1,721,078 research outputs found
Architectural Theory at Two Speeds
Full text linkThe article is a presentation of the ethnographic method applied to architecture. The author explains how “slow ethnographers” work when they deal with a building, by focusing on the case of namBa HIPS building by Shin Takamatsu, in Osaka. “Slow” ethnography offers an alternative to “quick theory” intended as a critical theory of architecture that is based on the observation and interpretation of a static object as related to the consolidated spheres of theory and history. Yaneva’s proposal is to start back from the experience of space and objects as built over time: architecture is a process made of cumulative interactions, that unfolds from the design phase to the experience of those who inhabit it, through a continuous intertwinement of human and non-human entities. The study offers itself as a diachronic operation framing the very project as an anticipation of the many velocities to which the project’s transactions are submitted, just as the uses of built space will be: «While working with the speeds, [the architect] does not express or symbolize anything; he simply immerses into the tempo of design and adjusts its different rhythms with engineers, contractors and investors
Made by the Office for Metropolitan Architecture:An Ethnography of Design
Full text linkThe book presents an ethnographic account of the design rhythm in the Office for Metropolitan Architecture. Written as a collection of short stories it draws on the mundane trajectories of models and architects at the OMA and shows how innovation permeates design practice, how everyday techniques and workaday choices set new standards for buildings and urban phenomena. In these stories of invention the "Eureka!" moments are missing. They are replaced by routine gestures of model making, recycling, assembling, recollecting, rescaling. This enquiry on architecture-in-the-making is based on participant observation in the office of Rem Koolhaas, extensive interviews with architects, and photo documentation on various projects: the Seattle Public Library, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the China Central Television (CCTV) in Beijing, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), la Casa da Musica in Porto, and others
Five Ways to Make Architecture Political: An Introduction to the Politics of Design Practice
No full textFive Ways to Make Architecture Political presents an innovative pragmatist agenda that will inspire new thinking about the politics of design and architectural practice. Moving beyond conventional conversations about design and politics, the book shows how recent developments in political philosophy can transform our understanding of the role of designers. Introducing the framework of contemporary post-foundational politics in a way that is accessible to designers, it asks: how, when, and under what circumstances can design practice generate political relations? How can architectural design become more 'political'? Five central chapters, which can be read alone or in sequence, explore the answers to these questions. Powerfully pragmatic in approach, each presents one of the 'five ways to make architecture political', and each is illustrated by case studies from a range of contemporary situations around the world. We see how politics happens in architectural practice, learn how different design technologies have political effects, and follow how architects reach different publics, trigger reactions and affect different communities worldwide.Combining an accessible introduction to contemporary political concepts with a practical approach for a more political kind of practice, this book will stimulate debate among students and theorists alike, and inspire action in established and start-up practices.Reviews:“How is architecture political? What is the agency of buildings? Because of contemporary social, political and environmental challenges, these questions have become crucial. Using Actor-Network Theory in an innovative way, Albena Yaneva disrupts received answers by giving priority to what buildings really do, instead of focusing on what they are supposed to mean to their designers, owners or users.” – Antoine Picon, Director of Research at Harvard Graduate School of Design, USA“Albena Yaneva's wonderful book asks us, above all, to take the study of architecture's politics slowly. Rather than jump to easy and ready-made political conclusions, she shows us both how it is possible and why it is necessary to take time to describe the politics of architecture in process, weaving theory and fieldwork together into a compelling synthesis. Five Ways to Make Architecture Political is a vital intervention, for students, practitioners and theorists alike.” – Andrew Barry, Head of the Department of Geography at University College London, UK<br/
Crafting History:Archiving and the Quest for Architectural Legacy
No full textWhat constitutes an archive in architecture? What forms does it take? What epistemology does it perform? What kind of craft is archiving? Crafting History provides answers and offers insights on the ontological granularity of the archive, and its relationship with architecture as a complex enterprise that starts and ends much beyond the act of building, or the life of a creator. We learn how objects are processed and catalogued, how a classification scheme is produced, how models and drawings are preserved, how born-digital material battles time and technology obsolescence. We capture archiving in its mundane, and practical course. We follow the work of conservators, librarians, cataloguers, digital archivists, museum technicians, curators, and architects. Based on ethnographic observation of the Canadian Centre for Architecture and interviews with a range of practitioners, including Álvaro Siza and Peter Eisenman, Yaneva traces archiving through the daily work and care of all its participants, scrutinizing their variable ontology, scale, and politics. Yaneva addresses the strategies employed by practicing architects to envisage an archive-based future, and tells a story about how architectural collections are crafted so as to form the epistemological basis of Architectural History. <br/
‘Turbulence’ in practice: How Zoom technologies affected architecture making
Full text linkThis essay offers a glimpse into the ways the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020-21 affected the day-to-day reality of architectural practice. But what exactly happened in this ‘world’ during the pandemic? Did we just witness another digital ‘turn’? If not, how exactly did the shift to online forms of working and their related technological changes redefine the creative apparatus of small-scale practices and modify their design culture? How did it alter the working space and epistemic habits, reshuffle expertise and redefine project priorities in these firms? This essay focuses on studies of the COVID experiences of a group of Italian practices, representative of what was happening all over the world in terms of architectural practice during the pandemic
School buildings as performative machines:the new architectural devices of control
Full text linkThe past two decades saw a growing attention to the role of design for the geography of education and simultaneously shifted architectural attention towards the understanding of different forms of pedagogy. Yet, careful empirical engagements with the material architecture of contemporary school buildings and the experiences they mediate are still scarce or missing. Focussing on how mechanisms of control are imagined and practiced in the design and use of school buildings, this article fleshes out a picture of the performative spatial machinery of schools. It will do so drawing on designers’ accounts, plans and visions for a Building Schools for the Future (BSF) building in Liverpool, UK and on accounts of the experiences of different school dwellers. Overcoming the dualist understanding of education as an activity that happens in objective frames of learning (the static architecture of the schools) or the subjective interpretations of users (the perception of teachers and students), we trace specific practices of ‘dwelling’ in the school building and identify architectural and designerly techniques for modulating control. Instead of dissipating or reducing control, or merely re-producing the classic forms of power, this versatile and porous type of architecture, we argue, multiplies and diversifies the forms of ‘polycentric’ control exercised through various intersecting lines of sight and sound.</p
What “No!” Means for Architectural Conservation:The Secret Life of Drawings in Collections
No full textWarriors in Search of a Public:Dispositional and Political Modalities of Presenting in Architecture
Full text linkArchitectural presentations provide a powerful way to witness the political dimension of design and the process of formation of urban publics. I will follow how an architectural presentation unfolds to demonstrate that the political is not any longer situated on the side of the individual architect. Instead, power is finely distributed in the objective tendency imposed by the situation of presenting. Following the specific techniques used by architects to re-enact buildings and urban concepts, I will showcase the distinctive ontological dynamics of the formation of urban publics and will illustrate how architects make urban arguments of civic importance. I will illustrate that architectural presentations play an active role in ‘doing politics’ by ‘materially refiguring’ the practices of designers and affected people, and contribute to the formation of publics through architectural means
Understanding Architecture, Accounting Society: A Dialogue of Architectural Studies and Science and Technology Studies
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