This paper explores interdisciplinary and inclusive methodologies in architectural education, addressing contemporary socio-technical challenges. It highlights the role of collaborative frameworks in fostering dynamic learning environments and innovative pedagogical strategies. By integrating Industry 5.0 methodologies and digital mapping, we examine their impact on design processes, material innovation, and urban discourse. Through co-production and computational design techniques, we showcase the benefits of interdisciplinary collaboration in shaping future architects. Additionally, we discuss how these approaches enhance problem-solving, teamwork, and critical thinking skills (...) essential for contemporary architectural practice. -/- This study also investigates how emerging technologies in Industry 5.0 facilitate human-centered design, sustainability, and resilience in built environments. By leveraging digital tools, automation, and adaptive systems, architectural education can better prepare students for evolving industry demands. The paper presents practical case studies from our design studios, demonstrating the transformative potential of these methodologies. This study offers valuable insights for educators seeking to enhance inclusivity, adaptability, and innovation in architectural pedagogy. (shrink)

This paper explores interdisciplinary and inclusive methodologies in architectural education, addressing contemporary socio-technical challenges. It highlights the role of collaborative frameworks in fostering dynamic learning environments and innovative pedagogical strategies. By integrating Industry 5.0 methodologies and digital mapping, we examine their impact on design processes, material innovation, and urban discourse. Through co-production and computational design techniques, we showcase the benefits of interdisciplinary collaboration in shaping future architects. Additionally, we discuss how these approaches enhance problem-solving, teamwork, and critical thinking skills (...) essential for contemporary architectural practice. This study also investigates how emerging technologies in Industry 5.0 facilitate human-centered design, sustainability, and resilience in built environments. By leveraging digital tools, automation, and adaptive systems, architectural education can better prepare students for evolving industry demands. The paper presents practical case studies from our design studios, demonstrating the transformative potential of these methodologies. This study offers valuable insights for educators seeking to enhance inclusivity, adaptability, and innovation in architectural pedagogy. (shrink)

This article examines the use of imagination as a communicative resource in interaction. Using actual examples of imagination in action collected during anthropological fieldwork at an architecture firm in California, I develop the concept of ‘collaborative imagining’ as a social, jointly-produced activity in which the objects of thought are created and manipulated in the shared space of face-to-face interaction. Such an activity relies upon a number of semiotic resources, and the paper examines three in particular: talk, gestures, and material objects, (...) taking into consideration the talk and gestures of all participants in an interaction as well as the material surround available to the interactants. This view suggests two new ways to think about imagination. First, imagining is not a purely individual act but is also a product of and resource for group interaction; second, the objects of imaginative thought are not necessarily mental images, but can potentially be constructed in the material world with real, material components. (shrink)

Given the increasing frequency of severe weather conditions, it is crucial to reassess our design strategies to establish architectural principles that protect individuals’ emotional and physical health and general welfare. Iranian master builders, known as Ostads, have historically devised effective methods to tackle climate change challenges and improve human comfort. Vernacular architecture in Iran showcases a continuity between its components, local construction processes, climatic adaptation, and cultural integration. Iran’s architectural solutions vary in response to different climatic zones. Vernacular (...) and indigenous Iranian architecture, with a history spanning at least two millennia, demonstrates its adaptability through seamless integration within very different surrounding environments and climates and changing societies over time. The extraordinary buildings created by the Ostads of Iran have effectively enhanced the comfort and well-being of occupants while protecting populations from often already extreme climates. Contemporary architects can utilise Iranian traditional architecture to create cost-effective, comfortable, socially embraced, and environmentally aware communities prepared to withstand the even harsher weather conditions of the future. This research compares traditional and modern architecture of Iran’s residential buildings, designed and constructed from the Qajar era to the present day. The primary emphasis is on analysing specific examples within the Köppen regional division, which is one of the best-known and most efficient approaches for climatic zoning. The Köppen climate classification scheme which uses monthly and annual threshold values of precipitation and temperature. (shrink)

Practical Ethics in Architecture and Interior Design Practice presents the basics of design practice through ethical scenarios, ushering design students into real-world experiential learning. Each chapter begins with a detailed story involving a complicated set of practical and ethical dilemmas, exemplifying those encountered each day in the world of professional practice. Practice-based topics such as contracts and project delivery methods, marketing design services, cross-cultural collaboration, virtual connectivity, social justice and sustainable design, soft skills, and other related (...) professional practice themes are anchored in realistic scenarios. While all the stories are fictional, in writing them the authors drew from over 75 combined years of professional experience in architecture and interior design, as well as many years of academic experience in teaching professional practice and ethics to architecture and interior design students. Each story is followed by discussion questions and suggested additional resources. This book provides a unique integrated perspective into the allied fields of architecture and interior design with topics relevant to both fields as well as specific to each profession. It prepares students of both disciplines for the broad issues of professional practice and encourages them to become ethical practitioners ready to contribute effectively to design teams and to ask the right questions. (shrink)

In this chapter we come full circle, by returning to our starting point and the house that we watched being erected. A house that had a plan created by an architect. The images that an architect attaches to a board in the design process are, for the most part, not in the order of what we have described as charged images. Nevertheless, they bear a strong family resemblance to the WBW.

In this book of the world's greatest architects explores the original aims and principles of modern architecture.

Under the premise that architecture makes life ›better‹, architecture is often presented as the ›solution‹ to social problems, made ›green‹ when promising sustainable futures, or fetishised as a cultural object for the creation of urban identities. Yet, what is it exactly that links architecture so closely to the pursuit of a good life? How is this link interrelated with crisis and crisis thinking? To what extent do belief systems in architecture influence its capacity to deal with crises? Carolina Crijns not (...) only explores the transformative potential in radically rethinking architecture's central concepts but introduces a method of utopian speculation for practices ambitious of social change. With a preface by Sabine Knierbein. (shrink)

Architectural specifications are not neutral instruments of technical coordination but recursive protocols through which architectural legibility is produced and sustained. Focusing on North American specification and documentation practice, this article argues that master specifications, cross-referenced clauses, digital templates, and contract documents reactivate prior decisions as present conditions of design validity. Earlier formulations do not merely persist as precedent; they return as operative criteria for recognising compliant objects, valid assemblies, coordinated scopes, and legitimate users. Drawing on systems theory, (...) Science and Technology Studies, and professional experience in specification writing, it distinguishes four interlocking registers of recursion: documentary, software, institutional-temporal, and ontological. These registers are developed through an analysis of MasterSpec and MasterFormat workflows, the persistence of the Kawneer 1600 curtain wall system across documents and assemblies, and accessibility standards under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Specifications do more than organise technical information: they reproduce the conditions under which architecture becomes legible, while carrying forward exclusions and asymmetries of professional authority. (shrink)

Memoires by eminently creative people often describe architectural spaces and qualities they believe instrumental for their creativity. However, places designed to encourage creativity have had mixed results, with some found to decrease creative productivity for users. This may be due, in part, to lack of suitable empirical theory or model to guide design strategies. Relationships between creative cognition and features of the physical environment remain largely uninvestigated in the scientific literature, despite general agreement among researchers that human cognition is (...) physically and socially situated. This paper investigates what role architectural settings may play in creative processes by examining documented first person and biographical accounts of creativity with respect to three central theories of situated cognition. First, the embodied thesis argues that cognition encompasses both the mind and the body. Second, the embedded thesis maintains that people exploit features of the physical and social environment to increase their cognitive capabilities. Third, the enaction thesis describes cognition as dependent upon a person’s interactions with the world. Common themes inform three propositions, illustrated in a new theoretical framework describing relationships between people and their architectural settings with respect to different cognitive processes of creativity. The framework is intended as a starting point toward an ecological model of creativity, which may be used to guide future creative process research and architectural design strategies to support user creative productivity. (shrink)

Architecture as Experience investigates the perception and appropriation of places across intervals of time and culture. The particular concern of the volume is to bring together fresh empirical research and animate it through contact with theoretical sophistication, without overwhelming the material. The chapters establish the continuity of a particular physical object and show it in at least two alternative historical perspectives, in which recognisable features are shown in different lights. The results are often surprising, inverting the common idea of a (...) historic place as having an enduring meaning. This book shows the insight that can be gained from learning about earlier constructions of meaning which have been derived from the same buildings that stand before us today. (shrink)

This book introduces readers to the theory of practice architectures and conveys a way of approaching practice theory through developing a practice sensibility. It shows that, in order to change our practices, we must also change the conditions that make those practices possible. The book draws on everyday life to illustrate how we can see the world by watching it unfold in practices: it argues that life happens in practices. The theory of practice architectures takes the (...) ontological nature of practices seriously by recognising that practices take place in the real world. Consequently, the book offers a new perspective on how practices happen amidst a vast world of happenings; on how we participate in the “happening-ness” of the world through our practices. It invites us to consider whether our practices reproduce or aggravate the contemporary environmental crises confronting the Earth, and whether we can transform our current practices to ameliorate these crises. Given its focus and scope, the book will benefit master’s and doctoral students in social and educational theory, early career researchers, and established researchers new to practice theory. (shrink)

In this paper we present a set of good practices in the design of a security-centric architecture for a Communication Channel that can be used to secure a Loosely-Coupled distributed platform, over unreliable communication mediums. The proposed practices are derived from designing a complete architecture that is modular and designed to support principles of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and the common functional requirements of a wide range of applications, including cybersecurity, smart power grids and industrial Internet of Things (IoT). The (...) architecture was developed and implemented as part of the BIECO project, and is based around open standards such as Open Platform Communications United Architecture (OPC-UA). The key feature of the architecture is that it enables secure asynchronous near-real-time communication between a large number of nodes in a multimodal setup, without the need of any Service to know its place within the tool-chain. Based on our experience with building this system and based on the good results obtained, we are presenting a list of lessons learnt, recommendations for better communication channel modules within loosely coupled distributed systems. (shrink)

Praktykowanie teorii. Koncepty wczesnych prac Daniela Libeskinda jako wzorce realnej architektury Treści wczesnych prac Libeskinda, w tym zwłaszcza idee zawarte w cyklach rysunków pod nazwą Micromegas: The Architecture of End Space (1979) i Chamber Works: Architectural Meditations on the Themes from Heraclitus (1983) oraz trzy maszyny określone jako Three Lessons in Architecture (1985) w decydujący sposób wpłynęły na wszystkie późniejsze realizacje architekta. Prace te w dużym zakresie zmieniły zasady oddzielania teorii od praktyki budowlanej, w tym tak- że odgraniczania architektury (...) od literatury czy filozofii. Już Micromegas były polemiką z traktowaniem rysunku architektonicznego wyłącznie jako utylitarnego narzędzia w procesie stwarzania budowli i postawiły na uczynienie z tej techniki pełnoprawnej postaci realnej architektury. Chamber Works w jeszcze większym stopniu niż prace z serii Micromegas akcentowały samodzielność rysunku i jego odrębność od wszelkiej rzeczywistości czy zewnętrznych źródeł treści. Maszyny połączone w Three Lessons in Architecture streszczały dokonania dawnych epok historii sztuki budowania. Reading Machine opowiadała o rzemieślniczych początkach, Memory Machine o intelektualizmie okresu nowożytnego, Writing Machine zaś o współczesnym okresie mechanizacji pamięci i kreacji. Zadaniem maszyn była metafizyczna refleksja nad głównymi założeniami i mitami architektury, a zarazem przeniesienie tej refleksji na poziom doświadczenia zmysłowego. W berlińskim Jüdisches Museum wymyślone liternictwo architektoniczne połączyło się z narracją na temat zagłady żydowskich mieszkańców miasta. Libeskind wykreował nie tyle budowlę,ile literacką relację o zbrodni przełamującej historię ludzkość. (shrink)

This book focuses on innovative, multidisciplinary, and pragmatic approaches to social and political engineering for the search and formation of world peace. The roots of dilemmas, illusions, and problems associated with education, law, justice, politics, human rights, poverty, violence, war, environment and the Earth in relation to the architecture of world peace are examined and the solutions are presented. This critique ultimately signifies establishing a crime-free biosphere, war-free world, and new humanity on Earth.

A significant international development agenda in the practice of nurses supporting families with young children focuses on establishing partnerships between professionals and service users. Qualitative data were generated through interviews and focus groups with 22 nurses from three child and family health service organisations, two in Australia and one in New Zealand. The aim was to explore what is needed in order to sustain partnership in practice, and to investigate how the concept of practice architectures can help (...) understand attempts to enhance partnerships between nurses and families. Implementation of the Family Partnership Model (FPM) is taken as a specific point of reference. Analysis highlights a number of tensions between the goals of FPM and practice architectures relating to opportunities for ongoing learning; the role of individual nurses in shaping the practice; relationships with peers and managers; organisational features; and extra‐organisational factors. The concept of practice architectures shows how changing practice requires more than developing individual knowledge and skills, and avoids treating individuals and context separately. The value of this framework for understanding change with reference to context rather than just individual’s knowledge and skills is demonstrated, particularly with respect to approaches to practice development focused on providing additional training to nurses. (shrink)

Central issues in philosophy of architecture include foundational matters regarding the nature of: (1) architecture as an artform, design medium, or other product or practice; (2) architectural objects—what sorts of things they are; how they differ from other sorts of objects; and how we define the range of such objects; (3) special architectural properties, like the standard trio of structural integrity (firmitas), beauty, and utility—or space, light, and form; and ways they might be special to architecture; (4) (...) architectural types—how to consider abstract groups of architectural objects and their instances; (5) meaning and other language-like phenomena in architecture and its objects; (6) formation of and warrant for our basic grasp, and considered judgment, of architectural objects; and (7) social and moral features of architectural objects and architectural practice. Yet other questions engage applied philosophical concerns regarding architecture, such as the character of architectural notation; intellectual property rights; and client-architect obligations. A far-reaching philosophy of architecture extends beyond even a broadly aesthetics-based assessment, to include considerations of ethics, social and political philosophy, and philosophical reflections on psychology and the behavioral sciences. The aesthetics of architecture, by itself, spans traditional issues mooted in philosophy of art, as well as aesthetics of the everyday, and environmental aesthetics. Such traditional issues include the nature of the work; the possibility of classes, kinds, or types in the domain; the character and roles of representation, intentionality, and expression; and the warranted foundations for criticism. The ethics of architecture also addresses traditional issues, including delineation of rights, responsibilities, the good, virtues, and justice in architectural milieus. Still other aspects of philosophy of architecture concern social and technological characteristics. (shrink)

There is fast-growing awareness of the role atmospheres play in architecture. Of equal interest to contemporary architectural practice as it is to aesthetic theory, this 'atmospheric turn' owes much to the work of the German philosopher Gernot Böhme. Atmospheric Architectures: The Aesthetics of Felt Spaces brings together Böhme's most seminal writings on the subject, through chapters selected from his classic books and articles, many of which have hitherto only been available in German. This is the only translated version (...) authorised by Böhme himself, and is the first coherent collection deploying a consistent terminology. It is a work which will provide rich references and a theoretical framework for ongoing discussions about atmospheres and their relations to architectural and urban spaces. Combining philosophy with architecture, design, landscape design, scenography, music, art criticism, and visual arts, the essays together provide a key to the concepts that motivate the work of some of the best contemporary architects, artists, and theorists: from Peter Zumthor, Herzog & de Meuron and Juhani Pallasmaa to Olafur Eliasson and James Turrell. With a foreword by Professor Mark Dorrian and an afterword by Professor David Leatherbarrow,, the volume also includes a general introduction to the topic, including coverage of it history, development, areas of application and conceptual apparatus. (shrink)

This chapter (Sects. 2.1–2.5) introduces the theory of practice architectures, although rather more cryptically than the more extended ways in which it is introduced in other publications. We encounter Baby Miles coming home after his birth in a hospital, and bringing a range of new practices into the household. We find a description of the theory of practice architectures illustrated by Baby Miles participating in the practice of bedtime reading with his parents. We see the song ‘You’re (...) my world’ interpreted through the lens of the theory of practice architectures. We read a letter written by [aut]Kemmis, Stephen to participants in a forthcoming workshop on the theory. And we find out how Marx’s Third Thesis on Feuerbach inaugurated a view of praxis and practice that lives on in the theory. (shrink)

I intend to show some of the limits of the decision-theoretic model in connection with the analysis of cognitive agency. Although the concept of maximum expected utility can be helpful for explaining the decision-making process, it is certainly not the primary motor that moves agents to action. Moreover, it has been noticed elsewhere that this model is inadequate to the analysis of single cases of practical reasoning. A theory is proposed that introduces a plan-structure as a basic idea. In order (...) to know its very conceptual scope, we need to accommodate that theory to a cognitive architecture whereby the rational and autonomous agent makes choices and deliberates between courses of action to achieve specific goals that are of its interest. The paper endeavours also to clarify the relationship between the different modules that should constitute the architecture of an agent to accomplish the requisites of efficiency and autonomy in a changeable and dynamic world. (shrink)

In this article we move beyond the problematic distinction between ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ cognition by accounting for so-called ‘higher’ cognitive capacities in terms of skillful activities in practices, and in terms of the affordances exploited in those practices. Through ethnographic research we aim to further develop the new notion of skilled intentionality by turning to the phenomenon of the tendency towards an optimal grip on a situation in real-life situations in the field of architecture. Tending towards an optimal grip is (...) an inherently affective and dynamic phenomenon. It has been under explored in philosophy, despite its central place in Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology. When the architects experience discontent, attention is typically solicited by the affordances through which possible ways of continuing the improvement of the design can be explored. In various ways this tension or disequilibrium - fueling a tendency towards an optimal grip - is encountered in the complex architectural design practices that we observed. Based on our field material we distinguish between: a) grip in visual perception, b) grip on the design, and c) grip on ‘how to design’. The move towards an optimal grip takes shape by joining forces with a landscape of affordances. This landscape includes, for instance, affordances for grasping a cup of coffee, affordances provided by a cardboard model to improve it, as well as for engaging with a person who is not physically present. Because they are skilled, the architects can be responsive to these different affordances in similar ways. Furthermore, in practice the architects are responsive to multiple affordances simultaneously. Through our analysis of the tendency towards an optimal grip we show that our surroundings contribute to skillful action and cognition in a far more complex way than is currently acknowledged in philosophy and cognitive science. (shrink)

It is common to criticize the idea of objectivity by claiming that we cannot make sense of any cognitive contact with the world that is not constituted by the very materials of our thinking, and to conclude that the idea must be abandoned and that the world is ‘well lost’. We resist this conclusion and argue for a notion of objectivity that places its source within the domain of thoughts by proposing a conception of facts, akin to McDowell’s, as thinkable (...) while independent of any act of thinking. However, we do so without any empiricist commitment. (shrink)

Architectural Philosophy is the first book to outline a philosophical account of architecture and to establish the singularity of architectural practice and...

Drawing on a series of exhibitions curated and installed at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montréal throughout the 1990s and the early millennium, this essay analyzes how architecture and its representation in museological exhibitions have innovated forms of communication and display practices, transcending the traditions established by the fine arts paradigm since the late eighteenth century. The author argues that in addition to providing a heightened recognition of the narrative and performative potential of the exhibitionary setting, the discourses and (...) tensions specific to architecture and architectural practice have led to a rethinking of the communicative potential of the exhibition environment. Principles inherent to architecture—spatiality, materiality, and the experiential—are fruitful when considering the possibilities of exhibition design to elucidate multiple levels of meaning, and these principles have led to architecture’s coming-of-age in the museological environment in ways that are specific to re aedificatoria—the art of building itself. (shrink)

Cognitive architectures - task-general theories of the structure and function of the complete cognitive system - are sometimes argued to be more akin to frameworks or belief systems than scientific theories. The argument stems from the apparent non-falsifiability of existing cognitive architectures. Newell was aware of this criticism and argued that architectures should be viewed not as theories subject to Popperian falsification, but rather as Lakatosian research programs based on cumulative growth. Newell's argument is undermined because he failed to demonstrate (...) that the development of Soar, his own candidate architecture, adhered to Lakatosian principles. This paper presents detailed case studies of the development of two cognitive architectures, Soar and ACT-R, from a Lakatosian perspective. It is demonstrated that both are broadly Lakatosian, but that in both cases there have been theoretical progressions that, according to Lakatosian criteria, are pseudo-scientific. Thus, Newell's defense of Soar as a scientific rather than pseudo-scientific theory is not supported in practice. The ACT series of architectures has fewer pseudo-scientific progressions than Soar, but it too is vulnerable to accusations of pseudo-science. From this analysis, it is argued that successive versions of theories of the human cognitive architecture must explicitly address five questions to maintain scientific credibility. (shrink)

Dialectic IV convenes contributions with new takes on the long held proposition that architects are providers of design services. They service everyone from the status quo all the way to the subaltern. We know well how architects have historically fashioned themselves to be able to procure the most valued building commissions a people have to offer. There are temples, churches, and shrines, palaces and private villas, and surely monuments, state institutions, and corporate headquarters. But how have the members of the (...) same profession managed to fashion themselves as the custodians of the public good? (shrink)

The case for massively modular models of mind -- The architecture of animal minds -- Modules of the human mind -- Modularity and flexibility : the first steps -- Creative cognition in a modular mind -- The cognitive basis of science -- Distinctively human practical reason.

This chapter explores the intersection between radical humanism and the architectural humanities. It focuses on decolonizing local practices in Indigenous contexts. Radical humanism rooted in equality inclusivity and common well-being challenges the systematic injustices perpetuated by Eurocentric models in urban psychology and education. It focuses on Indigenous knowledge systems and methods of participation. This chapter shows how mapping can be reimagined as a tool for empowering promoting resilience in marginalized communities.

The practice of architecture, a discipline that is inescapably contingent on the particular, but that is also required by society in some way to represent an ideal, raises a number of specific ethical issues. Following an essay by the philosopher Thomas Nagel, this paper argues that it is intrinsic to professional judgement that this involves the prioritizing of unquantifiable ‘goods’. A twentieth-century case study is examined, which exhibits the choices made by a well-known architect. The changed nature of (...) class='Hi'>architectural practice in the United Kingdom in the twenty-first century is then described, whereby the privilege of making such judgements has been severely limited by the substitution of managerial values for professional values. In the face of different ethical imperatives – most obviously to design responsibly within pressing ecological concerns – it is argued that the task for architects now is to re-establish a context within which sound judgements can be made, which of course implies a degree of professional trust. Their ability to balance managerial values (technical competence for example) with ethical decision-making is what may prove to be most valuable. There are implications for architectural education, which in the past has either pretended to be a science or has retreated into aesthetic speculation, providing training in the skills of persuasion rather than relationship-building. The conclusion is that ethical thinking is inescapable for the profession of architecture in the twenty-first century. (shrink)

This paper develops the theory of post-reflective design, arguing that contemporary architectural and curatorial practices increasingly operate without presupposing a stable reflective subject. Rather than reinforcing self-referential models of perception, post-reflective environments suspend identity by disrupting the feedback loops that ordinarily stabilize the perceiver. Through analyses of spatial recursion, curatorial framing, and architectural feedback systems, the paper shows how certain spaces loosen the reflective structure of experience. Post-reflective design emerges as an approach to architecture that withholds return—an aesthetic (...) and ontological strategy in which spatial experience no longer folds back into a stable subject. (shrink)

The Ethics of Architecture offers a short and approachable scholarly introduction to a timely question: in a world of increasing population density, how does one construct habitable spaces that promote social goals like health, happiness, environmental friendliness, and justice? What are the special ethical obligations assumed by architects? Because their work creates the basic material conditions that make all other human activity possible, architects and their associates in building enjoy vast influence on how all we live, work, play, worship, and (...) think. With this influence comes tremendous, and not always examined, responsibility. This book addresses the range of ethical issues that architects face, with a broad understanding of ethics. Beyond strictly professional duties - transparency, technical competence, fair trading - lie more profound issues that move into aesthetic, political, and existential realms. Does an architect have a duty to create art, if not always beautiful art? Should an architect feel obliged to serve a community and not simply the client? Is social justice a possible orientation for architectural practice? Is there such a thing as feeling compelled to "shelter being" in architectural work? By taking these usually abstract questions into the region of physical creation, the book attempts a concrete reformulation of "architectural ethics" as a matter of deep reflection on the architect's role as both citizen and caretaker. Thinkers and makers discussed include Le Corbusier, Martin Heidegger, Lewis Mumford, Rem Koolhaas, Jane Jacobs, Arthur Danto, and John Rawls. An added preface addresses architectural issues arising during and after the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. (shrink)

This paper argues that the reflective self—the narrating, observing, and reified subject often taken to anchor conscious experience—is not a metaphysical given but a recursive artifact. Drawing on evidence from cognitive science, linguistics, phenomenology, and architecture, it shows how recursive processes in thought, grammar, and space stabilize the illusion of a bounded subject. The so-called “hard problem” of consciousness is reframed not as an explanatory gap but as a structural misframing introduced by recursive self-modelling. The analysis extends to aesthetic and (...) architectural practices that disrupt recursive loops and thereby develops an approach to post-reflective design—the creation of cognitive and spatial systems that loosen self-reference itself. By shifting attention from metaphysical puzzles to lived structures of experience, the paper advances a deflationary account of consciousness as relational, eventive, and open-ended. (shrink)

The paper suggests that architectural making, a process of research in practice, and itself a bridging between the space of experience and the horizon of expectations, corresponds to phenomenology as a method of inquiry. This includes architectural phases parallel to epoché, phenomenological reduction, free variations, transcendental intuition of the essence, and description. The paper describes the in-between, its two edges, experience and expectations, and their mutual influences through the process of architectural making. Examples from the design (...) studio and professional literature illustrate the argumentation. The in-between is presented as structured, notably having a depth—the ineffable origin of creativity. In conclusion, the paper suggests that the edges and the in-between are temporary configurations in flux, wherein the architect makes use of his/her most inner resources, as a contribution to the metamorphosis and revitalization of his/her culture. (shrink)

Architectural research forms the basis of design in seeking a solution that considers the site’s sociopolitical and spatial-cultural factors and the built environment surrounding it. In addressing industrial heritage, industrial revolutions, energy transitions, and technological innovation uniquely shape the city. The transformation and new discourse between similar heritage and different sites allow for a combination of ideas with transnational and interdisciplinary depth, bolstering individual designs through a developed perspective on industrial architecture. This studio addresses the socio-political and spatial-cultural challenges (...) of post-industrial cities. This article uses a critical, comparative, and analytical problem-based design research approach to examine collaborative pedagogical practices that can build a new image and identity through adaptive reuse strategies in the post-industrial urbanscape. (shrink)

How will AI transform architecture? How can we conceptualize AI in the context of architecture? The contributors to this volume discuss different positions to understand the fundamental shift provoked by AI and contextualize this shift in forms of operational theories and performative uses of the medium. The volume includes essays by practicing architects who explain how AI is used in their work, by philosophers who reflect on the impact of AI on our way of thinking and conceptualizing the world, and (...) by scientists who explain the foundations and the potential of AI for architecture. It provides the starting point to engaging with AI in architecture. (shrink)

Inspired by Theodore Schatzki’s ‘societist’ approach—in which he advocates a notion of ‘site ontologies’—in this article, we outline our theory of practice architectures (a theory about what practices are composed of) and ecologies of practices (how practices relate to one another). Drawing on case studies of four Australian primary schools, we examine how practices of leading relate to other educational practices: professional learning, teaching, student learning, and researching and reflecting. We find ‘leading’ not only in the work of principals (...) and other formal leadership positions, but also in the activities of teachers and students. We show that changing leading practices requires changing more than the professional practice knowledge of individuals; it also requires changing the practice architectures (cultural-discursive, material-economic and social-political arrangements) in sites where leading and its interconnected practices are conducted. In order to study practices of leading, we adopt a philosophical-empirical enquiry approach, i.e. we conduct our research as a conversation between practice philosophy and theory and the empirical cases of leading we study. We study practices in the mode of research within practice traditions, sometimes described as ‘practical philosophy’, as a contribution to the self-reflective transformation of the practices we are studying. (shrink)

Architecture has always been a decisive manifestation of power. This volume represents an attempt to question and reflect on the relationship between power and architecture from three philosophical perspectives: materialistic, phenomenological and post-structuralist. -/- This collection opens an interdisciplinary investigation that aims to reflect on architecture and its interconnectedness with power within philosophy and cultural theory at large while presenting these concepts using practical examples from the built environment. Internationally recognised authors – philosophers, architectural theorists and historians – Andrew (...) Benjamin, Andrew Ballantyne, Mladen Dolar, Hilde Heynen, Nadir Lahiji, Jeff Malpas, Dean Komel, Elke Krasny, Robert Pfaller, Gerard Reinmuth, Luka Skansi, Douglas Spencer, Teresa Stoppani and Sven-Olov Wallenstein present their reflections in original unpublished essays and interviews. In the presented works, architecture is combined and transgressed by philosophy in a new discussion that focuses only on power. The contributions in this collection open a variety of architectural questions, one of the central among them being the impact of neoliberal capitalism on architecture. Architecture, with its implications on the complex contemporary political and social reality, is severely changing our space and, more globally, our environment. A reflection on the multilayered relation between architecture and power has never been as topical as it is today. (shrink)

This paper argues that while Heidegger showed the importance of architecture in altering people's modes of being to avoid global ecological destruction, the work of Christopher Alexander offered a far more practical orientation to deal with this problem.

This paper addresses questions of ethics in the professional practice of architecture. It begins by discussing possible relationships between ethics and aesthetics. It then theorises ethics within concepts of 'practice', and argues for the importance of the context in architecture where narrative can be used to learn and to integrate past and present experience. Narrative reflection also takes in the future, and in the case of architecture there is a positive but not yet well accepted move (particularly within (...) the 'academy') to realise the imperative nature of architecture's responsibility with respect of global sustainability. Architects, more perhaps than other professions, use the faculty of imagination in their work, and this paper therefore maintains that architects as artists are uniquely qualified to exercise 'moral imagination' when it comes to situations where moral deliberation is needed. Pragmatism has given a new impetus to the importance of imagination in moral reflection, and I focus on John Dewey's categories of 'empathy' and 'dramatic rehearsal' as descriptors of moral imagination as applied in situations. I argue in conclusion firstly that empathy between end-users and architects is an essential but not always realised part of morality in architecture, and secondly that 'dramatic rehearsal', when extended more widely that a given situation, may lead architects to question the social, political and ecological contexts of their work and thus motivate them to prioritise the 'ethical' in all the choices they make. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to investigate the possibilities opened up by radical interventions in public space: is it possible to foster reflection and create a critical methodology for analysing the topic of Commons in the urban context? Presenting the project “Stente: Residual Zones” as an example, the aim is to explore these questions using Umeå as a case study. Through the creation of an art/architectural object, the project seeks to use artistic and architectural practices as tools (...) to engage city residents in an active dialogue about Common spaces. Starting with a theoretical framework for situating the critical potential of art and architectural objects in public spaces, in this paper the project is seen as an example of a temporary critical moving device, gathering and amplifying the voices of the inhabitants through the city: it aims to represent an open-ended invitation to reinterpret the boundaries between nature and the city, posing itself as a radical (from the latin radicalis) form of dissensus (Rancière 2010). The experiment was conducted at the Umeå School of Architecture between March and May 2024 as part of the “Designing the Contemporary City” research group at Umeå University. (shrink)

In this essay on ancient architectural technologies, I propose to challenge the largely conventional idea of the transcendent origins of philosophy, that philosophy dawned only when the mind turned inside, away from the world grasped by the body and senses. By focusing on one premier episode in the history of western thinking – the emergence of Greek philosophical thought in the cosmic architecture of Anaximander of Miletus – I am arguing that the abstract, speculative, rationalising thinking characteristic of philosophy, (...) is indeed rooted in practical activities, and emerges by means of them rather than in repudiation of them. The spirit of rational inquiry emerged from several factors but the contributing role of monumental architecture and building technologies has been vastly under-appreciated. In the process of figuring out how to build on an enormous scale that the eastern Greeks had never before tried, the architects discovered and revealed nature’s order in their thaumata, the very experience with which Aristotle claims that philosophy begins. Ancient architecture and building technologies were on display for decades with monumental temple building. In front of Anaximander and his community, a new vision of nature spawned that, surprisingly, humans could grasp and command. The building of these thaumata, these objects of wonder, offered proof of the human capacity to control nature, and opened a new vision of our human rational capacity to understand the world and our place in it. (shrink)

Since its beginnings, architecture has served not only as a means of providing shelter but also as a significant manifestation of power. Starting with definitions of both architecture and power, this paper traces a potential genealogy of their relationship across four distinct historical periods: Antiquity, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the modern era. The analysis situates architecture as a medium of control, surveillance, and social organization, revealing how power structures are embedded within architectural forms and practices. The study concludes (...) by addressing two key challenges of power in architecture: the environmental crisis and war. (shrink)

This essay samples and describes the state of architectural scholarship across various platforms in the age of Cognitive Capitalism. The premise is that, much like scholarship in the Arts and Humanities generally, architectural scholarship suffers from the Either/Or schism between traditional academic research of a non-utilitarian form and the heavily mediatic practices of the mainstream – “mainstream” defined as both online and print publications that eschew the long-form essay or book in favor of the populist modality that serves (...) the neo-liberalization of the discipline. -/- The sampling includes the devolution of the thesis or dissertation to socio-cultural report and/or pseudo-scientific study, with speculative works relegated to the margins of architectural discourse. This shift, while emblematic of the “trade school” mentality of many architecture schools today, also signals a bias at large in the post-recession 2010s where research must be monetized to justify funding, or speculative work must adhere to a format that is dictated from the outside (from the regimes of capitalization imposed by publishers). (shrink)

The first book to look architectural narrative in the eye Since the early eighties, many architects have used the term "narrative" to describe their work. To architects the enduring attraction of narrative is that it offers a way of engaging with the way a city feels and works. Rather than reducing architecture to mere style or an overt emphasis on technology, it foregrounds the experiential dimension of architecture. Narrative Architecture explores the potential for narrative as a way of interpreting (...) buildings from ancient history through to the present, deals with architectural background, analysis and practice as well as its future development. Authored by Nigel Coates, a foremost figure in the field of narrative architecture, the book is one of the first to address this subject directly Features architects as diverse as William Kent, Antoni Gaudí, Eero Saarinen, Ettore Sottsass, Superstudio, Rem Koolhaas, and FAT to provide an overview of the work of NATO and Coates, as well as chapters on other contemporary designers Includes over 120 colour photographs Signposting narrative's significance as a design approach that can aid architecture to remain relevant in this complex, multi-disciplinary and multi-everything age, Narrative Architecture is a must-read for anyone with an interest in architectural history and theory. (shrink)