philosophy & architecture international postgraduate conference

book of abstracts

edited by Tomás N. Castro

Lisbon | 2015 Center of Philosophy of the University of Lisbon

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table of contents organizing committee 3 scientific committee 4 keynote speakers 6 keynote speakers’ abstracts 7 Filipa Afonso 8 Luís Santiago Baptista 9 Inês Moreira 11 Carlos Jacques 12 special session’s abstracts 14 papers’s abstracts 19

(in order of presentation) authors’ names 64

(in order of presentation) authors’ names 67

(in alphabetical order)

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organizing committee

Maribel Mendes Sobreira (maribel.sobreira@campus.ul.pt)

&

Tomás N. Castro (tomas.castro@campus.ul.pt)

Center of Philosophy of the University of Lisbon

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scientific committee

Adriana Veríssimo Serrão University of Lisbon

Ana Vaz Milheiro

ISCTE-University Institute of Lisbon

Armando Rabaça University of Coimbra

Carlos Machado University of Porto

Diogo Ferrer

University of Coimbra

Gonçalo Byrne Catholic University of Portugal

Inês Moreira

University of Porto / IHA—New University of Lisbon

Jorge Figueira University of Coimbra

José Bragança de Miranda

New University of Lisboa / Lusófona University

José Duarte Gorjão Jorge University of Lisbon

José Jaraíz Pérez

Superior Technical School of Architecture of Madrid

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José Miranda Justo University of Lisbon

Luís Santiago Baptista

Lusófona University

Margarida Brito Alves New University of Lisbon

Manuel Graça Dias

University of Porto

Michel Toussaint University of Lisbon

Neil Leach

Harvard GSD / European Graduate School / University of Southern California

Vítor Moura

University of Minho

Yolanda Espiña Catholic University of Portugal

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keynote speakers

Filipa Afonso

University of Lisbon

Inês Moreira University of Porto / IHA—New University of Lisbon

Luís Santiago Baptista Lusófona University

Carlos Jacques Al Akhawayn University

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keynote speakers

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Filipa Afonso Center of Philosophy of the University of Lisbon fafonso@campus.ul.pt

Metaphysical Architectures and Architectural Metaphysics in the Middle Ages

The relationship between Medieval Philosophy and Architecture in the Middle Ages has been explored by several authors, such as Erwin Panofsky and Conrad Rudolph. Gothic Architecture has already been stated as a concretion or an offspring of metaphysical ideas which can be found in Hugh of Saint Victor or Thomas Aquinas. The aim of this paper is to pursue this research, shedding some light to this debate, through a consideration of Bonaventure’s writings, namely Itinerarium mentis in Deum. Therefore, we will first examine what architecture would mean to Bonaventure, bearing in mind his conception of the liberal arts and the architectural metaphors than punctuate his work. Then, we will analyze how Bonaventure’s writing itself engages in an architectural model, and for what purpose. Finally, we will focus on the affinity between Gothic Architecture and Bonaventure’s metaphysics, using examples taken from Medieval Monuments, like the Basilica of St. Francis or the Parisian Cathedral of Notre-Dame. Filipa Afonso is an Invited Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Lisbon, where she teaches Medieval Philosophy, Medieval Metaphysics, Art and Philosophy in the Middle Ages, Interference of Arts. She received her PhD in Medieval Philosophy from the University of Lisbon with a thesis on Bonaventure’s Metaphysics of Light. Her current research is focused on Eriugena’s Ontology. Filipa Afonso is vice-director of the Centro de Filosofia da Universidade de Lisboa, and a member of the Société Internationale pour l’Étude de la Philosophie Médiévale, International Society for Neoplatonic Studies and Sociedade Portuguesa de Filosofia Medieval.

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Luís Santiago Baptista Lusófona University lsantiagobaptista@gmail.com

Derrida on architecture: the (im)possibility of deconstruction

‘One could say that there is nothing more architectural than deconstruction but also nothing less architecture,’ affirmed enigmatically Jacques Derrida in 1986. This statement means trouble when we assume the task of discussing the relation between philosophy and architecture in the context of Derrida’s thought. But there is more. It is in this extend striking that Philip Johnson and Mark Wigley, the curators of Deconstructivist Architecture at MoMA in 1988, had refused in the exhibition any structural relation between philosophical deconstruction and architectural deconstructivism. Further surprising in this refusal is the fact that Wigley presented in 1987 his PhD precisely on the relation between Derrida’s thought and architecture, later published in 1993 as the book The Architecture of Deconstruction: Derrida’s Haunt. On the other hand, prior to the exhibition, Derrida and the architect Peter Eisenman had collaborated, between 1985 and 1987, in a project for Parc La Villette, after an invitation from Bernard Tschumi. This famous event, published in 1997 in book form as Cora L Works: Jacques Derrida and Peter Eisenman, ‘was fecund but infertile’, as Jeffrey Kipnis brilliantly showed in his critical essay of the event, that was then followed by a violently polite exchange of correspondence between the philosopher and the architect. Therefore, the interpretation of the influence of Derrida’s deconstruction in architecture is circumscribed by a theory intentionally blocked from practice and a casting mistake that derived in an unproductive event. But there is a black hole here. If Wigley’s theoretical approach to Derrida’s thought, published in 1993, was in effect written in the middle of the 1980s, in this way before the most important essays of Derrida on architecture, that were therefore left out of the reflection, the spectacular collaboration between the philosopher and Eisenman obscured other potential disciplinary crossings between deconstruction and architecture, that eventually could me more insightful. The truth is that the texts Derrida presented at and wrote for architectural audiences remain largely unnoticed, essays in which the philosopher addresses explicitly architecture or is speaking among architects or architectural thinkers. Thus, we will focus our critical analysis on Derrida’s texts for the architectural deconstruction events, in the end of the 1980s, and his participation on the two first Any Conferences, in the beginning of the 1990s, just before his disappearance behind the wave of deleuzian emergence. Hopefully, this research may open new perspectives on the influence of deconstruction in architecture, beyond illustrative theory and formalist practice.

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Luís Santiago Baptista is an architect and has developed a multifaceted activity encompassing professional practice, academic teaching, architecture criticism, exhibition curatorship and publishing. He has a master degree in Contemporary Architectural Culture (FA-UTL) and is PhD candidate in Architecture and Urban Culture (DARQ-UC). He was teaching assistant in FA-UTL and is now invited assistant professor in ECATI-ULHT and researcher of LabART. He is editor-in-chief of arqa magazine. He publishes regularly in national and international magazines and have made conferences in several institutions. He was among the curators of Habitar Portugal 2006-2008 (Ordem dos Arquitectos), was co-curator of “«Let’s talk about houses»… in Portugal” (Lisbon Architecture Triennale 2010), consultor of Becoming Minor: Architectures and Critical Spatial Practices in Ibero-America (Guimarães 2012), the curator of Generation Z: Emergent Portuguese Architectural Practices and curator of ARX archive (Centro Cultural de Belém). He is author of the project Modern Masterpieces Revisited.

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Inês Moreira University of Porto / IHA—New University of Lisbon inexmoreira@gmail.com

On disturbances, figurations, allegories and other oblique strategies to curate architecture and space

Architecture, as a field of knowledge and of practice, has its wide theoretical disciplinary references, including a diversity of discourses set along the centuries. Though, until very recently, its cultural/curatorial side has been understood as an extension of architectural history and theory, or even as a formal extension of exhibition making. This research proposes wider theoretical scaffoldings set to operate curatorial research on architecture and space from a transdisciplinary and critical position.

Departing from the understanding of the “architectural” as a heterogeneous and processual field, beyond its disciplinary borders, the lecture explores transdisciplinary strategies to address and support research on heterogeneous entities, so to propose a theoretical approach to curating architecture. Ours´ is an attempt to set a methodology for curatorial research on hybrid and complex entities, beyond the strict authorial, objectual or disciplinary delimitations.

This lecture visits social and cultural sciences, namely, material-semiotics, assemblage theories and the critique of techno-science, so to outline a proposal for depiction of heterogeneous objects, supporting strategies to interdisciplinary work. Analysing the work of authors studying hybrid and heterogeneous entities, we focus mostly on reading/writing strategies: performative actor-networks as defined by Bruno Latour, Michel Callon and John Law; Donna Haraway’s strategy of densification of figurations; and John Law´s method assemblages. Along the lecture, we propose a curatorial method that dialogues, non-illustratively, with the theoretical scaffolding acting beyond the traditional centrality of designed objects and heroic authors, and manoeuvring the foregrounding of a non-unifying proposal: curating in/on/through space. Inês Moreira (b.1977) is an architect, researcher and curator. Guest Auxiliary Professor lecturing on Contemporary Culture and on Curatorial Studies at FBAUP - Faculty of Fine Art, University of Porto. Post-Doctoral Researcher at IHA - Instituto de História da Arte, FCSH-UNL. She obtained her PhD in 2014, from Goldsmiths College, University of London, with an epistemological and process-oriented research on the issues of curating architecture, space and exhibition display, presented under the title Performing Building Sites, a curatorial research in/on/through space. Master in Master in Theory of Architecture and Urban Culture from UPC-Barcelona in 2003; graduated from the Faculty of Architecture of Porto University in 2001. Her curatorial projects approach specific spaces (as post-industrial hangars, burnt historical buildings, minor architectures, or abandoned museums) exploring knowledge oriented research/production in the intersection of art, architecture, techno-science and the humanities.

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Carlos Jacques Al Akhawayn University jacquescarlos@hotmail.com

Playing in space: Profaning architectural practice

This reflection on architecture was inspired by the eruption of occupations of city squares in early 2011, a movement in which anonymous people re-appropriated public spaces for purposes no longer permitted or imagined. As cityscapes, with their streets, plazas and structures, have been moulded by the sanctities of power and the flows of wealth, the occupation movements of our “time of riots” profaned these spaces, redefining them as open and horizontal, without closure. Like a child who turns reality into a play thing, rendering it susceptible to multiple uses, oblivious to what should and should not be done except as its imagination dictates, the occupation of squares rendered them festive, carnivalesque, revealing dimensions of constructed space forgotten or repressed, and opening thresholds onto new spatial possibilities. The city was freed, however momentarily, for unprogrammed uses, for radical desires. The striated landscapes of urban space were transgressed in a proliferation of spatialities that testified to a profaning of the urbe by ways of life, bearers of new ways to make space.

There are no intrinsically radical or revolutionary ways of moulding architectural space. But then once it is understood that space is made through social relations, that it is as a social practice, and not a fixed reality, that space is spatialities made and re-made, then what emerges is the need to imagine spatial practices, in urbanism, architecture, or whatever, beyond their subservience to regimes of oppressive power. What then might, for example, a radical architectural practice look like? Without any pretence to proposing norms or pre-set goals, and in consonance with the idea that human spaces are created through the many practices that engender social relations, then a liberating architecture cannot be reduced to any fixed aesthetic and/or functionally defined form. It must rather be conceived of as a practice that creates spatial forms open to the multiplication of desires, and not their domestication.

This reflection then is an invitation to question, to reject, functionalist orderings of architectural space. It is an apology for an architecture of excess, of the monstrous; an architecture that allies itself with overflowing energies, wild experimentation, iconoclastic irreverence. To profane architectural practice is to render it anarchic. Dr. Carlos Jacques is Assistant Professor at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences of Al Akhawayn University, Ifrane, Morocco, where he has taught for over ten years in a variety of disciplinary areas and programs (e.g. in the University’s common core of liberal arts, courses such as Philosophical Thought, History of Ideas, Comparative Religion,

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Science and Society, as well as courses in political and social philosophy in the International Studies and Women’s Studies programs, and Philosophy of Religion in the Islamic Studies program). Dr. Jacques was a student of philosophy and did all of his academic cursus in Canada, having graduated with a Ph.D from York University, Toronto, Canada in 1993. After completing his studies, he had the opportunity to teach in various universities and in different countries (e.g. Ryerson University (Canada), University of Ghana, Universidade Lusófona (Portugal)). His principal areas of research interest are political and social philosophy, African philosophy and aesthetics.

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special session

Thinking and Walking in the Landscape to built the City

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Dirk-Michael Hennrich Center of Philosophy of the University of Lisbon dirk.hennrich@gmx.ch

Foundation and Possibilities of Philosophy of Landscape

Philosophy of Landscape is a relatively recent area in the Humanities, emerging through the 19th and 20th Centuries as a very peculiar connection between different fields of knowledge, like Geography, Geology, Arts, Architecture, and Ecology, trying to rethink the status of Nature and Culture in the industrial or even Anthropocene Epoch. The first communication of the panel Thinking and Walking in the Landscape to built the City will focus on the foundations and possibilities of Philosophy of Landscape, explaining how this new point of view must be considered as a Propaedeutic for every human activity and creation that is occupied with the habitation (and the architecture) of mankind on earth. In the so called Anthropocene, the opposition between Nature and Culture needs to be substituted by the thinking of the ‘Third’, as a real overcoming of all polemic and destructive actions on our planet. Philosophy of Landscape is related to Architecture of Landscape but it is before this, an authentic approach to bring together Geo-Science, Geo-Politics, Geo-Philosophy and Geo-Ethics. Talking about Landscape and Philosophy of Landscape means to reconsider our world-experience as a body-mint experience in constant movement through space and time. The return of a certain ‘Philosophy of Embodiment’ is therefore another index that Philosophy of Landscape is crucial for the Humanities in the 21th Century. Dirk-Michael Hennrich finished his PhD in 2014 at the University of Lisbon with a grant from the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) and holds a Master in Philosophy, Modern German Literature and History from the University of Basel/Switzerland (2003). He is an integrated member of the Centre of Philosophy of the University of Lisbon, foreign collaborator of the CISC (PUC-São Paulo), collaborator of the Centre for Studies in Portuguese Thought (CEPP) from the Catholic University of Porto and member of the Instituto de Filosofia Luso-Brasileira (IFLB). His main fields of research are Philosophy of Landscape, Media Philosophy, German Idealism, Early German Romanticsm and Philosophy in Portugal and Brasil.

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Moirika Reker Center of Philosophy of the University of Lisbon moirika.reker@gmail.com

The dialectic between city and landscape through interventions in the landscape

City and landscape co-exist and complement each other. But they are, nonetheless separate entities, or distinctive ideas. In fact, the problem arises when this distinction fades, when the extra-urban space is not the otherness of the city, but a spreading urbanity, or urban sprawl that covers all usurping the space of the landscape; when the outside of the city is the non-city instead of the landscape. However, the fact that the landscape is the city’s otherness does not mean that there are no elements in the city that are bridges to the landscape. Those are either ‘naturally’ there—as a river that cuts through the city, or the sea that borders it—or are interventions that transport us back to the landscape, places with a landscape essence, if one can put it like this, the importance of which lays in their being a counterpoint to the city, bringing a balance, or antidote to cities that are too dense and overly man-made. We will thus address the otherness in the city-landscape opposition and discuss some examples of interventions that succeed in bringing the landscape into the city. Moirika Reker, Master of Fine Arts by Columbia University’s School of the Arts, New York, with a grant from the Office of International Relations - Portuguese Ministry of Culture (1999/2001). Exchange student between ar.co Lisbon and the School of Visual Arts, New York with a grant from the Luso-American Foundation. Studied Visual arts at ar.co Lisbon and Free Media at Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam. Currently develops an R&D project researching the implementation of Urban Orchards as strategy for the appropriation of the public space by the community and its relation with the aesthetic experience of the city, funded by the European Cultural Foundation. The practical part of the project is being developed in the project “Fruta à mão” at Quinta dos Lilases, Lisbon (a winner of Lisbon’s Participatory Budget 2014). Member of the Center of Philosophy of the University of Lisbon. Main research topics include Philosophy of Landscape, Philosophy of Nature, the Garden and the City, Ethics and Aesthetics in Urban Intervention, and Public Space.

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Sandra Escobar Center of Philosophy of the University of Lisbon sandraesc06@hotmail.com

The aesthetic ecology of environment

The environmental crisis of the 1960s puts on the agenda the issue of urban sustainability and the need to convert biocides cities in ecological ones. The project of a sustainable city has been developing along these lines, based overall on an environmental policy emphasising the eco-system and the bio-physical-chemical components of the urban environment. However, from my point of view and according to Nathalie Blanc, the project of the sustainable city should embrace these components as well as the cultural dimension, which includes the actors/spectators of the city. Therefore, this paper aims at showing in what extent the aesthetic ecology of environment, as proposed by Arnold Berleant, provides a axiological model for the appreciation and construction of an ecological city. Sandra Escobar, graduated in Philosophy, holds a Master degree in Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art from University of Lisbon, and is currently a PhD student in Philosophy of Nature and of the Environment with a grant from FCT. She studied at the University Tor Vergata in Rome (1998/1999), was a high school Philosophy teacher (2001-2011), and an invited assistant at Portuguese Open University (2011/2012). She is a collaborating member of the Center of Philosophy of the University of Lisbon and a member of Sociedade de Ética Ambiental. Her main areas of research are Aesthetics and Environmental Ethics, Philosophy of Landscape, Bioethics and Gender Studies.

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Victor Gonçalves Center of Philosophy of the University of Lisbon victorgoncalves2@gmail.com

Friedrich Nietzsche, from Landscape to Architecture

Friedrich Nietzsche was a hopeless walker. In his work the idea that one thinks better when the muscles are tense by the harshness of a mountain trail is recurring. The contemplation of nature, of nature as landscape, would be the first step towards a re-naturalization of man and a radicalization of the illuminist critical project, body and mind emerging in a kôra made of biomass and senses, entwining natural and human. It was abandoned, withheld from civilization, immersed in the alpine landscapes that Nietzsche composed some of the most important and brilliant texts of his oeuvre. In this sense, his philosophy is more physiological than psychological.

This also explains why already at the end of his intellectually active life, 1888, decides to substitute the predominance of music within the system of the arts, by architecture. In The Twilight of the Idols holds that ‘Architecture is a kind of eloquence of power [Macht-beredsamkeit] that is expressed through shapes, oftentimes persuasive, or even pleasant, others merely imperative.’ Architecture, in the manner of music in Schopenhauer, becomes an art of a different kind, outside Dionysian inebriation (music) and apollonian inebriation (poetry). It translates directly the very will to power, draws in the undefined space, from pure determination of settling the formless, to draw an inhabitable place.

In our presentation we intend to demonstrate that these two fields are connected, the elevation of architecture to main art form stems from Nietzsche’s unrestrained and permanent need to walk for long hours through landscapes. Need that derived from his chronic health problems, but also from the incessant desire to think better, freer and lucidly. Masters in Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art (University of Lisbon). Almost concluding the PhD in Contemporary Philosophy - Nietzsche, Derrida, Foucault, Deleuze: beyond a hermeneutics of true. (University of Lisbon). With a PhD FCT scholarship. Philosophy Teacher in a secondary education (School Damião de Goes, Alenquer). Member of Center of Philosophy University of Lisbon. I published several articles in national and international magazines about Nietzsche, Foucault and Philosophy landscape. Held some papers on topics related to contemporary philosophy.

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papers’ abstracts

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Luciana Fornari Colombo Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul luci.colombo@gmail.com

Tracing connections between the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas and the architecture of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, one of the most influential architects of the twentieth century, often remarked that philosophy was an important source of clarification and guidance for his work. For example, Mies affirmed that the definition of truth maintained by the Medieval philosopher Thomas Aquinas played a crucial role in his effort to understand the authentic nature of architecture in a context marked by diverse views on how an architecture for a technological society should be. Despite being notably recurrent in Mies’s discourse, this affirmation has not yet been subject to closer scrutiny, including in publications by Fritz Neumeyer (1991), Franz Schulze (1985, 2012) Detlef Mertins (2014) and other authors who have dealt with Mies’s philosophical foundations. To address this research gap, the paper traces connections between Thomas Aquinas's concept of truth and Mies’s concept of architecture based on the analyses of the philosopher's writings; and of the architect's personal book collection and discourse excerpted from interviews, lectures, manifestos, oral history, letters, and manuscripts. Arranged in three parts, the paper introduces Thomas Aquinas's concept of truth, explores Mies’s modern interpretation of this medieval concept, and then reflects on how this concept informed Mies’s understanding of architecture. Ultimately, the paper argues that, like Thomas Aquinas's view of truth as adaequatio rei et intellectus, Mies’s view of architecture as Baukunst points to an equilibrium between thing and thought, object and subject, facts and ideas, thus promoting a close and harmonious relationship between construction and structure, building and art. In this manner, the paper corroborates Mies’s claims about the influence of Thomas Aquinas's philosophy on his work, and helps illuminate the relevance of philosophy to architecture. Luciana Fornari Colombo is a faculty member of the Department of Architecture at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. She completed her Ph.D. in Architecture at the University of Melbourne, Australia, in 2012.

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Lidia Gasperoni Technische Universität Berlin lidia.gasperoni@mailbox.tu-berlin.de

Diagrammatic thinking in architecture

In order to explain how architecture has an own spatial reflection, I would like to focus my talk on the use of media in design process and in particular on the function of diagrams as hybrid forms relating space and time, perception and thought. Even if diagrams recur constantly in the design process, a proper definition is still missing. There are multiple ways in which architects make us of diagrams, so that we could assert that there are as many diagrams as architectural projects. Furthermore, diagrams define an important link between architecture and philosophy. Foucault, Deleuze and Peirce are only some examples of philosophical reflection of the use of diagrams in architecture, as works of Peter Eisenman, UNStudio and FOA show.

The purpose of my presentation is to pick out the central question, whether the diagram is only a particular and historical notion or, on the contrary, an indispensable medium within the design process. Starting from single projects that focus on diagrams, I firstly explain the philosophical sources of diagrammatic theory in architecture and secondly the medial qualities of diagrams. At last I propose my own conception of diagrammatic thought in architecture, understanding the diagram not as a medium, but as a way of thinking and using media in architecture. Lidia Gasperoni achieved her PhD in Philosophy at the TU Berlin under the supervision of Prof. Günter Abel and funded by DAAD fellowship. Since 2014 she is research fellow at the Faculty of Architecture of the TU Berlin. Since 2010 she is Co-Director of the Freigeist-Akademie für Geisteswissenschaften. She studied at the University La Sapienza of Rome, at the Albert-Ludwigs-University of Freiburg in Breisgau and at the TU Berlin. The subject-matter of her dissertation is the relation of sensibility and conceptuality within the theory of Schematism in Kantian and Post-Kantian Philosophy and within contemporary theories of knowledge.

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André Patrão KU Leuven / Lunds Universitet andrefpatrao@gmail.com

The inbetween: on the essence of architectural design

Philosophy’s traditional categorization of architectural design amongst various forms of fine arts is both an inadequate assumption for its genuine theoretical comprehension and dangerously misleading for its practice. This critical claim has been voiced by more and more philosophers and designers in recent years, yet both struggle to present a solid, coherent, holistic alternative which convinces one another and even themselves. The detachment of architectural design from the arts implies opening a space of its own, under its specific norms and purpose, but it is one impressively hard to pin down and remarkably apt to slither through any attempt to do so.

The challenge is then to articulate architectural design’s own proper space as a discipline. Within and through philosophical discussion, it is shown to yield a unique role of ontological representation and reconfiguration partially shared with, but ultimately beyond, that of art. The fundamental ontological difference, and defining characteristic, of architectural design as a discipline is its inbetweenness: inbetween science and art; abstraction and utility; determinacy and indeterminacy; theory and practice; ontical and ontological; beings and Being; and modes of Being. In this mediatory space is its realm, one which hold on to and moves all others, yet is irreducible to and uncategorizable under any other than its own.

This reflection as such also occurs in the inbetween, specifically of philosophy and architectural design. The grounding reference author is Martin Heidegger, whose work found translation into design through the (mis)interpreter Christian Norberg-Schulz. Though both architectural theory and ontological thought grew beyond these thinkers – as does this exposition – the first coherent expression of architectural design’s inbetweenness discloses itself in their work. André Patrão is a young Master of Sustainable Urban Design — Lund University, Sweden – currently completing a Philosophy Master thesis — with KU Leuven, in Belgium – having previously earned both a Bachelor of Architecture — with the University of Lisbon – and an Abridged Bachelor of Philosophy — again, with KU Leuven. Focusing on different concerns, both Master theses investigate the mutual singular benefit of a dialogue between philosophy, art, and design, namely aesthetics and metaphysics, and architectural and urban design. Given the benefit of each discipline in understanding the other, André researches and writes about both topics per se and about their fascinating yet challenging inbetween space.

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Mahroo Moosavi The University of Sydney mmoo5607@uni.sydney.edu.au

Existentialism or Essentialism: An Investigation of the Architecture of Safavid Persia

Developed in the 17th century, ‘Transcendent Theosophy’ as defined by the thinker Mulla Sadra, illustrated a major transition from essentialism to existentialism in Islamic thought. According to Sadra, ‘something has to exist first and then have an essence.’ Cast in opposition to the idea that ’essence precedes existence,’ previously introduced by Shahab al-Din Suhrawardi and Avicenna, Sadra’s achievement was to reconcile opposing conditions including reason and intuition within a largely late-Neoplatonic paradigm. Such complementary natures are also found within the architecture of the same period. How buildings in Isfahan, Persia such as Shaykh Lutfullah Mosque (1613-1619), were predisposed, if not determined, by an intimate knowledge and practice of Transcendent Philosophy is central to this investigation.

If one considers Safavid-era Isfahan as both an arbiter and physical symbol within ‘Transcendent Theosophy,’ then it may be argued that complementary natures found within architecture engendered the capacity for contemplating philosophic ideals. As Mulla Sadra demonstrates, the physicality of a substance is the same as its existence. Due to the uniqueness of existence, architecture and urbanism, which take place through the appearance of a building or a city, should be an expression and representative of that unique existence. While Safavid architects tried to embody Heaven on earth, this paper illustrates how individual buildings in Isfahan extended instrumental approaches to the substantiation of existence. Constructed ‘frozen’ forms of existence are ultimately translated as tools of a mediated architectonics across Safavid theosophy.

Linking Transcendent Theosophy to the architecture of the Safavid era (16th-18th centuries), associative meanings including the deployment of metaphor, allegory and paradox were intensified in both philosophy and architecture. As a result, these associative meanings allied architectonic approaches to philosophical principles embedded in the form of buildings. Mahroo Moosavi is a PhD Candidate in Architecture in the Faculty of Architecture, Design and Planning at The University of Sydney. Her thesis is entitled, “Translating Essence: The Evolution of Persian Theosophy in the Architecture of Shaykh Lutfullah Mosque”. An architect, with degrees from the University of Tehran and the University of New South Wales, Mahroo recently presented the paper “Translating Essence: Conceptions of the City in Safavid Poetics” at Symposia Iranica: The Second Biennial Graduate Conference on Iranian Studies, hosted by the University of Cambridge.

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Tamanna Ahmed University of Évora tamannahmed.arquitectura@gmail.com

Vihara Architecture:Defining the existential foothold of ‘Somapura Mahavihara’ of ancient Bengal, VIII century AD

‘When we treat architecture analytically, we miss the concrete environmental character, that is, the very quality which is the object of man s identification, and which may give him a sense of existential foothold.’1

‘Existential space,’ comprises the basic relationships between man and his environment. Existential Foothold of ‘Somapura Mahavihara’ refers the factors that shape the monument upon which it was anchored, to establish the relation between men with his environment on a specific time period.

Buddhist Architecture had been playing a vital role in shaping the Architecture of greater Asia as early as VI century B.C. The earliest evidence of historical monumental architecture derived itself from the Buddhist monastic architecture i.e. Vihara architecture since history.

In line of history, the Pala Dynasty (750-1155 A.D.) of ancient Bengal, contributed numerous significant Viharas, among which the ‘Somapura Mahavihara’ (770 AD), attests the sensitivities of a highly sophisticated architectonic typology of Vihara architecture, announcing the flourishing minute of art and architecture of the era. Being significant in character, this monument has been enlisted as UNESCO Heritage Monument since 1992.

This research paper aims to explore the existential foothold of ‘Somapura Mahavihara,’ in terms of its territorial, functional, structural, social, cultural, religious symbolic hierarchies of human achievement while clarifying the architectonic typology that shaped ‘Somapura Mahavihara’ through evolution process.

This understanding intends to combine the archaeological knowledge with architectural analysis to portray the glorious past of ‘Somapura Mahavihara’ that echoes the cultural symbolism of human civilization in a modest way, while defining the singularity of it through the evolution process of Vihara Architecture, since 530 BC in the region of ancient Bengal.

1 Norberg-Schulz C. Genius Loci: towards a phenomenology of Architecture. Academy Editions, London. 1980, p. 5. Tamanna Ahmed. 2012: Bachelor of Architecture, BRAC University, Dhaka, BD. 2012-current: Integrated Masters in Architecture. Universidade de Evora, Evora, Portugal. http://www.catedra.uevora.pt/unesco/index.php/unesco/content/view/full/1420

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Khuat Tan Hung Hanoi Architectural University khtahung@yahoo.com

Manifestation of ancient Vietnamese philosophy concept in architecture of communal houses in the Red River delta of Vietnam

Red River delta is one of the earliest wet rice agricultural centers of Vietnam. There are still many architectural heritages associated with the socio-cultural life of local residents in the delta. The best example of which is the communal house – famous with the name ‘Dinh’. This is a genre of traditional architecture familiar in most of the Red River delta villages, whose role is both a place for worship and a place for community events.

The origin of the village's communal houses is currently a controversial issue. The earliest traces of the communal houses date from the early 16th century. Over hundreds of years of existence through many historic events, Dinh continues to be an integral part of village’s socio-cultural life in the Red River delta. Its architecture is still the most characteristic image, the most mentioned when talking about traditional villages.

However, these characteristics in terms of architectural form and spatial organization of the Dinh as well as their origin are still mysteries to explain. For example, why the most of the earliest communal houses have stilt structure? Why the worship space in the house is located in the lowest position close to the ground? Why the sculptures and decorations in the house located mainly in the overhead, dark and difficult to see, etc.?

This paper explains these mysteries while finding out the relationship between the architecture of the communal house and the philosophy concept and world view of the ancient Vietnamese like Yin and Yang Philosophy, their notion about the nature and structure of the universe etc. This paper also points out the specific manifestation of the philosophical concepts in the structure of the house, its roof features and the characteristic decorative details… as well as behaviour of the local people in and around the house. BIO TBA

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Philippe Zourgane École Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture Paris Val de Seine philippe.zourgane@gmail.com

Rewriting Another Modernity from the Global South Viet Minh and the use of Vegetation as a Political Agent

Plant life is central in the development of modern spatial operational framework. Plant life has been a subject of study and contemplation for botanists, a source of wealth via spices or coffee, a field of production for the agricultural plantations, and an exotic subject for travel tales literature. During the 17th and 18th century vegetation had a central position in the whole Western society. But its power became even greater: the plants analysed by botanists, drawn by naturalists, and acclimatized in the botanical gardens were modified to be more robust and productive. For this reason, plants are fundamental to the creation of colonial space from the very beginning. It is well-known that flows of capital, maritime industry and market capitalization were worked around plants. But we can also say that the colonial territory was structured at the service of plants. There is a reversal of the rules of the game: the cultivated areas are ordering the whole territory, even the city. To that extent plant life has a certain autonomous agency, the major/minor relationship between built and non-built space is inverted. Linking this inversion to the economic, financial, and political conditions of colonialism and post-colonialism allows us to re-read these territories in a different way: their planning and their iconic architectures. To treat vegetation – plant life – as a political agent enables us to foreground the ways in which vegetation orders social and economic relations. It is an ordering agent of the colonial and postcolonial territory, of agricultural planning and of urban space.

I will discuss in this paper vegetation as a tool employed in the struggle by the weakest against the strongest. I do not refer here to the art of camouflage, nor to a return to a primitive state: rather it is used as a subordinate weapon for the preservation of autonomy. In that case, Vegetation is no more a planning tool or a management tool, it offers a possibility to escape from the colonial grid to disappear. Vegetation as also been used to create the conditions to live different and autonomous lives apart from state authorities as James Scott describes it in his book The Art of not Being Governed or as Philippe Zourgane describes it in his text Architectural Free Zone.

Vegetation was often used as a political agent in asymmetrical or revolutionary wars, during decolonizing process, as theorised by Mao Tse-Toung and Ho Chi Minh. I will use archive images extracted from the film Chiến thắng Tây Bắc' (The victory of the North West) shot in 1952 by the military forces in Viet Minh during the war against French occupation. These images also demonstrate a form of counter-planning of the land that allows topography (plains and mountains), geography and the ecosystem (the forest or the savana) to be used as a weapon.

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These images depict the strength of the soldiers who become one with their territory. I am the territory. They inhabit it, and reconstruct it as something else. Thousands of soldiers travel across the country without using the established infrastructure. Instead they use pathways that allow them to avoid detection by the French occupiers. In this way they invent a new map. This map subverts the relationship between city and countryside, and the new territory is built from nature (the countryside) towards culture (the city). Where, previously, bamboo rafts were used to cross rivers, here Giap built invisible bridges, along the Ho Chi Minh route, made from bamboo and positioned 10 centimetres under the surface of the water to allow them to escape the enemy's bombardment of the infrastructure. As well as the refinement of these particular inventions, what stands out is the use of vegetation to support the resistance effort.

From a theoretical point of view it was the reconstruction of another modernity turning upside down the conceptualization of culture as a key point reference for modern society. Nature replaced Culture to form a new agency that was able to destroy a modernity construct on infrastructure and total territorial planning. Nature was defined a the new point of departure instead of culture, to form a revolutionary society. Philippe Zourgane is an architect, researcher, assistant professor of Architecture and Theory in Paris (ENSAPVS) and director of RozO architecture landscape environment. Researcher in the Architecture Milieu Paysage lab in Paris. He is a co-founder with Severine Roussel of the firm RozO in 1998. He developed and realized architectural and landscape projects in different countries (including France, Reunion Island, Senegal, Italy). He completed his PhD in the Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths college (University of London) in 2013. He studied Architecture in ENSA Paris Versailles where he obtained his diploma. He is currently writing on different collective books in France, Canada and Austria.

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Ramona Costea G. M. Cantacuzino Faculty of Architecture of Iasi ramonna.costea@yahoo.com

The architecture of the memory. The memory of architecture

Architecture, where from, where to? Memory is as a modus operandi in establishing rapports between the material and the metaphysical, such that objects endowed with a forceful meaning permeate in the space of memory. The complex evolution of humanity occurs with regards to the evolution of consciousness and cognitive flow, understood not only through the intellectual lens, but through its entire spectrum – identity, emotion, empathy. Considering that architecture is an ‘infusible fusion’ of culture, art, technology, functionality, vital and spiritual support, augmenting society, we may state that consciousness, architecture and memory determine the system of our conscious existence. The temporary character of architecture represents the outgrowth of the society evolving at an accelerated pace, surpassing the individual, thus making the evolution of memory unpredictable and its life shorter.

This paper proposes an analysis regarding architecture and memory, starting with the known phenomenon of memorizing and memory’s path through architecture, continuing with “the built memory” within historical or contemporary patterns of our cities and concluding with its complexities of philosophical and metaphysical origin - the discourses of architecture – the implicit theoretical discourse, the fictional discourse (the literary dimension of architecture) and the philosophical discourse. In order to transcend into the space of long-term memory, an object permeates through 3 essential perception stages: the sensorial stage (regarding sensorial memory); the semantic stage (related to short-term memory) and the emotional stage, triggering the long-term memory. Thus, in order to imprint its values to long term memory, architecture should comply to these 4 conditions: synesthetic, semantic and syncretic, and emotional.

Reinterpreting architecture through the way it is being memorized and rediscovering memory as an architectural meta-language imply their reconnection with the identity and consciousness of a culture. In conclusion, this gigantesque consciousness, whose rhythm and hidden geometry operates as an artful cryptographer of time embodied through architecture, must constitute an essential part of every signified, without altering the experience of the new, but empowering it and potentiating it with value, coherence and continuity.

Ramona Costea was born in Iaşi, Romania. She is an Architecture Graduate Student of G. M. Cantacuzino Faculty of Architecture of Iaşi (2009 – 2015, including Master’s Degree with the Dissertation Paper ‘Upon memory and architecture,’ evaluated with 9,00). She recently finished an Internship at “Adam Bresnick Architects” Office based in Madrid, Spain. She wishes to pursue the subject during a PhD Program regarding Architecture and Neurosciences.

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Aleksandra Paradowska Uniwersytet Wrocławski aleksandraparadowska@wp.pl

Architecture as public policy. Nazi architecture in occupied Poland as a peripheral region of the III Reich

It has been a long period after the Second World War since Nazi architecture became a subject of art-historical research. Increased interest on that subject arises just in the last two decades of the 20th century. Nevertheless, the aspects of architecture based in peripheral regions of the Third Reich have been overlooked for many years.

This tendency began to slightly change in the last years thanks to publications of German and Polish art historians (e.g. N.Gutschow, H.Grzeszczuk-Brendel, J. Purchla). Their books and articles opened a wide discussion on Nazi architecture in the incorporated region of Wielkopolska and a part of Masovia – the so-called Reichsgau Wartheland, and the occupied southern areas of Poland – the General Government.

The East was described by the Nazis as ‘unsettled,’ so it was necessary to ‘give a new shape to people and things,’ just as Wilhelm Hallbauer wrote in reference to Łódź in 1940. German architects saw here a long-awaited chance; they could draw new outlines for area planning of a ‘little motherland for German citizens.’ Due to this ideology it is important to describe phenomena of nazi architecture in occupied Poland in relation to philosophical diagnoses. Nazi architecture should be understood not only as the product of the criminal system, which existed in defined time frames, but also it is put in the context of a wider timeless ethic problem of a dangerous collaboration between art and power.

Although in the last couple of years many blank spots on the map of Nazi architecture were filled in, many uncertainties about its position in the occupied or incorporated regions still exist. In short, the main aim of this paper is to extend present research and define mechanisms of formulating ideological shapes of architectural projects on peripheries, and in further perspective - to change the optic for perceiving Nazi architecture as a whole. PhD, research fellow in Art History Department, University of Wrocław, master's graduate from Art History Department at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, studied also at Universität Hamburg. Her research areas include history of architecture in 19th and 20th century with a particular interest in the social connotations of architecture. Her recent publications include articles about polish architecture in the interwar period, today's meaning of nazi architecture and a book "Przeciw chorobie. Architektura szpitalna Wielkopolski w dwudziestoleciu międzywojennym" ("Against illness. Interwar hospital archtecture in Wielkopolska /Greater Poland/"), Wydawnictwo Nauka i Innowacje, 2015. Currently she is working on a postdoctoral project about Nazi architecture in polish territories incorporated by the III Reich (Wartheland).

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Emilia Jarosova Karlova univerzita v Praze jarosovaemilia@gmail.com

Dealing with time, place and memory in contemporary architecture — architecture between indexical and diagrammatic

Using the example of temporality and approach to time I would like to demonstrate the connection of architecture as an index and as a diagram by comparing two types of buildings, seemingly standing on opposite ends of spectrum – shopping centre and library. Indexical concept of architecture (in the US the most frequently used in critical theory based on Frankfurt school that influenced thoughts of Manfredo Tafuri and subsequently other authors, for example M. Wigley or P. Eisenman) considers the perception of architecture as a process of decoding meaning. Important is what architecture means and how it is read. This concept is based on semiotics (e.g., Ch. S. Peirce, U. Eco). Diagrammatic concept of architecture, based on Gilles Deleuze, or Michael Foucault and embodied in American theory mostly in the context of the projective theory, does not deal with meanings, with what the architectural object is, but rather how it operates and appeals, how it can change state of things, how virtual becomes actual. It does not need a reader, it becomes deleuzian ‘fold’ of reality. In my dissertation I follow up the connection between the two approaches, namely the examples embodying these seemingly opposite poles, an indexical library and a diagrammatic shopping centre. At this conference, I would like to focus specifically on the perception of time in this context. Everything is changing too fast nowadays and the role of architecture is particularly specific. It is not a medium which can be flexibly changing according to circumstances. Therefore, there exist different approaches to time within architecture. Indexical architecture, represented by library is going against the time, defying it and presuming stability, long continuance and personifying memory. Diagrammatic architecture, represented by shopping centre, is functioning outside of time, trying not to create memory, adjusting to the circumstance and changing with the contemporary era. Mgr. Emilia Jarosova (1985) earned master degree at Faculty of Humanities, Charles University in Prague (2011). She studies architecture at Czech Technical University in Prague since 2010 (earned bachelor degree in 2013). She also studies PhD. program Semiotics and philosophy of communication at Charles University in Prague from 2013. Her research subject is connection between architecture and philosophy of communication. She currently works in architectural office based in Prague on projects related to the subject of her dissertation.

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Philipp Kampschroer University of Lisbon philipp.kampschroer@ruhr-uni-bochum.de

Post-war reconstruction and spaces of memory in German cities. The example of Bochum

In summer of 2015 the owners of North Station (Nordbahnhof) asked the Town Council of Bochum for the authorization to pull down this historic monument built in the 1870s. The request caused a considerable discussion in the local press and media, with numerous associations underlining the historical relevance of the building.

In Nazi Germany, the site served as the starting point for deportations of local Jews. The construction of the station, however, appoints to the industrial revolution and its infrastructural effects on Bochum and the Ruhr Area, Europe’s major area of coal mining and steel production. Connecting the former rural Bochum to train networks was one of the most essential project of this time, seeing a 300 percent growth of the city’s population between 1871 and 1900. Such increases wouldn't leave the architectural appearance of the city untouched: while the historical center (predominately Truss structures) was repressed, new mines, factory complexes, worker’s housing and classicist Gründerzeit blocks would spread out, dominating the city’s face until the massive Allied Bombing in World War II. As Martin zur Nedden points out, the post-war reconstruction of Bochum should be considered as important as the Gründerzeit era, with few buildings being restored and most of them being replaced by functionalist structures, built along broadened streets (Nedden 2005, 281).

How can memory be experienced in a place ‘deprived’ of its architectural legacy? In the case of Bochum (as well as many other German cities), historic buildings (such as Nordbahnhof) are rather isolated carriers of symbolic memory in the cityscape. Old street names refer to sites lost in the war and following reconstruction, while commemorative panels can be considered ‘active’ references to disappeared heritage. In the end, photo books presenting historical pictures (alongside recent photographs) can probably transmit the most complete image of the lost. The presentation will be divided into 1) a historical introduction to the development of Bochum's architectural cityscape and 2) a reflection on the city’s contemporary spaces of memory (refering to A. Assmann, Halbwachs, Lynch). Philipp Kampschroer holds a B. A. in General and Comparative Literature and Philosophy from Ruhr-Universität Bochum. He is a graduate student of Romance Philology (Portuguese Literature) at the Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa. He has published a translation (from Portuguese to German) and reviews.

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Ana Luiza Nobre Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro nobre@puc-rio.br

Max Bense: Intelligence as Mobility

The series of four travels of German philosopher Max Bense (1910-1990) to Brazil, between 1961 and 1964, is closely related to the rise of a new conception of design in Latin America in the 1950’s and 60’s. The trips were recorded by the author in the book Brazilian Intelligence. A Cartesian reflection, published in Germany in 1965. By then Bense was a central figure in the exchange between Latin-American and German constructive trends in arts, poetry and design. Brasília, the new capital of Brazil, had just been built. And the country was just beginning to face two decades of dictatorship.

Rather than reading the local context through a theoretical frame, Bense observes a kind of local intelligence that is associated to a non-historical consciousness embodied in design. To Bense, design in Brazil emerges as a dialectical substitute of European historical consciousness. Thus the idea that the tropical civilization expressed in the emerging idea of design in Brazil is the very essence in progress of mankind, conveying a possibility of renewal long buried in Europe.

Defined as the expression of a total design, by analogy with the German notion of Gesamtkunstwerk, Brasilia is seen as embodying the concept of mobility, key to theoretical debate in architecture then. Bense evokes Yona Friedman’s spatial cities to explore the interchangeable aspect of Brasilia, found both in its architecture and in its floating population that refuses sedentary lifestyle. Yet, the term Mobilität is sometimes substituted by the term Beweglichkeit, which suggests, more specifically, a movement capacity or potential.

What is Max Bense’s idea of mobility, then, when he speaks of Brasilia? This is the main question we seek to explore, in an attempt to stress, with a philosophical approach, a concept at the core of contemporary architecture. Ana Luiza Nobre is a Brazilian architectural historian, author and critic, born in Rio de Janeiro in 1964. She teaches Architectural History in the Department of Architecture and Urbanism at the Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio), Brazil. Nobre received her architectural training at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), where she graduated in 1986. Later on she studied at the Politecnico di Torino, and received her PhD in History in 2008 at PUC-Rio. She is a member of CICA/International Committee of Architectural Critics, founder and ex-director of Casa de Lucio Costa, and currently Head of the Learning and Research Department at Instituto Moreira Salles. She has also organised a number of exhibitions and seminars, and was curator (with Guilherme Wisnik and Ligia Nobre) of the X Bienal de Arquitetura de São Paulo, in 2013.

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Fernando Curiel Gámez Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey fcuriel@itesm.mx

Luis Barragán’s philosophical working itinerary between 40’s and 50’s

The most famous architectural works of Barragán are houses and gardens built between the 40’s and 50’s. During this period, Barragán began one of his most important architectural periods, coinciding with the generally critical reviews of modern architecture developed in the 20’s and 30’s.

Barragán, like most architects of his time, practiced under an ideological and philosophical way of thinking which challenged concepts of mechanistic, functionalist and technological utopias that were current in modern architectural ideas of that era.

Today, at Barragán’s House-Studio, the personal library of the architect is maintained as part of his personal archive. Barragán’s library is composed of nearly 2,400 books and 640 magazines about many subjects such as architecture, arts, literature, philosophy, anthropology, and many more. Through a complete analysis of his personal library, we realized that Barragán left some kind of marginalia on many books and magazines like: underlined paragraphs, notes, folded pages, photos and magazines’ pages.

These evidences in Barragán’s books and magazines let us suppose a large variety of conclusions about his philosophical and moral doctrine based on certain authors such as Marco Aurelio, Pascal, José Ortega y Gasset, Aldous Huxley, Cyril Connolly, which truly defined the ideology supported in his architectural and landscape works during the 40’s and 50’s.

This paper analyses multiple ideas that Barragán took from these authors contributing to a better understanding of the ideological discourse in Barragán’s work. In 2012, I presented my PhD dissertation: Luis Barragán’s library: 1925-1980. In 2013, I was invited to give a lecture at Tecnológico de Monterrey’s Museum about Luis Barragán’s cultural influences. In the same year I started working at the Postgraduate School ITESM as a teacher of the Master in Architecture and New Urbanism. During this period, I gave a lecture at Cancún and Playa del Carmen Society of Architects. These lectures became lately an article: Fronteras Difusas: arquitectura, ciudad, arte y paisaje, which was published in Sinápsis Social Revista Científica de Sostenibilidad, v.1, no.1, April-September 2014.

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Natalia Solano-Meza Faculty of Architecture, University of Porto carambolagroup@gmail.com

The creation of the School of Architecture at the University of Costa Rica from the perspective of power, knowledge and nationalism

The School of Architecture at the University of Costa Rica was created in 1968 and opened its doors in 1971. It was the first architecture school in the country. Its creation opened a debate regarding the role of architecture in the Costa Rican society, its capacity to solve social needs and its autonomy.

The creation of the School was marked by an intellectual argument between its founders and the high structures of the University of Costa Rica. This paper explores this conflict from two philosophical perspectives.

First, I use Michel Foucault's ‘power-knowledge’ definition to analyse the struggle between the emerging School against the University apparatus. Reviewed archived documents show that such conflict originated in the way in which the School challenged traditional education through an anti-curricular pedagogical model, critical of an educational system serving a political and cultural program.

Secondly—to provide context—I recur to Costa Rican philosopher Alexander Jimenez. I apply his concept of ‘ethnical metaphysical nationalism’ to support the idea of the School defying not only education, but, a series of institutionalised values regarding politics, territory and nationality. Research reveals that the University of Costa Rica was a fundamental instrument in the transmission of a supposedly social democrat project. I suggest that, paradoxically, the School's intention was not political but aimed to open a space for the practice of architecture in Costa Rica, and, to allow the discipline to contribute to the solution of persistent national problems: housing, urban planning, local construction.

I conclude that the School's original objectives remain unfinished, as its ideas started to yield to the pressure of the academic structures towards 1974. In spite of this, I argue that the School creation served to introduce the idea of architecture as an autonomous discipline able to contribute independently to Costa Rican society.

Natalia Solano Meza is a third year PhD student at the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto, Portugal. Her research focuses on the relationships between architectural practice, pedagogy and politics. Her thesis approaches the creation of the School of Architecture where she graduated from, the School of Architecture of the University of Costa Rica. The thesis addresses relationships between architectural education and practice. She has published articles in magazines such as the HABITAR— Costa Rican Architects Journal, DOMUS Magazine for Mexico and Central America, LUNCH — the Architecture Students Journal of the University of Virginia, amongst others.

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Isabella Moretti Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau moretti@bauhaus-dessau.de

The Body in the Architectural Clinic: a Phenomenological Experiment

The human figure has certainly inspired architects and city planners since the early beginning, either figuratively or metaphorically. As ideal figures, they escaped manifestations of humanity, be it sickness or malformations. It is the modern architect who introduced health into architectural discourses and included it in the core of the contemporaneous research programme. The body stopped being a symbol and started being inductively shaped by scientific management and environmental standards.

Explicitly opposed to the use of statistics, Paul Virilio calls for more clinical experiments in architecture. In the 1960s, Claude Parent and Paul Virilio were determined to revolution architecture by introducing the concept of The Oblique. In inclining floors and walls, usable surfaces, which they called ‘habitable circulations’, were maximised and transformed into a continuous ground that encouraged exercise and body consciousness. They developed an experiment - the Pendulum Destabiliser No 1 - to test what psycho-physiological consequences living on sloped surfaces might generate. Being themselves the subjects, they wanted to monitor the lived and isolated experience in order to document the shifts in musculature, rhythms, and behaviour. Due to political incompatibilities, Parent and Virilio broke their partnership in may 1968, and the experiment was not conducted.

In this paper, I will reconstruct the limitations and parameters of the experiment, drawing parallels to the clinical investigations of the German physician Kurt Goldstein, whose studies and therapies on patients with frontal lobe injuries, were of major relevance for philosophers and phenomenologists Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Georges Canguilhem. In doing so, I will outline the importance of environmental stimuli for the construction of behaviour. Isabella Moretti is a Research Assistant at the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation investigating the relation between body-image, dance and the production of space, currently framed in the dance congress held in Magdeburg, Germany, in 1927. She graduated as an Architect from the University of Buenos Aires, and holds a MSc on Design Research from the Humboldt University in cooperation with the Anhalt University of Applied Sciences.

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Danilo Manca University of Pisa danilomanca30@gmail.com

Socrates as Architect. On Valery's Eupalinos

Between 1919 and 1923 Paul Valéry wrote some pseudo-Platonic dialogues with Socrates as main character. In one of them, Eupalinos, Socrates and Phaedrus continue their dialogue in the afterlife. Phaedrus told Socrates the story of Eupalinos, an architect who conceived his art as a form of self-consciousness. Seduced by that story, Socrates envisages how would have been his life whether he became architect instead of philosopher: ‘an architect was within me and the events let him unfinished’. Starting from this dialogue, I will deal with the architecture as metaphor of philosophic activity. In particular, I will focus on three points: 1. The architecture as the building of its own self; 2. The architect as the metaphor of the demiurgic activity of philosopher; 3. The architecture as a way to experiment all potentialities of human creativity.

By describing architecture as the building of its own self, Valéry elaborates that which Nietzsche had said in Twilight of Idols by referring to architect as the interpret of the will to power. Valéry sees in the myth of Orpheus erecting Thebes' walls by playing cithara a sublation of Nietzschean dialectic between Dionysian music and Apollonian sculpture.

When Socrates envisages himself as architect likens philosophic activity to that of the Demiurge: the philosopher composes his work of art as the Demiurge did with the Universe. The most representative figures of this idea of philosophy are Leonardo Da Vinci and Edgar Allan Poe. To Valéry, the origin of philosophic activity is the same of the artistic one: the poietic impulse of the human being. Leonardo and Poe have experimented the various possibilities of poietic impulse and by doing this they made themselves able to be many men in only one life. I am actually PhD student at the University of Pisa in Theoretical Philosophy and Philosophy of Literature. I am also Assistant at the Chair of Aesthetics. In 2013 I edited the book Il velo scolpito. Dialoghi tra filosofia e Letteratura (ETS Publishers). I just wrote a book on Valéry and Borges. The Quarrel between Inspiration and Composition, forthcoming. Since 2014 I coordinate the research center Zetesis (http://zetesisproject.com) and I am the editor in chief of the new International Journal Odradek. Studies in Philosophy of Literature, Aesthetics and New Media Theories.

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Clemens Nocker / Clara Archibugi La Sapienza University of Rome clemens.nocker@gmail.com

Self organised architecture as the disclosure of place identity

Space is never neutral: it affects and is affected by the subjects who cross it. Architecture is the space produced by human kind, as a form of art and as a form of abode, always within this compromise, which distinguishes living from inhabiting the world. If architecture becomes exclusively a form of art, it loses its function and it is destined to contemplation or abandon. On the other hand, an architecture that is merely functional will make humans who deal with it feel superfluous and unrelated to the place.

Two theorists, Marc Augé and Rem Koolhaas, seem to agree that the contemporary urban landscape has become more and more generic. According to the French Anthropologist Marc Augé, an extended number of ‘non-places’ are created in the new urban landscape: anonymous and interchangeable places in which people are nothing but passers-by and to which they do not connect emotionally. While these ‘non-places’, as distinguished from private properties, are theoretically spaces of interaction of plurality, the exchangeability and anonymity of the subjects within these spaces makes them decline from citizens to customers. These spaces seem private, not simply in the sense of property privatization but in the sense of de-priving them of their civic value, by which these – with their art, monuments, architecture – were meant and built.

Our purpose is to analyse the lack of feeling caused by the “non-places” in relation to a completely different typology of space, which seems to emerge as a response and protest of the expropriation of public space pursued by capitalism. It is the kind of space related to the ‘commons,’ with the characteristics of accessibility, decision-making processes, collective care and production of culture: in other words, the possibility to define and be defined by the alternative production of spaces. Clara Archibugi is currently attending a Master Degree in Philosophy at Sapienza University of Rome, focusing on what concerns contemporary public sphere, right to the city, direct democracy processes and independent cultural production, under the influence of Hannah Arendt, Jacques Derrida and Günther Anders. Clemens Nocker is an Architect/ Urbanist from Austria currently based in Rome. He studied architecture at the University of Applied Arts Vienna in the studios of Greg Lynn/ Zaha Hadid and received a degree in Urban Studies from the 4Cities programme which took place in Brussels, Vienna, Copenhagen and Madrid. Since 2014 he is a PhD Fellow in Architecture Theory at Sapienza University in Rome.

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Andrew P. Steen University of Queensland andrew.steen@uq.edu.au

Charles Jencks’s Entry into the Arena

The ‘Letters to the Editor’ in the May 1966 edition of Arena: The Architectural Association Journal includes a submission by Charles Jencks. This letter was Jencks’s first published work in the United Kingdom. It addresses an article from April’s edition of Arena: George Baird’s ‘Paradox in Regent’s Park: A Question of Interpretation.’ Baird’s article develops an argument for architectural semiology based around an ostensibly mismatched couple of buildings sited around London’s Regent’s Park: Denys Lasdun & Partners’s Royal College of Physicians; and Llewelyn-Davies & Weeks, and John Musgrove’s Zoological Society of London building. Jencks’s letter laid the foundation for the then-doctoral candidate's authorial status within the lively and combative architectural discourse of the time.

This paper analyses Jencks’s mode of authorship in relation to that presented by Baird. It exposes key differences between the rhetoricality of Baird’s article, and Jencks’s critique. The paper interrogates the manner in which the use of language can direct a reader’s attention, and shape their conceptualisation of architectural theory. Through this discussion, the often-overlooked issue of writerly style in architectural discourse receives focus, and the idiosyncratic author function of Jencks gains articulation. Andrew P. Steen (BA (UQ); BBEnv, BArch (QUT); MPhil, PhD Candidate (UQ)) is a member of the ATCH research group. Steen's PhD thesis, ‘The Figures of Charles Jencks, ‘Semiology and Architecture’,’ is due for submission in August 2015. Steen was awarded an MPhil in 2011 for his thesis ‘Re Made in Tokyo.’ Steen's other publications include the journal article “Radical Eclecticism and Post-Modern Architecture” (Fabrications 25:1 (2015)); and SAHANZ conference papers "Guerrilla in the Midst: The Universitas Project and a New Type of Institution” (2015), “Operation Marginalia: Translations of Semiology and Architecture” (2014), “Jencks’s Semiological History: ‘Pop — Non Pop’” (2013), and “Epigraphs, Poetics, Architectural History” (2012).

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María Rivo-Vázquez Universidade de Santiago de Compostela maria.rivo@usc.es

Walking with Michel de Certeau. Jesuit architecture and city

‘Bernard loved the valleys, Benedict the mountains; Francis the towns, Ignatius loved great cities.’ According to Thomas M. Lucas SJ this is an old Jesuit proverb which, I think, clearly expresses the strong bond between the Society of Jesus and urban settings. In fact, the establishment of most of its colleges followed a precise urban strategy. Thus, even though limited by numerous circumstances such as the patron and the inhabitants’ wishes, the frequent reluctance of previously settled religious orders, and the urban layout, the Jesuits used to achieve significant locations inside the walls of the cities. And this, along with the orientation, dimensions, configuration and iconographic elements of their façades, makes it evident that the Order carried out a quest for representativeness –or, from Evonne Levy’s perspective, ‘propaganda’– that is paradigmatic of the cultus externus promoted by the Counter Reformation. In other words, they strove to show their peculiar white wall/black hole to as many people as possible. Therefore, to consider aspects like the urban layout and its unfolding, viewpoints, transit dynamics, space's current and past functions, or toponymy can be very useful to better understand Jesuit architecture. This paper aims to analyse some Jesuit urban establishments by using the wandering gaze of Michel de Certeau. María Rivo Vázquez holds a B. A. in Art History (2011) and a M. A. from the Universidade de Santiago de Compostela (USC), where she is currently working on a PhD about the Jesuit Architecture in Galicia. She has published “En el ocaso patrimonial. Sobre protección, conservación y restauración en la revista Galicia Diplomática”, in La huella impresa (Fernández Martínez, Carla (coord.) and Monterroso Montero, Juan M. (dir.)), Alvarellos and USC, Santiago de Compostela, 2014, pp. 347-364; and “Crux Criticorum. La fortune critique de la Cathédrale de Saint-Jacques dans l'historiographie Galicienne du XIXe siècle”, Compostelle, 16 (2013), pp. 55-84.

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Alexandra Areia ISCTE-IUL / DINÂMIA-CET xanaareia@gmail.com

What is an architect? The singular case of Manuel Graça Dias and his multiple selfs

This proposal of communication departs from two seminal texts by Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault — “Death of the Author” (1967) and “What is an Author?” (1969), respectively —, in order to question some of the idiosyncrasies of being an architect, particularly within the Portuguese realm. Undoubtedly, both texts need to be understood at the light of, firstly, the literary realm they mainly aim to address, and secondly, the historic context in which they emerged — which coincides with the events surrounding May’68 in Paris. For Roland Barthes, the birth of the reader must be ransomed by the death of the Author, which embodies a strong rejection to the “Author-God” figure present in romantic literary criticism; as for Michel Foucault, the “author function” was essentially a characteristic of the mode of existence, circulation, and functioning of certain discourses within a society.

By transposing some of the concepts and ideas of both essays into current architectonic debates, this communication aims to reflect on the “architect function” through a systematic analysis of Manuel Graça Dias’s work. In fact, for Foucault, the question of “What is an Author” (and, in this perspective, that of the architect) should be linked to the function of the author’s name — that performs a certain role with regard to narrative discourse, assuring a classificatory function — and also to the question of what constitutes a “work” (oeuvre) — If an individual were not an author, could we say that what he wrote, said, left behind in his papers, or what has been collected of his remarks, could be called a “work”?

In the case of Manuel Graça Dias, an architect divided between several forms of discourse production (construction, drawing, writing, teaching, film, television, radio, etc) and that also nourishes a peculiar appreciation for some “architecture without architects”, one could inquire: How to delimitate Manuel Graça Dias architectonic practice, when it is scattered through a plurality of multiple selfs? What ultimately constitutes his “work”? Finally, what defines him as an Architect? Alexandra Areia, Architect. Researcher assistant at DINÂMIA-CET and FCT Scholarship holder; Phd Candidate at ISCTE-IUL; Gained a masters degree from the Metropolis program of UPC and CCCB, Barcelona, in 2007; Studied at École d’Architecture Paris Val-de-Seine in 2002-03; Graduated in Architecture from University of Minho in 2004. Programmer at Arquiteturas Film Festival Lisbon; Co-editor of Passagens Magazine (ISCTE-IUL, Caleidoscópio); Co-editor and writer of Fanzine Friendly Fire. Has published in Jornal Arquitectos, Artecapital and Homeland, News from Portugal; presented communications on the seminars On the Surface and Intersections at FAUP.

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Giorgio Ponzo Leeds Beckett University G.Ponzo@leedsbeckett.ac.uk

Of canopies and roofs. Framing uninterrupted spaces

In his book In the World Interior of Capital Sloterdijk (2013) describes how Western civilization managed, over the course a 500 years long process, to build up a global system of communication and exchange that ended up enclosing the whole planet into one psychotechnical construction.

What actually helped European states to displace their power across the globe was a series of material and immaterial constructions – defined by Sloterdijk as ‘canopies of globalization’ – that exported value(s) and meaning of motherlands into previously inhospitable spaces.

In March 2015, Google presented the project (by Thomas Heatherwick Architects and BIG Bjarke Ingels) for the redevelopment of its headquarters in Mountain View. The project seems to take literally Sloterdijk’s reading of the process of globalization where a series lightweight constructions frame the basic values of a community (the Googlers) in an indifferent environment (American suburbia): gigantic transparent membranes aim to cover large stretches of natural landscape and to host a series of movable and adaptable structures that will host not only the ‘workspace,’ but also a series of facilities and amenities to be shared with the people of the surrounding neighbourhoods.

It is possible to look at how Google headquarters project appropriates and transfigures the character of past radical projects (Scott, 2007) that aimed to frame production processes within large scale continuous structures (Pimlott, 2009) – from 1954 Mies’ Convention Hall Project in Chicago, to 1960 Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic dome over Manhattan, to 1969 Superstudio Continuous Monument and 1970 Archizoom No-Stop City; the paper will look at Google project to see which features of Sloterdijk’s ‘canopies’ it is able to embody (‘the poetics of the ship’s hold,’ ‘the religious network,’ etc.) pointing at a disappearance of boundaries between different kinds of spaces (natural environment, urban space, interior, workspace, leisure space) and proposing a worldview of an all-encompassing architecture that can only be lived from within. Giorgio Ponzo is PhD candidate at the Leeds School of Arts, Architecture and Design at Leeds Beckett University where he teaches as part time lecturer. His research focuses on architecture, both as theoretical and material construction, as mirror of the processes of ‘production’ that characterize the contemporary condition of the ‘knowledge society.’ Giorgio studied architecture at the Berlage Institute in Rotterdam (2009-11) and at the Technical University in Torino where he graduated cum laude in 1999. Giorgio taught at the Technical University in Torino, at the Berlage in Delft and at the HIT in Harbin (China).

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Susana Ventura University of Porto susanapventura@gmail.com

Towards an intensive architecture: how do we compose intimacy in architecture?

The present paper aims to define an aesthetic category yet inexistent in the theory of architecture named ‘intensive architecture’, which results from an area common to philosophy (aesthetics) and architecture, understood in the light of Deleuze’s work. Thus, a work of architecture is an example of intensive architecture if it composes a bloc of sensations through its own proper means (architecture devices), mastered by an architect’s composition. A sensation may be, for instance, a sensation of intimacy, silence, contemplation, lightness or other, which a work of architecture has the ability to sustain through time. As Adolf Loos once said of the work of art: it should affect us until the last heartbeat of the last man. However, one should not confuse sensation with senses. An intensive architecture is not that type of architecture usually said to be related to the senses (as Pallasmaa describes), inasmuch as sensation has primarily a direct impact on the nervous system, hence each and every organ is a receptacle of sensation, and not only those of the senses. And as sensation is ‘the being of the sensible’, it always obeys to an aesthetic composition. In music, for example, there has been a perpetual desire to compose silence, probably with one of its culminations and highlights in John Cage’s 4’ 33’’, but how do we compose silence, in architecture? Or intimacy? Through which means, which forms, which artifices, which materials?

The works of Adolf Loos and Kazuo Shinohara are some of the examples to be analysed where one finds intimacy as an architectonic sensation, a sensation that fills the space independently of time and seasons. Wherefore, the experience of the work in place (the empirical experience that has been in the foundations of the phenomenological thought so mistreated by architecture experts) and a knowledge of our own body are important, when these are deeply connected to the philosophical concepts of sensation and sensibility. Architect, writer, curator & post-doc researcher. Currently, developing a post-doc research project untitled "Towards an intensive architecture" at The Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto. Awarded in 2014 with the Fernando Távora’s Prize. PhD in Philosophy – Aesthetics, Faculty of Social and Human Sciences of Nova University Lisbon (FCSH-UNL, 2013), with the thesis "Architecture’s Body without Organs", supervised by Philosopher José Gil, which included research residences at the architecture studios of Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Lacaton & Vassal and Peter Zumthor. Architecture Graduate from Coimbra University (darq – FCTUC, 2003). Curator of “Habitar Portugal 09/11” (“Inhabiting Portugal 09/11”). Shortlisted in the international competition for Chief Curator of the 3rd edition of The Lisbon Architecture Triennial. Invited participant at the Portuguese Representation in the 14th Venice Architecture Biennale as architect editor of the section “Detached” of Homeland – News From Portugal.

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Teresa Lousa University of Lisbon teresa.lousa@gmail.com

The sublime through architecture

While the sublime had its origins in the Longinus’s text On the Sublime, it is only in the eighteen century that such term has developed as an aesthetic category. The word has its origin in the Latin language, meaning literally to be ‘raised or high up’.

The sublime is aesthetically conceived as something that has such a magnitude or intensity, that our ability to understand stays temporarily overwhelmed. The concept is either considered an obsolete and outmoded concept related to the past, or it is seen as a revivalist concept understood in a similar way as it was in the eighteenth century. The long trajectory of this concept led it to several evocations as part of a process always present in the Architecture.

Kant was perhaps the most systematic developer of this concept. Although for such philosopher, Kant the sublime was more related to the Nature, that kind of feeling can also come to us through Architecture: the sense that arises when imagination faces the demand to provide an aesthetical apprehension of totality in a single moment, like in a glimpse, can in fact happens to someone who beholds a pyramid or that stands in the interior of St. Peter's cathedral in Rome. In this kind of situation, we can become overwhelmed because we cannot comprehend in a glance the whole that we are facing.

We can find evocations of the Sublime in contemporary Architecture in aspects such as: manipulation of scale, monumentality or the use of shade and light. The sublime can also arise in the attempt of presenting what cannot be presented. Quoting Lyotard, ‘the immanent sublime, that of alluding to the non-demonstrable’ can be present in the abstraction or in the absence of form as a vehicle to evoke infinity or absoluteness. Teresa Lousa (1978); PhD in Sciences of Art (University of Lisbon 2013); CIEBA’s Integrated Researcher; CEFI Researcher, Sociedade Espanhola de Estética e Teorias da Arte - SEyTA Associate, Master Degree in Art Theories 2005 (FBAUL); Degree in Philosophy 2000 (FCSH); Teaches Aesthetics I and Aesthetics II in FBAUL since 2008 as Assistant Professor. Has recently published a book based on her PhD thesis Do Pintor como um Génio na obra de Francisco de Holanda, and also several papers in peer reviewed journals. Has participated in various international colloquia in the academic context.

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Lucy Elvis National University of Ireland Galway L.ELVIS1@nuigalway.ie

Hermeneutics, Architecture and Belonging

For many aestheticians, architecture occupies a difficult position within the pantheon of the arts. Hegel’s normative approach leaves architecture limited in its truth-disclosing capacity due to its brute physicality. This paper argues, with Gadamer, that this physicality is fundamental to architecture’s role in establishing a space for the emergence of all other art forms. As such, architectural space creates a space for the creation of and encounter with all other forms of cultural expression. Architecture, therefore, both includes decoration and is, in its very nature, decorative. It is bound to imposing its aesthetic content and then foregrounding its contents in order to facilitate the encounter between viewer and art work.

Gadamer’s interpretation of architecture thus requires a rehabilitation of ornamentation which refutes Hegel’s separation of ornament in his reading of architecture. Ornamentation becomes inseparably related to the harmony of the architectural work as the whole, its ‘komospoeisis’. This reciprocity between ornament and the work as a whole is an analogue of the relationship between architecture and ‘bildung’. Once shaped by culture, architecture becomes the ‘house’ in which culture is established and sustained. As a result, Gadamer restores the connection between art and the ethical life of a community that is lost in Romantisicm.

The paper makes reference to selected passages from Truth and Method, On the Relevance of the Beautiful and other select essays by Gadamer. Although for such a brief presentation an exhaustive account of the advantages of a hermeneutic approach to architecture cannot be provided, the paper suggests that it is perhaps incorrect to debate its position within the pantheon of the arts, for as the metaphor suggests, it remains the foundational space of culture itself; the site in which culture and community are brought not only into being, but into question. Lucy Elvis holds a BA in Art History from Leicester University (UK) and MA in Visual Culture from Lunds Universitet (Sweden). She is currently a recipient of the Galway Doctoral Scholarship. Her current research is concerned with philosophical attempts to ‘deal’ with architecture as an art, and the problems and pitfalls that these encounter in light of (among other things) the necessary functionality of building and architecture.

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Filippo Maria Doria TU Delft filippo.doria@gmail.com

Blindness and Representation

Voir; savoir; povoir: since the outset of western culture, the genealogy of the word ‘Idea’ (εἶδος = ‘form’; ‘appearance’; ‘what is in sight’), associates the possibility of constructing knowledge with human vision (εἴδομαι = ‘to see’; ‘to know’).

Accordingly, the elaboration of architectural projects is frequently mediated by artefacts that convey information by means of visual perception. However, these artefacts always encode non-visual epistemic dimensions embedded in the project. The standard modes of architectural representation: section, floor plan and elevations are in fact ab-ocular gazes that never show an artefact as it would appear to the eye, but rather unveil the logical and narrative relations between different parts and spaces. Moving from these premises, this paper explores one aspect of architecture drawing whereby the power of the eye abdicates to other cognitive processes. In this context, the notion blindness serves as a metaphor for elaborating a theory of architecture drawing as a mnemonic practice, rather than a visual one.

In the paper, I will examine the seminal work of Jacques Derrida The Memoires of the Blind, where the author demonstrates the relation between descriptive drawing and mnemonic recollection. In the case of architectural drawing, the primacy of memory over perception is all the more evident since the represented object does not imitate a pre-existent model. With reference to Howard Gardner’s Frames of mind, I will also discuss what are the specific forms of memory at play in the elaboration and comprehension architectural drawing. In the last section of the paper, I will consider the role of memory in John Hejduk’s drawings, focusing on the representation of time in his project for the 13 Watchtowers of Cannaregio. Filippo Maria Doria is an architect. He holds a MSc. in architecture (TU Delft) and a BSc. in building architecture (Politecnico di Milano). His work has been recognized in international completions such as: Terraventure research completion in 2009 (1st prize), Solar Decathlon 2012 (finalist) and Netherlands Archiprix 2014 (1st prize). In 2015 he was awarded with the Hunter Douglas Award for the world’s best graduation projects in architecture. In 2009, he worked as research assistant for the Department of Landscape Architecture, TU Delft. In 2013-2015, he worked for Import/Export Architecture, an Antwerp-based office for architecture and urban design. In December 2014, He started a PhD at the Department of Architecture of the TU Delft. His research focuses on representation theory and its implication for architectural design. Since then, he co-authored the second issue of Modi Operandi, to be published by Architectura and Natura Press.

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João Almeida e Silva University of Porto joaocasilva@gmail.com

The semiotics of the kitchen

Hans Robert Jauss, in Aesthetics of Reception (1964), considers the work of art as a system defined by production, communication and reception. This triangle weaves a dialectical relationship between author, work and user, and moves the act of fruition for two main areas: the one implied by the work itself and the one which is interpreted by the user (and its context). Since the moment the work is reinterpreted and reproduced (Benjamin, 1936) - and considering that architecture has always been correlated with media (Carpo, 2001) - we can assign to the work, now reproduction (Colomina, 1988), an important role in mediation (sometimes even interference) between the author and user (receptor) via the work's manipulation in relation to its original purpose.

From the variety of reproduction modes, we will study those that relate to the architectural work, specifically the ads published in architectural specialized magazines, those that constitute, in a semiotic way, a decisive mechanism on creation and diffusion of style. With starting point in Greimas and Courtés (1979), we will trace an overview of the advertisements published on magazine Arquitectura between 1958 and 1988, and we will take the kitchen (specifically its components, types and protagonists) as an example. We will make a semiotic analysis of the images of domesticity that constitute them, referring the proposed models and underlying lifestyle. On the one hand, we will demonstrate that the kitchens ‘exposed’ by the ads follow a clear intention on create desire in the observer-user (here, also consumer) through the systematic use of a narrative anchored in the promise of an ‘unavoidable happiness’; on the other, we will find that, therefore, these ads have played a unique role in the dissemination of architectural models, particularly in terms of the interpretation of style and aspirations of an entire population. This way, we will check that advertising is a mechanism that decisively acts in the intermediation between production (the author) and reception (the observer-user). João Almeida e Silva (Tondela, 1980), architect (FAUP, 2005) and PhD student (FAUP, since 2012), develops thesis on the theme ‘Publicidade revista 1946-1988: interferências entre publicidade e arquitectura’ under supervision of Prof. Manuel Graça Dias. Has published regularly the results of his research in several architectural magazines (Arq/a, Artecapital, Resdomus or Passagens) and had won a research grant to study the japanese domestic spaces (Fundação Oriente, 2013). Has also worked with several architectural offices (Balonas Menano S.A., Porto, 2006-2012; Sou Fujimoto Architects, Tokyo, 2013) and has been awarded with first prize on the contest Tec-Empreende to develop a prototype on ‘liveable advertising’ (Anje/Inesc, 2011-2013).

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Mateja Kurir Independent researcher mateja.kurir@gmail.com

On home (das Heim) in Heidegger’s philosophy

The question of home (das Heim) can be seen as one of the privileged questions in Martin Heidegger’s philosophy. I will try to open and discuss the topic of home through a specific threshold, through a particular point of view, that could bring some new light into the understanding of Heidegger’s perception of home and could possibly extend the predominant reading of his concept of dwelling and of architecture itself. This specific point of view is the concept of das Unheimliche, usually translated to English as the uncanny and regularly taken by Heidegger as the term for the translation of the Greek word deinon, as it was presented in four of his texts and lectures, namely Being and time (1927), Introduction to Metaphysics (1935), Hölderlin's Hymn ‘The Ister’ (1942) and Building Dwelling Thinking (1951).

To be able to lay down the complexity of the topic, I will attempt to draw a terminological map of Heidegger’s intertwined understanding of the term das Heim. Through an analysis of Heidegger’s understanding of the concept of das Unheimliche in the above mentioned texts, I will try to give an answer to some pertinent questions, such as: What is das Heim in Heidegger’s philosophy? What defines and constitutes home and (un)homely in modernity? And ultimately, can architecture build a home for a man of modernity? Dr. Mateja Kurir is an author, theoretician and project manager. She obtained her PhD ‘Architecture in philosophy; the reflection of architecture as a contemporary art form in the hermeneutic and structuralist philosophy of the twentieth century’ in 2014 at the Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana (Slovenia). In 2015 she was a Visiting Scholar at the Department of Architecture of the University of Leuven (Belgium). Her primary field of interest is the theoretical positioning of architectural modernism in philosophy. She published numerous articles related to architecture and philosophy, concerning also on the theme of das Unheimliche.

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Maki Iisaka Texas A&M University m.saka@tamu.edu

Henri Poincaré and William James in the sensible space of Togo Murano

I will examine the connections between the architecture of the Japanese architect Togo Murano (1891-1984), the philosophical movement of pragmatism, and the development of topology in mathematics.

The beginning of the 20th century witnessed parallel developments in mathematics and philosophy. The mathematician Henri Poincaré was developing a new kind of understanding of continuity that began with an examination of sensible space, setting the foundation of which would later be called algebraic topology. At the same time, the philosopher William James was advancing his ideas about the continuity of experience as a series of temporally contiguous events, which were later incorporated into a philosophy of pragmatism that attempted to understand the world through ‘conceivable effects of a practical kind.’

In Japan, James's philosophy was embraced by the writer Soseki Natsume and the philosopher Kitaro Nishida, and also permeated the literary and intellectual community in the early 1910s through the work of Henry Bergson. I will demonstrate how James adapted Poincaré's mathematical formulation of continuity and how this whole set of ideas is manifest in the work of Murano, who was drawn to the philosophy of pragmatism on multiple fronts: through his travel to the United States in the 1920s and 1930s, through the work of the philosophers Bergson and Odo Tanaka (who studied with John Dewey), and in his professional experiences as a commercial architect. Examples to be discussed include the Chiyoda Insurance Headquarters (1966) and the Nissay Theatre (1963), which exhibit flexible compositional qualities based on an intuitive engagement with space, suggesting that non-Cartesian topological composition naturally arises from the pragmatist approach to design. Maki Iisaka is a fourth year PhD student at Texas A&M University. Her dissertation focuses on the post-war work of the Japanese architect Togo Murano. She is interested in how Murano's often confounding ideas and methods has been received in Japan and abroad, and how this reception can be framed in relation to the issues of representation, tradition, commercialization, and architectural discourse. In September 2014, she presented part of her work at the Ponja-Genkon 10th anniversary symposium organized by the Japan Society and New York University. She has a master's degree in mathematics from University of Toronto, Canada.

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Marissa Lindquist Queensland University of Technology m.lindquist@qut.edu.au

The Sublime, Affective Process + Architectural Production

A year before Kate Nesbitt’s Theorising a New Agenda For Architecture (1996), the author penned a chapter on the significance of the sublime and its contribution to post-modern architecture via the uncanny or disturbing through the theories of Vidler and Eisenman (Nesbit, 1995). Twenty years on, we see its on-going presence within the contemporary works of artists Kapoor, Ellison and Viola. Eisenmann and Libeskind aside, explicit reference to the Sublime whether through architectural praxis or theory appears to have been trumped by ecological derivatives and associated transactions, as catalyst for new architecture and architectural thinking.

For Edmund Burke (1757), the Sublime was seen as a leading, an overpowering of self to a state of intense self-presence, often leading to a state of otherness. To experience the sublime is to experience affect, physiologically over-whelming the mental faculties through intensities of astonishment, terror, obscurity, magnificence, and reverence. Key here is Burke’s articulation of the stages of the sublime encounter, particularly so, its implications for the process of production which architectural theorists appear to have overstepped in their valorisation of the sublime object.

This paper seeks to resituate the sublime within the context of architectural production. Through concepts such as material thinking, bodies and making strange, the paper explores a shift in focus toward affective processes traced from Burke’s inquiry. Rather than proposing strategies solely for affect within the work itself, the focus lies upon the designing experience, where blockage and desirous forces are critical partners in the process of production, as revealed through recent studio programs entitled Strange Space. Marissa Lindquist is an award winning architect with over 10 years practice experience and lecturer at the School of Design, Queensland University of Technology. In 2008 she was awarded the Dulux Study Tour for emerging architects in Australia. She formed part of the editorial team for the international IDEA Symposium [2010] entitled Interior Spaces in Other Places, Brisbane, Australia, and is recognised for her creative practice through publication within the 2012 Venice Biennale Australian Pavilion Catalogue. Marissa is currently undertaking her PhD focusing upon neuro-imaging, architecture and emotion, with specific interest in the visually impaired. Her teaching practice dwells on the margins of interiority, perception and craft making. She sits on the Executive for the Design and Emotion Society, Australian Chapter.

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Nuno Crespo New University of Lisbon nunoccrespo@fcsh.unl.pt

Rational and irrational in architecture. The Wittgenstein House and the poetic possibility of architecture

There can be identified two primal forces or tendencies in thinking / doing architecture. One relates to a will-to-design or, if one prefers, a will-to-order. It is an normalizing idea that expresses a desire-of-object and demands from architecture a strict and rigorous rationality that denies any possibility of chance, error or deviation from original rational plans. The other force or tendency involves an understanding of architecture as a response to the reality with which it has always to negotiate and to which design must always conform and adapt. Here the architecture gesture opens itself to the manifold possibilities that reality presents and that demand attention. What happens is not only the necessary openness of the architecture project to the contingent materialist reality, but also the question about it’s poetic possibility, ie., how can we speak of a poetics of architecture when its all about responding to reality? The conflict between these two forces is founder of architecture as we know it and its articulation allows to discuss and identify key aspects of contemporary architecture production. This discussion is brilliantly inaugurated by Jan Turnovski that takes the Wittgenstein’s House as the most brilliant example of the discussion here at stake.

In this conference I intend not only to go back to this discussion highlighting its main aspects, but also to contextualize it in Wittgenstein’s definition of architecture and showing how Wittgenstein’s philosophy and work as an architect allows to access the core issues of the relation between not only between architecture and philosophy (cf. Architecture is like Philosophy, he states), but also ethics and aesthetics. The purpose is not to establish an illustration relation between philosophical reflection and architecture design process, but to show how Wittgenstein philosophy allows to spot some essential key elements that help building a synoptic view of contemporary architecture production. Which, as we will be able to see trough a set of examples, cannot be reduced to a group of styles, schools or normalizing tendencies, but is characterized by individual attitudes and exemplary cases requiring new analysis methods and vocabularies. Nuno Crespo (b. Lisbon, 1975) studied philosophy and aesthetics at Lisbon New University. Currently is associated researcher at Instituto de História da Arte FCSH/UNL where he coordinates a research group about art, criticism and politics. He teaches art theory and aesthetics at Lisbon New University and is invited lecturer at Art College of Coimbra University. His current research interests are the relations between architecture, art, philosophy and criticism. Besides the academic career he works as free lance art critic and art and architecture curator.

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Frederike Lausch Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main lausch@kunst.uni-frankfurt.de

Changing the Architectonic of Philosophy. Rajchman's Interest in Folded Architecture

‘The rise of Deleuze [in architecture] was not a natural phenomenon, but an institutionally structured one,’ writes Karen Burns in regard of the influence of Anyone Corporation in the ‘Deleuze-after-Derrida’ narrative in architectural history. In all the major publications about the concept of ‘folding’ in architecture the philosopher John Rajchman, member in the editorial board of ANY magazine, appears as a kind of facilitator expediting the relationship between architecture and philosophy. What is his interest in folded architecture? I will argue that he believes in an enhancement of philosophy through a “new” architecture, as if both of them working together might change the architectonic of our thinking and thereby philosophical working and writing.

According to Frederik Stjernfelt there is no self-liberation from metaphors of architecture in science, so what Rajchman tries is not to release but to renew the architectonic of philosophy, which he identifies with a rigid Kantian schematism. Through ‘provisional points of contact and alliance’ architectural and philosophical constructions could speak together a ‘new and foreign idiom no longer belonging to the recognized languages of either.’ Then, once the architectonic becomes ‘looser, more flexible, less complete, more irregular, a free plan in which things hang together without yet being held in place,’ it will effect the philosophical field so that the questions of how to construct a work or a life can acquire new shapes.

Thus the story of architecture and philosophy connected via sharing the topic of ‘folding’ during the 1990s is not necessarily the one of architects appropriating Deleuze’s philosophy for formal or organisational innovation, but also one which incorporates the actions and intentions of philosophers alike. Frederike Lausch studied Architecture at the Bauhaus-University in Weimar/Germany from 2007 to 2014 including a study abroad at the Middle-East-Technical-University in Ankara/Turkey. From 2011 to 2012 she studied Philosophy at the Friedrich-Schiller-University in Jena/Germany. Currently she is a PhD student in the DFG-research group on ‘Media and Mimesis’ and working as a research assistant at the Art History Department of the Goethe-University in Frankfurt am Main. This year she published her Master’s thesis on biographies of architects from the former German Democratic Republic. She was editor-in-charge for HORIZONTE – Journal for Architectural Discourse in 2013.

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Pedro Ferrão University of Lisbon pedroferrao@campus.ul.pt

Meaning in architecture

Louis Sullivan’s dictum that ‘form ever follows function’ has been taken as normative, and thus to mean that whatever form a given building will have must be determined by the function it is meant to serve. From such an understanding of the phrase the conclusion was drawn that ornaments are not to be permitted in a sound construction of whatever kind, for the very simple reason that an ornament has no function. To draw this conclusion we are not allowed, not only because this is a piece of invalid reasoning, but also because Sullivan himself had ample use for ornament.

I wish to suggest that whether the phrase was to be taken as normative or descriptive is of absolutely no importance. I shall argue that what Sullivan is talking about is not a matter of how buildings are or should be built, but of how buildings are supposed to mean, that is, how it is that a building can be said to have a meaning: it is not a dictum about the process of building, but about the process of understanding any architectonical structure.

This being satisfactorily, I hope, argued for, I shall then try to show that Sullivan is wrong: first, because form and function are not the only attributes of a building to be taken into account, for an account of intentions (of the architect and the client(s)) is also required; and secondly, because none of these needs have pride of place, the elements that confer meaning to a building are to be taken ‘as a corporate body,’ to borrow Quine’s phrase − the meaning of a building will be the answer to the question, ‘Why this form for that function?,’ and that answer will yield the description of an intention. This is what makes architecture an art. Graduate student at the Programme in Literary Theory of the Faculty of Letters of the University of Lisbon.

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Ricardo Miguel LanCog Group, Center of Philosophy of the University of Lisbon ricardomiguel@campus.ul.pt

An autonomist view on the ethical criticism of architecture

It is a fact that there is ethical criticism about art. Art critics, the general public and even artists themselves point out moral flaws in artworks while evaluating them. Philosophers, however, have maintained a hot debate on the meaning of such criticism. This debate can be understood as a disagreement about the kind of relation between the artistic value of artworks and their eventual moral value. While some claim that moral value can contribute to artistic value (moralism), others claim that there cannot be such a contribution (autonomism). Since at least some works of architecture are artworks, that debate also extends to architecture (though the debate can still be meaningful about non artistic works). A moderate moralist view claims that some works of architecture have moral flaws/merits that bear on their artistic evaluation. In an apparently promising version, the contention is that some moral flaws/merits are aesthetically relevant. In this paper I argue for an autonomist view. I start by distinguishing the views in debate, pointing out a greater theoretical simplicity of autonomism and explaining why the burden of proof is on the moralist side. Then I argue that the apparently promising version of moderate moralism either begs the question against autonomism or is compatible with it. On one hand, an intimate relationship between moral value and artistic value clouds the distinction between moral and aesthetic properties; on the other, the autonomist can accept that those properties which are simultaneously moral and aesthetic bear on the artistic evaluation of artworks but not qua moral value. That is, they do not count as moral properties but as aesthetic ones. Ricardo finished is Mestrado em Ensino de Filosofia (Master of Arts in Teaching Philosophy) with a report in which he analyses the option of teaching aristotelian logic or propositional logic in portuguese secondary education of philosophy. His aim was to claim that this option is not pedagogically irrelevant and that teachers should opt to teach propositional logic. He is mostly interested in ethics, philosophy of logic and philosophy of mathematics. He is now pursuing his PhD (at ULisboa) with a topic concerned with the moral status of nonhuman animals and the problem of replaceability.

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Lena Galanopoulou National Technical University of Athens galanopoulou.lena@gmail.com

‘I’m a cage in search of a bird’ / architectural intention and guilt

This lecture is a commentary on the freedom of the architect and human in general, in relation to architecture. Architecture, as a social derivative, has social responsibility. And society, as much as responsibility, enforces commitments. As part of the treatise, self-commitment is considered to be the only possible commitment. That being said, the analysis comes from the liability a human designer or user has, as part of a ‘whole’, towards the ‘whole’ which carries him. The purpose is not the quest for the ‘perfect liability’, but the evaluation of any responsibility that comes off as motivational or inhibiting power, as intention or guilt. The subject is approached by the words of Franz Kafka: ‘I am a cage in search of a bird’, which occurs as a starting line. This phrase operates as a matrix that generates philosophical questions, architecturally oriented. Guided by the trimer of the proposal (the ‘cage’, the ‘in search’ and the ‘bird’), an alternative reading of the ‘architectural phrase’ and of its components, is being provided. The ‘cage’ recommends the architectural piece, the ‘in search’, the pursuit of a shelter and the ‘bird’, the user. Beginning with that phrase, but with alternative interpretations, three different sequels are given. Named ‘punishments’ because they embody the guilt from which the architect is unable to run, under the pressure of the responsibility he is carrying. The different possible outcomes lay the philosophical groundwork for determining the intention and the point from which it becomes a guilt. Since intention and guilt are internal processes, analysis is personified and is more of a guess than a treaty. More so, it inevitably concerns personal architectural (if not) experiences and recordings. This study is a reading of intentions and guilt inherited by Modernism and its early contradiction to the postmodernism of today. It’s also a general conjecture about the way the sense of responsibility influences the design process over time. It is a contemporary perspective on the philosophy and ideology of the 20th century that still affects the design and ways of habitation among other things. Lena Galanopoulou is working on her master in Architecture at National Technical University of Athens (NTUA). Her theoretical thesis concern primarily freedom and its relation to architecture. Her research is focused on how architecture can embody timeless philosophical questions. During her studies she writes articles submitted in national papers. The right to the city and the ways the citizen can reclaim the public space are themes of exceptional interest and consist a subject of study for the years to come. In March 2015 she presented her thesis at NTUA with excellence. Beyond the academic walls, she has worked in architectural offices and participated in several competitions.

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José Carlos Cardoso University of Évora cardos.josecarlos@gmail.com

A common blind spot

Take seriously the conjunction from Philosophy and Architecture requires us to think from there what is unthought in the reciprocal movement of their becoming and force us to think.

In this paper we will try to show, in order to sketch what could be termed as a common blind spot, a particular and quite subterranean lineage of the thought of space (and its corresponding space of thought) from Kant to Deleuze through Heidegger. In ‘Von dem ersten Unterschiedes der Gegenden im Raume’, from 1768, Kant debates, before the gestalt switch of the Dissertatio, the question of absolute space arguing that ‘to generate the first ground of the concept of regions in space’ we must chart the relations of the space to the intersection angles of our body. The region, Gegend, consists in the map of relations of the situations system to the absolute space. Heidegger think the same concept of region, using the same word, from Sein und Zeit to Die Kunst und der Raum, as a network of placements and orientations, come-and-go [spazieren] between space and body, performing the place in-between [topos], spacing [das räumen] an encounter. Deleuze receives and transforms this problem, in order to think this dynamic in his genetic moment, (re)working and creating concepts like the refrain [ritournelle], haecceity and territory.

This architecture of concepts, emerged from an affective cartography, it will help us, as well as some art works peering the same blind spot, to tackle the ultimate question – what it means to orient oneself in space and in thinking? – in a whole new way. José Carlos Cardoso is a researcher, art critic and curator. With a Philosophy degree and a master degree in Contemporary Philosophy, develops a PhD research. International speaker for more than a decade, it has focused on the relations between ontology, art and aesthetics. In 2014 he edited the volume Pessoas e Lugares – Pensar com as práticas artísticas. Um catálogo; in 2015 will come out the volumes Deleuze and the problem of literality, Corpo de Pensamento. Pensar com José Gil, and a special issue of Deleuze Studies entitled The orientation in thinking: Deleuze, before and beyond.

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Ricardo Santos Alexandre ISCTE-University Institute of Lisbon rfsae@iscte-iul.pt

Is space a part of being?: reassessing space through Japanese thought

In this paper I will briefly develop an ontological theory of space based on the interpretation of two concepts in Japanese Philosophy: basho (place) and fudo (milieu), coined by two 20th century Japanese philosophers, Nishida Kitaro and Watsuji Tetsuro, respectively. For this, I will refer - mainly, but not only - to Augustin Berque’s exquisite interpretation of the logic behind fudo and further develop and articulate it with my own interpretation of the logic of basho, in order to help us reassess the way we think about space.

Both concepts derive from a particular way of relating to space in Japanese culture, that is accessible through some aesthetic concepts present in its arts, literature and poetry, that tends to turn the individual, first, towards his surrounding environment, and then, with space acting both reflexively and experientially, to himself. The logic of basho tells us that the subject, to be a subject, must be part of a predicate, or else, he is not a subject at all. The logic behind fudo is that a true awareness of space is not built from thinking about it - since we are already objectifying it and, therefore, understanding ourselves as being detached from it -, but from being in it, experiencing it and letting it act reflexively.

What we can conclude, but most important of all, learn from the articulation and interpretation of these two concepts is that space is certainly more than just a receptacle where human beings exist, move, act, or interact with each other - it can also be thought of, to some extent, as being part of the individual himself. Ricardo Santos Alexandre. BA in Asian Studies (FLUL-UL, Portugal). Currently: MA Anthropology (ISCTE-IUL, Portugal).

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Litao Zhou The University of Sheffield Lzhou11@sheffield.ac.uk

Architectural Heterotopias: Socio-Spatial Practices of Alterity

‘Heterotopia’ is an unintelligible and elusive term in aspects of spaces and architectural practices. This paper will majorly focus on the demonstration of ‘heterotopias of space’ from the position of ‘Alterity’ and spatial practices of otherwise by Spatial Agency as alternative approaches to criticise architecture practices under Chinese both formal and informal urbanism, particular in Chinese urban context.

Firstly, heterotopias will be explored from major philosophers such as Foucault (first introduced heterotopias into philosophy along with power-spatial discourse), Lefebvre (utilised heterotopias as distinctive spatial practices to transform existing dominant power in producing/reproducing spaces), Edward Soja (related heterotopias to the Thirdspace) and Kevin Hetherington (heterotopias were spaces embracing heterogeneous human agents within transformative possibilities to be transgression). Eventually, the properties of spatial heterotopias are transient, contingent, resistant, transgressive, and transformative will be summarised. The article will demonstrate how such properties of spatial heterotopias (intertwined with diasporic power-relations without alienation) can maintain transformative codes within multiple actors’ agents as affect in a certain socio-political context.

Through critical thinking of philosophers’ interpretation of heterotopias, the new definition of heterotopias in spaces will be refined in the architectural and urban domain that has embedded into a socialised, culturalised, urbanised and institutionalised context. Reasons that architectures and spatial physicality can be seen as heterotopias in different periods will be explored in a certain urban or social context. The exploration will be explicated in aspects of socio-power relations in distinct scales and layers impacting the production of space. The case of paradox products of Chinese urban village as informal urbanism produced and managed by multiple landowners and transient migrants in Shenzhen will be expounded. The methodology of ethnography, feminism, agency and mapping will be used to explore hybridity of becoming of subjectivity through various narrative spatial stories. Based on these spatial stories, the paper will excavate controversies in different groups. In addition, ‘Hybridising Subjectivity’ of these groups in spatial heterotopias of transforming will be explored.

In the final part, the ‘turn’ spatial heterotopias to be a critical architecture, based on refined definition, the article will elaborate architecture design process to invent concept of spatial heterotopias from alternative (critical or creative) spatial practices by multiple actors. In addition, essay will demonstrate why it is impractical to from permanent architectural typologies/spaces/programs to theorise architectural heterotopias. In this part, Spatial Agency will be employed as both human and non-human spatial strategy to challenge fixed spatialized codes,

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maintaining or achieving transformative possibilities that involve within heterogeneous and diverse actors’ cooperative productions. B.Arch at Anhui University of Architecture in China (2006-2011). MA in Architecture Design at University of Sheffield, UK (2012-2014). Candidate of PhD by Design at University of Sheffield (2014-). Publication: Two chapters will be published in this year: 1. socio-spatial practices of alterity in Chinese urban villages, at University of Edinburgh, Architecture of Alterity, Cambridge Scholar Publishing; 2. Mapping Subjectivities of Becoming within embedded socio-spatial practices in Gangxia Urban Village, will be published this end of the 2015.

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Maria Mantzari National Technical University of Athens mmantzari@pspa.uoa.gr

Spatial dimensions of the Freudian uncanny

In this paper, I will attempt, reading the essay «Das unheimlich», written by Freud in 1919, to seek the spatial dimensions of the Freudian uncanny. I will examine examples where certain urban experiences may give rise to uncanny feelings. Can the uncanny be considered as the class of frightening spaces that leads us back to what is known and familiar? If we perceive this feeling as the mark of the return of the repressed, which places may trigger us uncanniness?

The first signs of an awareness of the uncanny within the architecture, displayed through the field of literature in a series of short stories written by Edgar Allen Poe and ETA Hoffmann and continued from the 19th and early 20th century when the city turns into a metropolis and the person subject to estranged metropolitan mass, till its postmodern version.

Beginning with a lexicographical approach of the Greek term ανοίκειο so as to understand its semantic field, this paper continues with the analysis of castration complex, fear of death and the mirror stage throughout specific spatial constructions. I focus my study on ruins, digital architecture and certain building examples designed by Bernard Tschumi, Coop Himmelblau and Daniel Libeskind, approaching what we might call the aesthetics of the fearful and the aesthetics of anxiety, hoping to broaden the ways we analyze and understand the world we live. Maria C. Mantzari is currently a phd student in the National Technical University of Athens – School of Architecture (GR) focusing on habitat’s Greek history during the 20th century. Her previous academic training in Athens and Paris includes three Master degrees on Architectural Engineering, Urban Planning and Spatial theory. She has attended various workshops, conferences and seminars covering issues of her main research interest including urban sociology, forms of emancipating spatial practices and urban communing. The last three years she works as a curator of public programs in the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.

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Madeleine Kennedy Newcastle University madeleine.jessica.kennedy@gmail.com

Exhibitions as Philosophy

Many art exhibitions seek to contend with philosophical questions or concerns, most often through a written narrative illustrated by the art objects on display. Another more interesting approach, however, is to use the inherently spatial medium of the exhibition to communicate philosophical ideas through sensory means. In 1985 the philosopher Jean Francois Lyotard curated an exhibition with just that intention, creating minutely arranged scenographic spaces which embodied his postmodern analysis of the human condition. Significantly Lyotard did not consider the exhibition an illustration of his written philosophy but as a self-sufficient work of philosophy in itself. Entitled Les Immateriaux, that exhibition has now prompted the question whether there may be more exhibitions which have set out, whether explicitly or not, to present a work of philosophy through the immersive vehicle of exhibitions. Using Jean Francois Lyotard’s 1985 exhibition as a reference point, this paper uses a handful of case studies to explore the possibility that exhibitions can be works of philosophy. Further, it asks what the criteria should be to distinguish exhibitions as works of philosophy from exhibitions about philosophy, and posits a possible answer: that an exhibition can only be a work of philosophy in itself when it is the design of the space, rather than any written content, which is utilised as the main method of communication. I received my MA in Curating the Art Museum from The Courtauld Institute of Art, and my MA in Art History and Philosophy from The University of St Andrews. I am an associate staff member at Newcastle University, where my role as Keeper of Art at Hatton Gallery enables me to curate exhibitions which communicate significant ideas and pose problems to the viewer in a manner akin to the modes of thinking I learned whilst studying philosophy. My writing has recently been published in Stedelijk Studies, and I have articles forthcoming in the journals Architectural Research Quarterly and Immediations.

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Matías García Rodríguez Santiago de Compostela University matias.garcia.rodriguez@usc.es

What Does It Mean to Have an Architectonical ‘Idea’? Chaos, Infinity and Composition in Félix Guattari

Nietzschean post-structuralist aesthetics has conceded a rather important place for architecture, particularly through (and apropos) the work of Félix Guattari. Also, it is probably within this tradition where we could find the most «architectonical», or rather, spatial way of thinking in the context of continental philosophy. In order to properly grasp the sense of what architecture means to the late Guattari (and to Deleuze), thus being able to understand the still radically opened possibilities provided by him both to aesthetics scholars and architects, we should pay attention to:

1) The differences between ‘art’, ‘science’ and ‘philosophy’ in Guattari and Deleuze, their necessary relationship with chaos, and why architecture is here singularly relevant.

2) The dialectics between chaos and infinity within architecture, and the relevance of the notions of ‘consistence’, ‘reference’, ‘composition’, and the couple percept-affect.

3) The topology of the concept as ‘hétérogenèse’, and the intimate correlation between architectural ideas and «events» (the concept as a ‘constellation d’un événement à venir’), as well as between concepts in general and their «plan d’immanence».

4) The inseparableness of architecture and urbanism in Guattari’s notions of ‘idea’, art and territory (indeed, what does it mean to think within architecture?).

In relation to the works of Carlo Scarpa and Shin Takamatsu (both analyzed by Guattari) as well as others explicitly influenced by Guattari-Deleuze, such as Toyo Ito, Kazuyo Sejima, or even Rem Koolhaas, we will thus synthetize Guattari’s contribution to the aesthetics of architecture, as well as outline its relevance for both current Philosophy and Architecture. Matías García Rodríguez is a member of the Department of History of Art at the University of Santiago de Compostela. MA in History of Art (2012), he is currently a PhD student in Philosophy with a thesis on the aesthetics of Félix Guattari. His interests revolve around the links between Aesthetics, Politics, and Subjectivity, particularly within the frame of Post-Structuralist discourse, about which he has published various papers (in journals such as Fedro, Ápeiron, or Forma) and gave several presentations at Portugal, Spain, and France.

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Marion Roussel GERPHAU / ENSA Paris La Villette Université Paris 8 roussel.marion@hotmail.fr

Between Terrestrial Maintenance of Bodies and Space Odyssey: The Architectural Relevance of Peter Sloterdijk’s Spheres

Since their publication, the three volumes of Peter Sloterdijk Spheres have become a major source of reflection for architectural theorists. The question of the explicitation of inhabitation, or concepts such as anthropogene, absolute and atmospheric islands are invoked to proceed to a reading of the housing crisis that is shaking our disenchanted (post)modernity. As for us, we would like to propose to link Sloterdijk thinking as it appears in Sphere with digital architecture. To our knowledge, this subject has not yet been processed. Nevertheless, Sloterdijk’s three volumes seem to offer a toolbox as well as particularly productive analysis paths to think both the representations conveyed by digital architecture and the discourses that surround its productions. In particular, the philosopher’s statement that architecture, as a tool to reconfigure the human sojourn on Earth, establishes ‘islands’ similar to waterproof suits, inhabitations similar to space capsules – separating us from an exterior that seems toxic – is very relevant with American architect Greg Lynn blobs, or Zaha Hadid architecture.

By virtue of their strange, spiky, complex, biomorphic or futuristic forms, their often smooth and shiny textures, and the lack of dialogue with their implantation sites that they often exhibit, these architectures are frequently described as spaceships landed on Earth. Beyond this mainly formal observation, we propose to consider the ‘journey’ of this space travel theme, since its emergence in the 1960’s and 1970’s experimental architecture to nowadays digital architecture, from the tracks offered by Sloterdijk. While the cosmos broke out, while nothing seems to retain us on the ground anymore, have we not to deal here with a story of exile, nomadism, attempted return, a story about a rebuilding of a world in which we could inhabit again as humans? Architect graduated from the School of Architecture of Normandy (ENSAN). Post-Master degree in architecture and philosophy (ENSAPLV). PhD Candidate in Architecture at GERPHAU (ENSAPLV / University of Paris 8). Last publications: Forthcoming. Life and Death of Cyberspace, or When Technology Grabs a Cyberpunk Novel. In G. N. Vlahakis, K. Tampakis, Science & Literature. Forthcoming. De l’androïde à l’avatar: chairs étranges du cinéma de science-fiction au XXe siècle. In S. Walon, J. Bloch, B. Flores, Les représentations troublées des corps au cinéma. Paris: L'Harmattan. 2014. Devenir-liquide, devenir-alien. Des devenirs-autres des corps dans l’architecture de Marcos Novak. Le Philotope, 10, pp.149-153.

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Céline Bodart GERPHAU / ENSA Paris La Villette Université Paris 8 / Université de Liège bodart.celine@live.fr

The Twelfth Camel and the Legacy of the Deconstruction in Architectural Practices

Most of recent anthologies on architectural theory concede that the encounter between architects and the derridean philosophy of deconstruction has marked a kind of turning point in our architectural practices. Yet this specific episode of our late history seem still provoke a floating discomfort in the French-speaking part of the contemporary architectural debate. It is as if no one could assume what this disciplinary crossing of the mid-eighties both has produced and has not succeeded in producing. So now, thirty years later, how to be the architectural heirs of a theoretical legacy which precisely cannot be bequeathed as such?

Through the so-called fable of “The Twelfth Camel” (V.Despret), my research work is to construct a sort of 'twelfth camel' for the French architectural discourse in order to help it accepting the heritage of its history. The twelfth camel here proposed would be a book; the inedit translation of Mark Wigley's essay, “The Architecture of Deconstruction: Derrida's Haunt”. But forced exorcism of the Derrida's haunt twenty-five years later by this translation is not to constitute an archive of what the deconstruction has been for architecture. Rather, the proper concern of that project is precisely to refresh the narrative power of such a meeting. It is an artefact from which new ways to inherit this historical turning of architectural theory can be built.

Within the framework of the conference, this ongoing research would be presented through its methodological invention issued from “The Twelfth Camel”, and be displayed the first conditions of existence given to it through a large spectrum of different forms. Considering theory as a living material for creation, it would not be a matter of theorizing a reflexive practice but stating this theoretical approach as an architectural practice. Céline Bodart is an architect; post-master in 'Architecture and Philosophy' (ENSA Paris La Villette); graduated of an Experimental Program in Arts and Politics, Sciences Po Paris (dir. B.Latour and V.Pihet) in 2014. She is a PhD candidate in Architecture at University of Paris8 and at University of Liège since 2012. Working at the interface between philosophy and architecture, her doctoral research focuses on a specific episode of recent architectural history marked by the crossover of these two practices under the influence of the derridean deconstruction. She actually serves as a research assistant in Gerphau-Lab. (UMR-CNRS 7218 Lavue).

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Vicente Esteban Medina Alfonso X University d31251@hotmail.com

The Construction of Philosophical Thought Deconstructivist. Jacques Derrida and Architects: The Circle of MoMA,

Peter Eisenman and Bernard Tschumi

The thought of Jacques Derrida, deconstruction, has left traces beyond their discipline, has crossed the philosophical corpus and has inseminated subjects as Food, Fashion, or other more academic, as Politics and Law.

Between disciplines inseminated by the thought of Derrida are highlighted called Mechanical Arts: Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. But beyond establishing links with painters like Adami and Titus-Carmel, and its influiencia in undecidable sculptures by Gordon Matta-Clark, Derrida and deconstruction he has had great impact on the Architecture.

The interest by deconstruction in Architecture generated numerous meetings and written, leading to the relevant exposure Deconstructivist Architecture, organized in 1988 at the MoMA in New York. The exhibition included works from seven studies of architects: Frank Gehry, Daniel Libeskind, Rem Koolhaas, Peter Eisenman, Zaha Hadid, Coop Himmelb(l)au and Bernard Tschumi. From this exhibition, his works were labeled Deconstructivist Architecture, and them, The Circle of MoMA. However, of these architects, only Tschumi and Eisenman maintained contact with Derrida.

The competition of the Parc de la Villette in Paris linked to Derrida with Tschumi and Eisenman. This relationships intensified the receipt of the philosopher in the Architecture, making Derrida published his writings Why Eisenman Writes Such Good Books?, A Letter to Peter Eisenman, The Philosopher and Architects, Intertextuality and Metaphor, Changes of Scale, or together publication Choral Work.

This paper aims to clarify and develop above underlined links between the thought of Derrida and Architecture, and analyse how they have expressed such philosophical approaches the proposals of these architects. Vicente Esteban Medina is an Architect by the Univ. Nacional de Tucumán, PhD-Architect by the Univ. Politécnica de Madrid, Master in Philosophy by the Univ. Nacional de Educación a distancia, and PhD-Philosophy by the Univ. Complutense de Madrid. His background ranges between architecture and philosophy and focuses its research on the deconstruction and the works of Jacques Derrida, point of contact established between both disciplines. At the same time, he teaches and lectures on Argentine and Spanish universities.

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authors’ names (in order of presentation)

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Filipa Afonso 8 Luís Santiago Baptista 9 Inês Moreira 11 Carlos Jacques 12 Dirk-Michael Hennrich 15 Moirika Reker 16 Sandra Escobar 17 Victor Gonçalves 18 Luciana Fornari Colombo 20 Lidia Gasperoni 21 André Patrão 22 Mahroo Moosavi 23 Tamanna Ahmed 24 Khuat Tan Hung 25 Philippe Zourgane 26 Ramona Costea 28 Aleksandra Paradowska 29 Emilia Jarosova 30 Philipp Kampschroer 31 Ana Luiza Nobre 32 Fernando Curiel Gámez 33 Natalia Solano-Meza 34 Isabella Moretti 35 Danilo Manca 36 Clemens Nocker / Clara Archibugi 37 Andrew P. Steen 38 María Rivo-Vázquez 39 Alexandra Areia 40 Giorgio Ponzo 41 Susana Ventura 42 Teresa Lousa 43 Lucy Elvis 44 Filippo Maria Doria 45 João Almeida e Silva 46 Mateja Kurir 47 Maki Iisaka 48

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Marissa Lindquist 49 Nuno Crespo 50 Frederike Lausch 51 Pedro Ferrão 52 Ricardo Miguel 53 Lena Galanopoulou 54 José Carlos Cardoso 55 Ricardo Santos Alexandre 56 Litao Zhou 57 Maria Mantzari 59 Madeleine Kennedy 60 Matías García Rodríguez 61 Marion Roussel 62 Céline Bodart 63 Vicente Esteban Medina 64

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authors’ names (in alphabetical order)

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Aleksandra Paradowska 29 Alexandra Areia 40 Ana Luiza Nobre 32 André Patrão 22 Andrew P. Steen 38 Carlos Jacques 12 Céline Bodart 63 Clemens Nocker / Clara Archibugi 37 Danilo Manca 36 Dirk-Michael Hennrich 15 Emilia Jarosova 30 Fernando Curiel Gámez 33 Filipa Afonso 8 Filippo Maria Doria 45 Frederike Lausch 51 Giorgio Ponzo 41 Inês Moreira 11 Isabella Moretti 35 João Almeida e Silva 46 José Carlos Cardoso 55 Khuat Tan Hung 25 Lena Galanopoulou 54 Lidia Gasperoni 21 Litao Zhou 57 Luciana Fornari Colombo 20 Lucy Elvis 44 Luís Santiago Baptista 9 Madeleine Kennedy 60 Mahroo Moosavi 23 Maki Iisaka 48 Maria Mantzari 59 María Rivo-Vázquez 39 Marion Roussel 62 Marissa Lindquist 49 Mateja Kurir 47 Matías García Rodríguez 61

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Moirika Reker 16 Natalia Solano-Meza 34 Nuno Crespo 50 Pedro Ferrão 52 Philipp Kampschroer 31 Philippe Zourgane 26 Ramona Costea 28 Ricardo Miguel 53 Ricardo Santos Alexandre 56 Sandra Escobar 17 Susana Ventura 42 Tamanna Ahmed 24 Teresa Lousa 43 Vicente Esteban Medina 64 Victor Gonçalves 18