Although the association between architecture and utopia (the relationship between imagining a new world and exploring how its new conditions can best be organized) might appear obvious from within the domain of utopian studies, architects have long attempted to dissociate themselves from Utopia. Concentrating on the difficulties writers from both perspectives have with the topic,… [Read more…]
2 0 1 2 I S P A C o n f e r e n c e Andrew Ballantyne • Emily Brady • Ian Buchanan • Ian Ground • Paul Guyer • Simon James • David Leatherbarrow • Tom Spector The subject of aesthetics is often taken as dealing with questions of mere… [Read more…]
It seems that the history of the skyscraper and their relationship to commerce is overlooked or ignored. Is there a reason why these aspects do not come into play in your work? I wrote my study on verticality while I was in Hong Kong in 2010. The history of skyscrapers from the Chicago of the… [Read more…]
Christophe Bruchansky invited ISPA to comment on his essay “Welcome to My Place: a philosophical paper on the appropriation of space” which presents an analysis of non-place simply and subtly conceived. Exploring ideas regarding verticality, Bruchansky describes the signification process in all types including markets, restaurants and playgrounds. Bruchansky’s video work filmed in Hong Kong further compliments his study of verticality and is exhibited… [Read more…]
Though perhaps not obviously so to many of the ISPA blog’s readership, Tom Spector’s post of December 8 is right on target with respect to both (1) ISPA’s main aims, which form an implicit background against which he writes, and (2) the history he describes, of failures in architectural theory and practice, which have produced… [Read more…]
Architecture was a latecomer to the Enlightenment. Though repeatedly confronted by the technological, social, and artistic progress unleashed in the eighteenth century and always nominally proclaiming allegiance to the public welfare, the question of who the work of architecture should serve didn’t really get off the ground until the early twentieth century with the full onslaught… [Read more…]
The premise for this symposium was brought about by mutual interest in a sustained and rigorous philosophy of architecture. This interest usually comes to architects as a result of the popular reference of philosophers’ work in architects’ own thinking and theorising about architecture. Some are interested in participating in this kind of activity and others are interested in understanding… [Read more…]
Linear Perspective’s position as a ‘tool’ for mapping spatial relationships on to a two-dimensional surface is very well established. Alberti’s codification of perspective sets it out clearly as a system of projection that defines the relationship between the eye, the picture plane and the external world. And despite more recent commentary regarding its broader cultural… [Read more…]
This paper will suggest a paradigm shift in architecture, which is given the title Concretism. To support this argument the paper applies the phenomenological realism of Roman Ingarden. His ontology of art presented in his 1989 text entitled Ontology of the Work of Art, offers a solid system to identify the points of changing ideals in architecture. When applied to… [Read more…]
Though architecture was historically considered the ‘mother of the Arts’, it is now often treated as the stepchild of the sciences. As a broad field of research related to the humanities, the arts and the sciences, it is caught between craft and discipline, science and design, history and culture. Although it offers a unique blend of… [Read more…]
The neuroscientist David Marr proposed a distinction between Object-Centered and Viewer-Centered representations, in a progression from ‘primal sketch’, via ‘2.5D sketch’, to ‘3D model’. I would like to investigate this movement using the idea of transcritique as developed by Kojin Karatani in his readings of Kant and Marx, with reference to the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright. I will… [Read more…]
Many of the problems found between philosophy and architecture can be traced back to current theories of perception. This paper offers an alternative view based on a radical new definition of perception that has startling consequences for conceptions of language, intelligence, meaning, the senses, emotions and subjectivity. The core argument (Moore 2010) has been developed by taking… [Read more…]
Let us start by saying that pulp-theory in architecture isn’t a problem caused by philosophers. The constant misuse and misinterpretation of philosophical positions adapted as architectural generative devices has to be fully owned by architects. The problem is, architects don’t seem to be able to address the issue. There is a persistent design culture at the core of… [Read more…]
This paper will attempt to dissolve the autonomy of autotelic subjects and objects of architecture. This will be done through arguing for the constitution of a potentiality embedded in the dichotomy of the subject-object problem in philosophy, not by way of expanding on or attempting a reconciliation of this dichotomy, but through a tracing of various possibilities… [Read more…]
The philosopher Hannah Arendt is quite famous because of the distinctions she made. For instance her threefold distinction of the human activities: ‘labour’, ‘work’, and ‘action’ as she defined in her most famous book The Human Condition [1]. In her latter work, she also emphasized a threefold distinction of the activities of the mind: ‘thinking’, ‘willing’… [Read more…]
Although presented within the context of a meditation on architectural value, John Haldane’s observation that conflict over terms usually assumes ”that disagreement over values within a community is proof of the subjective character of the rival attitudes” broadly describes most instances of divergence within discourse, even if “rarely noticed is that a necessary condition of… [Read more…]
I agree with the premise of this conference that recent architecture has suffered as a result of putting its faith in various – often ill-digested – philosophical theories, but the latest philosophical fad in architectural theory promises to be different. In his influential essay “The Eyes of the Skin” Juhani Pallasmaa embraces the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty:… [Read more…]
Architectural conservation aims to preserve, restore, and reconstruct damaged, decayed and no longer extant buildings. While doing this, a complex set of reflections upon the function and the meaning of a building are brought into light in order to determine what interventions to carry out. These interventions may affect the aesthetic functioning of architectural works. By discussing several… [Read more…]
{ 1 4 t h o f J u n e 2 0 1 0 } @ Architecture Building, School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK 9-9:30 – Reception & Registration 9:30-9:40 – Introduction 9:40-10:20 – Keynote I* 10:20-10:30 – Coffee Break 10:30-12 – Sessions 1a* & 1b 12-1 – Session 2*… [Read more…]
ISPA FLIER-A3 The 14th of June 2010, a symposium will be held at Newcastle University. The objective of the symposium is to engender as well as provide an informal platform for real philosophic engagement with the subject of architecture. Ed Winters and Andrew Ballantyne will be giving keynote presentations. The Aesthetics Research Group from Durham University’s Department of Philosophy… [Read more…]
Over the summer I presented a paper entitled, ‘Understanding Architecture as Anti-Essential’ at the 32nd International Wittgenstein Symposium in Kirchberg, Austria (the village neighbours Trattenbach where Wittgenstein once worked as a school teacher). Apparently by googling my name one of our blog’s commentators found
Sometimes I wonder whether we in the architecture profession and academe do not forget about some of the presuppositions our discipline depends on. There are many of these. Say that architecture is to have certain identifiable qualities that could say be incorporated into a design pedagogy: space, order, composition, etc. Although interesting topics to explore, this… [Read more…]
Back in Finland, I participated in the 11th International Alvar Aalto Symposium. The symposium had an extremely interesting theme which sought to reach out to the edges of profession by introducing modest but professionally respectful approaches to local problems of five continents. As it happened, the theme was concretisedby architects who believe in and seek… [Read more…]
As an undergraduate I was indoctrinated with the idea that theoretical appeals were the most desirable and most acceptable method for approaching architectural design. This went OK for my first studio, but after my second and onto my third, each instructor introduced a different theory, and each one we students were to treat with the same… [Read more…]
April 11, 2011
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