Architecture Thinking
This program supports a diverse set of issues as the topics of research vary with the respective researchers interest and expertise, therefore, Architecture Thinking should be considered a series of projects held together under one program title. Nevertheless, members of this group are naturally held together by an inter-related set of problems or questions and various members of this group work together on numerous projects as well as provide the core teaching agenda for the theory driven aspects of the Master and, eventually, the PhD program.
Issues addressed by this group include, among other things: philosophical notions of time and space in respect to theories dealing with temporality and spatiality in Architecture and Urban discourse and practice; transdisciplinary research, utilizing multiple disciplines - understanding both arguments and methods - such as philosophy, political philosophy, social and economic sciences, geography, media and film studies, advanced technologies, and, more recently, image theory and the neuro-sciences. All with respects to their relevant applications within architecture. Of primary interest are issues which address technological developments impacting means of production in architecture and society, addressed from both historical and contemporary perspectives. In general it can be said that research within the Architecture Thinking program is approached through investigations ranging from in depth historical studies - dealing with both a physically (material) and socio-culturally (immaterial) constructed past; theoretical considerations - interrogating both the specific and the general conditions by which objects and subjects are reflexively produced and, at times, spontaneously emerge; to urban and architecture research - investigating both case study objects and over arching methodologies by which the very modes of thinking and producing the city and its objects become possible.
Areas of interest: (excerpted) Examples
Conceptual issues Architecture Theory:
A conventional understanding of technology generally situates it as being opposed to organically defined categories such as life, the body, society and culture. Yet, with the interpenetration and symbiosis of technology and society, of machine and body, new theoretical challenges and questions are brought to the fore in contemporary architectural discourse. If, as many theorists and scholars have claimed over the past decades, modernity finds it cornerstone in the belief that human progress should be measured and evaluated solely in terms of the domination of nature, instead of focusing on the transformation of the relationships between ‘humans' and ‘nature', it becomes evident that much has escaped our attention. The relationship between humans and nature, which has without a doubt undergone dramatic changes, boundary dissolutions, and definitional mutations -at least in contemporary discourse-, renders the general notions of ‘nature' and ‘society' i.e. obsolete. Haraway, Latour and Hayles, among others, have shown in a rather convincing way how, in their obsolescence, ‘society' and ‘nature' become concepts that are no longer equipped to address their referents. Finding new definitions and understandings of ‘society' (Latour, Urry) and ‘nature' (Haraway) is becoming paramount. (A. Graafland)
Turns in Modernity
Scholarship on modernity often notes a breach between tradition and progress as an essential problematic for all scientific and cultural disciplines. Philosophy lays claim to the ancient nature of this problem, yet in terms of cultural theory and architecture particularly the current conditions of this breach raised by the consciousness of (this most recent) modernity remain of critical importance.
Investigations - historical & critical - of this condition of knowledge forms one of the general principle of this research group. The subsequent questions relating to the breach, though they query understanding (intellectual / abstract notions / mediated knowledge), are also to be understood in terms of experience (perception / action / knowing). (D. Hauptmann)
Studies in Architecture & Philosophy:
One study, entitled The Model and its Architecture, which has as its aim an investigation of the response within discourse on architecture design to the debates on model and simulacra in the work of Plato and Deleuze, and investigates the complex of the' body-machine-mind ‘ in historical and current discussion for architectural practice. This study was published in September of 2008. A second study, relates to the work of Karl Kraus, and the issue of media and culture critique in early modernism, this is a book of 250 pages which was commissioned by Penguin books London. The work will be published as Karl Kraus, Select Writings, translated and introduced by Patrick Healy sometime in late 2009 or early 2010. The third study, currently underway is a work on Walter Benjamin, essentially a reading of his relation to place and the city through his complete writing, and an effort to situate his contribution to architectural theory, in his understanding of technological innovation as the motor of new stylization in built forms; both as architectural object and for the urban environment. (P. Healy)
The Future and its Image
Issues of drawing, media and image production within Architecture, Urbanism, Art and Film; and, most importantly, the impact images have on culture and the way in which they are utilized to economic and political ends. Forty years ago, image culture was vilified by renegade artists-activist Guy Debord as emblematic of ‘the society of the spectacle'; thirty years ago, the apocalyptical sociologist Jean Baudrillard described a situation in which reality had been superseded by the simulation of reality, the simulacra. In the years which have elapsed, image culture subsisted despite such reservations and dark warnings. It is currently embedded throughout culture, evolving in unexpected manners as a result of computing and the wide availability of digital imaging instruments such as diverse digital cameras, 3D modeling software, image treatment software and so on. The 'Future of the Image' is thus be a means of inspecting the current state of affairs of image culture as a means of forward looking. (D. Hauptmann, T. Kaminer)
Architecture in Mind: from bio-politics to noo-politics
Two general concepts will guide the discussion: First, plasticity, generally indicating the idea of mutability, transformation and the inherent potential for change whether productive or prohibitive, positive or negative. For some this can be understood as a theoretical notion; for others a property of brain; for others still a metaphoric or diagrammatic concept applied to the culture surrounding built environment, as well as spatial analysis and design. Second, noo-power, understood generally as a power exerted over the life of the mind, including memory and attention which together form the ever evolving concept of the general intellect (nous). For some this will be directly related to current theoretical discussions on ‘noo-politics' and ‘societies of control'; for others the term will indicate the ways and means by which the neurobiological architecture may be reconfigured; for others this will be a new and yet unconsidered concept with respects to built environments and spatial analysis and design, and this, is precisely one of the principle aims of this colloquia - to bring an understanding of the importance of this issues to the fore with respects to thinking on the City. (D. Hauptmann & W. Neidich).
PhD Research Projects: Examples
A Radman: Ecological Perception: An Architect's View: or how to overcome the allographic curse. Promotor: Professor Arie Graafland.
Architecture as an allographic (mediated) practice cannot escape representation. However, J.J. Gibson's theory of ecological perception has the potential for rescuing the discipline from the damaging legacy of what A.N. Whitehead diagnosed as the fallacy of misplaced concreteness. The dissertation will attempt to resurrect the importance of perception (expressionism) for architectural design. The emphasis is on the encounter where experience is seen as an emergence. It returns the body to a process field of exteriority, as opposed to phenomenology where experience is a form of interiority.
As maintained by the precursor of process philosophy, one refers to objects as objects rather than events by sheer force of habit. Event is a more appropriate term because it debunks space-time dualism and confirms relativity (interdependence in the literal sense of the word) between architecture and urbanism on the one hand (double articulation) and the embodied space-time experience on the other (triple articulation). The purpose is not to affirm the (epistemological) relativity of truth but, quite the contrary, the (ontological) truthfulness of the relative.
The core of the argument is built around empirical transcendentalism which is immanent as it involves one reality albeit with two modes. It is important to emphasise the qualitative difference between the modes where the form of expression does not correspond to the form of content. What connects the two is the process of progressive differentiation. This is the quintessence of creativity i.e. production of the new.
There is substantial resonance between the (classical) ecological school of perception and the most contemporary cognitive/neuro- science (as represented by W.J. Freeman, G. Edelman, et al). What they share is the non-representationalist approach to (the space of) experience as the bedrock of the new materialist approach to architectural design. The work will draw upon Gibson's theory of spatial and temporal "nesting", the notions of affordance and occlusion; as well as his "formless forms" or invariants. The invariants inevitably require a second degree of abstraction where (intensive) topological thinking replaces the (extensive) topographical approach. The research will be carried out as both a theoretical-historical study and a design-based investigation aimed at testing the grounds of the discourse.
Radman is a faculty member with the DSD. The expected date of completion of this work to be submitted as a doctoral manuscript is autumn 2011.
Isabelle Doucet: Negotiating (Spatial) Complexity: Towards a Science-in-Action. Promotor: Professor Arie Graafland
This dissertation empirically addresses the contemporary knowledge constructions in the city, more specifically in Brussels. It addresses the gap between concrete attempts to extract knowledge from everyday life of the city and the (official) planning techniques applied in urban renewal programs. By addressing both the perceived failure of (participation within) the latter and the scope and limitations of the former, this dissertation aims at gaining a better insight in urban knowledge building ‘as a whole', by exploring the tension between everyday action and the orchestrated space of urban negotiation. It explores the opportunities of thinking in terms of knowledge by the city, as an alternative for the traditional, and problematic divide between either knowledge on or knowledge in the city. Rather than prioritizing top-down or bottom-up planning, this dissertation avoids such exterior positioning, but explores the different actors and knowledge productions from within: the way in which those actors transport knowledge throughout the different knowledge building levels. As such it is questioned how one could move beyond traditional schisms such as bottom-up vs. top-down, software vs. hardware, orchestrated vs. everydayness. Defense: Spring 2009.
Tahl Kaminer: The Idealist Refuge: Architecture, Crisis, and Resuscitation. Promotor: Professor Arie Graafland
The dissipation of modernist architecture in the 1970s was experienced as a disciplinary crisis, stemming, supposedly, from the unresolved contradictions, errors of judgment and ambition of the modernist movement. Finding itself out of favor with the general public and with expanding discontent within its own ranks, the discipline of architecture sought a remedy for its ills, beginning a process of self-analysis, critique, and reappraisal. This research studies the transformation of the discipline in the following years, a transformation which exposes the relation of architecture to society as well as the idealist foundations of the discipline. The ‘paper architecture' of the 1970s, the designs of the Tendenza, the work of the neo-avant-garde, the analyses of Venturi Scott-Brown and, finally, the emergence of Koolhaas: a sequence and process which helped architecture regain its status and credibility in society, aided the discipline in internalizing and implementing the emergent ideology of post-industrial society. Successfully Defended: September 2008
Lukas Stanek: Henri Lefebvre and the Concrete Research of Space: Urban Theory, Empirical Studies, Architecture Practice. Promotor: Professor Arie Graafland
This research discusses the mainly unpublished empirical, or "concrete", studies of urban space by Henri Lefebvre (1901 - 1991) and demonstrates that Lefebvre's theory of production of space cannot be understood without taking these studies into account. Based on archival research and interviews with former collaborators of Lefebvre, this dissertation shows that the main questions, methods and arguments of the theory of production of space were developed on the basis of his engagements in empirical studies about the everyday practices of habitation in the 1960s and 1970s in France and his analyses of suburban housing and collective estates. This allows situating the key concepts of Lefebvre's theory of space within the political, economic, intellectual, urbanistic, and architectural debates in the transitory period between the death of Le Corbusier (1965) and the emergence of the French ‘urban' architecture in the mid-1970s. At the same time, this dissertation critically relates the rediscovery of Lefebvre's theory in the 1990s to the end of the cold war and to the conditions of the post-socialist European urbanism after the welfare state.
Successfully Defended: May 2008
Alta Steenkamp: Space, power and the body - the civil and uncivil as represented in the Voortrekker Monument and the Native Township Model. Promotor: Professor Arie Graafland
The relationship between space and power in pre-democratic South Africa was deliberately inclusive of some and excluded the ‘other' through its nature, location, ordering and limits. The thesis has as its focus this process as it pertains to two projects of the mid-20th century South African urban environment: the Voortrekker Monument and Native Township Model.
This thesis aims to define, investigate and understand the relationship between the concepts of space and power through a theoretical framework developed from the intersection of architecture, philosophy, cultural theory and social theory. The reading and representation of the Voortrekker Monument and Native Township Model as spatial works/histories, when examined through this theoretical lens, allow for their re-location/re-interpretation. The study is interested in the relationship between conceptualizations of space and power and their practical applications in architecture: how power worked through space within the political period of apartheid and how space was made an object of the exercise of power. It aims to contribute to the post apartheid discourse on apartheid architecture and planning in the South African public domain. Successfully Defended: September 2008.
Footprint Journal:
Footprint is a peer-reviewed journal presenting academic research in the field of architecture and the city. Architecture is the point of departure and the core interest of the journal; from this perspective, the journal encourages the study of architecture and the urban environment as a means of comprehending culture and society, and as a tool for relating them to shifting ideological doctrines and philosophical ideas. The journal promotes the creation and development - or revision - of conceptual frameworks and methods of inquiry.
- Issue 1, Autumn 2007, "Trans-disciplinary"
- Issue 2, Spring 2008, "Mapping Urban Complexity in an Asian Context" (Urban Asymmetries program)
- Issue 3, Autumn 2008, "Architecture and Phenomenology"
Conferences / Colloquia 2008:
- Trans_Thinking the City: Architecture & Mind: from bio-politics to noo- politics (Oct./Nov. 08)
- Rethinking theory, space and production: Henri Lefebvre today (Nov. 08)
Collaboration:
Advanced research seminars and events include contributions from renowned international practitioners and scholars such as:
- M. Christine Boyer, Princeton University
- K. Michael Hays and Antoine Picone, Harvard University, GSD.
- Saskia Sassen , Columbia University & London School of Economics
- Scott Lash, Goldsmiths College London
- Karsten Harries, Yale University
- Michael Speaks, Dean University of Kentucky
- Caroline van Eck, University of Leiden
- Brendan O'Bryne, Trinity College Dublin, Center for the study of Platonic Tradition:
- Reiner de Graaf, OMA: Partner Director AMO
DSD Faculty and Research Staff currently involved in Architecture Thinking are:
A. Graafland, D. Hauptmann, P. Healy, T. Kaminer, L. Kavanaugh, A. Radman, R. van Toorn & I. Doucet.
