assumption that objects with their scripts and incorporated programs of action compel and rearticulate new social ties, I argue that design triggers specific ways of enacting the social. It is impossible to understand how a society works without appreciating how design shapes, conditions, facilitates and makes possible everyday sociality. Viewed as a type of connector, not as a separate cold domain of material relations, design’s investigation might shed light on other types of non-social ties that are brought together to make the social durable. the article also discusses some steps towards an ANt of design and suggests a new research program for design studies
Mapping Controversies in Architecture
No full textThe book tackles a number of challenging questions: How can we conceptualize architectural objects and practices without falling into the divides architecture/society, nature/culture, materiality/meaning? How can we prevent these abstractions from continuing to blind architectural theory? What is the alternative to critical architecture? Mapping controversies is a research method and teaching philosophy that allows divides to be crossed. It offers a new methodology for following debates surrounding contested urban knowledge. Engaging in explorations of on-going and recent controversies and re-visiting some well-known debates, the analysis foregrounds, traces and maps the changing sets of positions triggered by design: the 2012 Olympics stadium in London, the Welsh parliament in Cardiff, the Heathrow airport runway extension, the Sydney Opera House, the Eiffel Tower. By mobilizing digital technologies and new computational design techniques we are able to visualize the variety of factors that impinge on design and track actors' trajectories, changing groupings, concerns and modalities of action. The book places architecture at the intersection of the human and the nonhuman, the particular and the general. It allows its networks to be re-established and to run between local and global, social and technical. Mapping controversies can be extrapolated to a wide range of complex phenomena of hybrid nature.</p
Chalk steps on the museum floor: The 'pulses' of objects in an art installation
No full textThis article argues against the well-established wisdom in sociology of art that a sudden artistic or institutional gesture can 'elevate' an ordinary object to the status of 'artwork'. Instead, it affirms that there is a gradual process of 'becoming art'. The mechanism of artistic activity does not consist of a single transformation of one huge difference into something artistically significant; it is rather related to the deployment of various small objective differences, their extension, intensification, repetition, and stabilization. It is the tempo of transformation that matters, but not the nature of these differences. Located in the objects, they are empirically describable. That is why the article follows ethnographically the process of installation of a chalk Bruegel copy on the floor of Musée d'art moderne de la ville de Paris in 1999 and depicts different sequences and rhythms of change in the materiality of all participants in an art installation
Urban controversies and the making of the social
No full textOn the one hand, architectural knowledge advances very rapidly, with new types of materials and technological innovations entering the field and multiplying architectural invention. On the other hand, urban experts, architects and engineers often debate publicly uncertain urban knowledge and technologies, risky plans and daring designs, polarising opinion-as witnessed on numerous blogs, citizen forums and architecture websites. This radical transformation in building technologies, in the reliance upon experts and in the expansion of architectural networks could have remained practically invisible were it not for the presence of another phenomenon: the digitalisation of architecture and the availability of enormous Internet databases. The digital technologies at our command provide us with abundant resources to follow architectural controversies. © 2012 Cambridge University Press
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