bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Experimental and numerical investigation of an interlocking system out of osteomorphic cast glass components
Authors: Oikonomopoulou Faidra
Published: November 2023

The previous chapter concluded that blocks following an osteomorphic geometry are the most promising in respect to the principles of interlocking and glass casting. Moreover, interlayers of the polyurethane (PU) family are considered the most suitable for a building application, without compromising the transparency of the resulting structure. Based on these findings, this chapter aims at investigating the structural behaviour of an interlocking assembly employing osteomorphic blocks and PU as an interlayer. Initially, experimental research is conducted in different PU interlayers available in the market, aiming on finding one that fulfils the established design criteria and mechanical properties, as discussed in chapter 7.6. Different readily available two-component PU interlayers, with a Shore Hardness ranging between 60A – 80A, are cast to follow the osteomorphic interlocking geometry and are tested under static compressive load between two half osteomorphic kiln-cast glass blocks in series of 3 specimens and in 2 different thicknesses (3mm and 6mm). The results suggest that the tearing strength of the interlayer is as important as its Shore Hardness; whereas the geometry of the interlocking form can further influence the overall resistance of the assembly against tearing. They also highlight that insufficient contact (mismatch) of the interlayer with the glass blocks, due to dimensional deviations, can lead to the eventual failure of the assembly even under static load due to peak stresses that are further increased by the lateral stresses occurring due to the creep of the interlayer. From the examined interlayers, PU with a shore hardness between 70A – 80A, are considered as the most suitable for the further experimental validation of the assembly. Following, to investigate the influence of the interlocking mechanism to the structural behaviour of the proposed Thus, to further explore the influence of the most crucial geometrical aspects of the interlocking mechanism, namely the height and amplitude of the glass components, to the overall structural performance under shear a numerical model65 is made. In accordance with the output of the experimental validation, here an osteomorphic block with multiple locks is tested, considering a 4 mm thick 70A PU interlayer. The results of the numerical model indicate that bricks of reduced height are more susceptible to failure by bending, whereas with taller brick variants shear lock failure is more critical. It is also confirmed that an increased amplitude of the interlock can be beneficial as it leads to an increased shear capacity and lower uplifting effects. It is also shown that specimens with increased height reach the failure stress limit with considerably smaller deformations, thus, requiring a higher manufacturing precision.
Conclusions
Authors: Oikonomopoulou Faidra
Published: November 2023

This dissertation aims to explore the possibilities and constraints of employing cast glass for structural, self-supporting applications in architecture. This chapter summarizes and discusses the main outcomes of the dissertation. Initially, responses to the sub-research questions are given, presenting their particular findings. Based on the latter, a comprehensive answer to the main research question driving the research project is given. Recommendations for further developments in the field are given in Chapter 10.
Mitigating the Risks in Energy Retrofits of Residential Buildings in China
Authors: Jia Ling
Published: November 2023

To speed up residential energy retrofitting in the Hot Summer and Cold Winter(HSCW) zone, the barriers to retrofitting projects need elimination. Energy retrofitting contributes to improving building quality and living comfort, but has not been accepted by the public. It stems from poor project performance in quality, time, costs, etc. The risk is an essential factor hindering such project objectives and project success. Residential energy retrofitting in China is exposed to various risks due to uncertainties regarding finance, organization, coordination, technology, etc. This thesis thus aims to deepen the understanding of risks in the whole process of residential energy retrofitting to smoothen its implementation and develop risk mitigation strategies for the HSCW climate zone of China. The thesis adopts Transaction Costs Theory (TCT) to identify the risks in the whole process of project implementation and assesses the importance of these risks in both objective and subjective aspects. Given the importance of homeowners-related risks and the key role of the government in retrofitting projects, this research develops s series of develop strategies for risk mitigation from the viewpoints of both homeowners and the government. The thesis contributes to the body of knowledge by conducting a systematic exploration of risks in retrofitting projects. In terms of the practical contributions, it does not only enable project managers to recognize the priority of project risks, but also help the government tackle these issues at its source for promotion of residential energy retrofitting.
Understanding the decision-making process in homeowner energy retrofits
Authors: Ebrahimigharehbaghi Shima
Published: November 2023

In 2020, owner-occupied housing accounted for 57% of the housing stock in the Netherlands. Homeowners are fully responsible for the implementation of energy retrofits. Moreover, the processes of energy retrofitting are complex and homeowners face problems such as finding financial support, reliable information and contractors. The complexity of implementing energy retrofits may discourage homeowners from continuing the process and achieving the expected benefits. Behavioural aspects and transaction costs (TC) are among the most important factors influencing consumer decision-making processes. Behavioural factors primarily illustrate a range of personal, contextual, and external factors that influence the decision-making process of homeowners. These include cognitive awareness and biases, attitudes and beliefs, experience and skills, homeowner characteristics, sociodemographic characteristics, property characteristics, and the behaviour of others. TC are any hidden costs that influence decision making but are not included in the direct physical costs of renovation services and products. This dissertation developed an integrated framework of behavioural factors and TC that impede the decisionmaking process for energy retrofits. Key findings include (1) the significant importance of behavioural factors and TC barriers. (2) the behavioural factors are particularly important in the early stages of energy retrofits and the TC barriers after the final decision. (3) the importance of behavioural factors and TC barriers differs according to the type of energy retrofit and non-energy retrofit. (4) Accounting for cognitive biases significantly improves the prediction of households' actual decisions about energy retrofits. This modelling is more accurate than the model that assumes households make rational decisions.
Urban Scenes of a Port City
Authors: Tanış Fatma
Published: November 2023

This dissertation is an invitation to the reader to explore Güzel İzmir / Beautiful İzmir in Turkey. Through three different semi-fictional narratives, it aims to draw attention to specific and singular spaces as they were recorded and remembered through old postcards, black and white photographs, stories, and written travelogues in the past centuries and decades. Thus, it wants to discuss the specificity of an eastern Mediterranean port city by addressing it on eye-level through the experiences of a wanderer. By acknowledging the important role of narratives in building an image of the city, this doctoral research proposes that developing a particular narrative writing method may help to re-establish emotional connections between present-day inhabitants of port cities and their environments. It offers an alternative way of writing and an unconventional reading of the urban and architectural history of İzmir to revive socio-spatial practices by writing narratives of Beautiful İzmir.
Het handschrift van L.P. Roodbaard
Authors: van der Laan-Meijer Els
Published: November 2023

Het oeuvre van de tuin- en landschapsarchitect Lucas Pieters Roodbaard (1782-1851) is toonaangevend voor de Noord-Nederlandse landschapsparken uit de eerste helft van de 19de eeuw. Zijn oeuvre is te verdelen in drie categorieën: openbare wandelparken, landschapsparken bij buitenplaatsen en landschapstuinen bij (stads) villa’s. Aan de hand van ruimtelijk architectonisch onderzoek is een schat aan oorspronkelijke plantekeningen uitgebreid gedocumenteerd en geanalyseerd om zo tot de kern van de ontwerpmethode van Roodbaard te komen. Daarmee is zijn vorminstrumentarium, ook wel de ‘meetkundige gereedschapskist’ ontrafeld. Het heeft geresulteerd in zes compositorische ontwerpprincipes. Dankzij dit onderzoek en de nieuwe inzichten in Roodbaards handschrift kan een aantal landschapsparken worden geïdentificeerd en aan zijn oeuvre worden toegevoegd. Het gaat daarbij niet alleen om Roodbaards collectie van landschapsparken, maar ook om de samenhang van deze collectie met het omliggende historische cultuurlandschap. Dit overzicht biedt handvatten om het oeuvre van Roodbaard aan te duiden als een buitenplaatsenlandschap dat een samenhangend tuinen landschapsarchitectonisch ensemble vormt in het Noord-Nederlandse cultuurlandschap. Dit ‘parkachtige’ landschap, ook bekend als de Noordelijke Lustwarande, is grotendeels gelegen in het kustlandschap dat grenst aan het Unesco Werelderfgoed Waddenzee. In de epiloog is een proeve van een reconstructie van een ontbrekende ontwerptekening gemaakt voor het landschapspark De Braak te Paterswolde. Het vormt de opmaat voor de integrale reconstructie van deze bijzondere collectie groen erfgoed.
At the crossroads of Architecture and Landscape
Authors: Marulo Federica
Published: November 2023

In the context of rapid urban transformations, this thesis explores the possible preservation strategies for historic military systems that used to be embedded in extra-urban settings, but that now are absorbed in the development dynamics of complex metropolitan areas. The research stems from the main peculiarity of these heritage systems: namely, the coexistence of cultural and natural values, and their being at the crossroads of the architecture and landscape domains. Although the need to address nature-culture interlinkages has become a topical issue in the field of heritage preservation, military landscapes have been almost completely left out of this debate. Moreover, the lack of inter-scale strategies in current preservation practices for historic military systems further complicates the way nature-culture interlinkages are addressed. The development of a conceptual framework on this topic has required considering the diversity of existing approaches to landscape, architectural heritage and their interconnection. Italy and the Netherlands were selected as relevant contexts in Western Europe for comparison on this topic. Linking archival research, interviews and field observations, Italian and Dutch contemporary experiences with the revitalization and reuse of historic military systems (NL: New Dutch Waterline; IT: Entrenched Field of Mestre) were compared. Both national and international initiatives promoted in the frame of the World Heritage Convention were analysed. To understand the historical roots of the recent approaches, the evolution of landscape protection in the two contexts has been investigated, highlighting the different influences played by the national discourse on architectural heritage and spatial planning. This historical background, together with the cross-reading of the case studies, has led to the definition of a transnational conceptual framework on the possible preservation strategies for historic military systems with an inter-scale approach. Taking into account the peculiarities of each context, it provides a tool for facilitating the decision-making process, bringing historic military systems into the international discussion on nature-culture interlinkages. Ultimately, it can serve as a reference for other historic landscape systems sharing similar characteristics and preservation issues.
Towards A Poetics of Dwelling
Authors: Lu Li
Published: November 2023

This thesis starts with a worrisome observation tied to various phenomena across modern built environments: humans today are experiencing a weakened relatedness to and reduced intimacy with the world around them. In stark contrast to the general trend, however, most Chinese literati gardens maintain their traditional rich conditions, enabling their visitors to experience a unique, high-quality experience of relatedness to and intimacy with the world, which may serve as an antidote to the existing disruptive modern condition. What lessons can be learned from the Chinese literati gardens to address this weakened intimacy of relatedness in modern built environments? Motivated by this question, this thesis takes the Heideggerian notion of Nearness as its foundation. Through a contextually relevant interpretation of the meaning of Nearness in Heideggerian discourse, it first establishes a theoretical framework through which to assess how the experience of Nearness—the ontological relatedness to and intimacy with the world— generally occurs within built environments. Next, taking the Master of the Nets Garden as a case study, it reveals the various embedded spatial-experiential settings and complex mechanisms that continuously facilitate rich, strong, and multi-dimensional experiences of Nearness. Finally, it reflects on some of the key relevant issues, including what benefits and enlightenments the findings of this thesis could bring to current architectural practices. Overall, by exploring this essential aspect of the literati garden, the thesis equips contemporary spatial practitioners with the theoretical and practical tools necessary to recapture the high-quality experiences of Nearness within their works in the modern era.
Addis Ababa’s sefer, iddir, and gebbi
Authors: Tola Anteneh Tesfaye
Published: November 2023

This research is motivated by the scholarly calls for new concepts and analytic tools for documenting, analysing, and theorizing complex urban territories such as those of cities in Africa. With implicit comparative intent, it takes the case of Addis Ababa city and its old and typifying places—the sefer, to develop and test a new architectural transdisciplinary research methodology referred to as the trinocular. By way of this methodology, it unearths and introduces sefer, iddir, and gebbi of Addis Ababa as not only socio-spatial phenomena but concepts and vocabulary for a located and nuanced reading of the city itself. Sefer are introduced as flexible boundary conditions that are primarily cognized by their dwellers—results of indigenous and autochthonous foundation and continued processes of self-actualization by communities that construct them. Iddir is unearthed as a form of social capital embedded in sefer that appears in the structures of relations among residents. And the gebbi as an urban spatial typology that constitutes the sefer’s morphology—the last frontier of communality just prior domestic spaces which, in many cases, can be a single multi-functional room.

These concepts and vocabulary, it is argued, in both practical and metaphoric sense, should be the starting point of new urban imaginaries for Addis Ababa. Urban planning and housing projections thus, should draw inspiration from these notions, elements, and phenomena. Furthermore, lessons learnt from the trinocular and the findings are presented as new avenues for architectural research in similar, less-known, and complex urban conditions as the sefer of Addis Ababa.
Peter Eisenman
Authors: Graafland Arie
Published: November 2023

For quite a while, Peter Eisenman’s dissertation lived the life of a mystery text. Many architectural theorists knew about it, but it was not published until 2006. The facsimile reprint by Lars Müller finally makes available the complete typographic script that Eisenman defended in August 1963 at the University of Cambridge.
Benjamin’s Dialectical Image and the Textuality of the Built Landscape
Authors: Lipton Ross
Published: November 2023

In The Arcades Project, Walter Benjamin describes the architectural expression of nineteenth century Paris as a dialectical manifestation of backwards-looking historicism and the dawn of modern industrial production (in the form of cast iron and mass produced plate glass). Yet in the same text, Benjamin refers to the dialectical image as occurring within the medium of written language. In this paper, I will first discuss the textuality of the dialectical image as it emerges from Benjamin’s discussion of allegorical and symbolic images in his Trauerspiel study and the ‘wish symbol’ in The Arcades Project. I will then discuss the ‘textual reductionism’ implicit in Benjamin’s theory of the dialectical image, in which the dense pluralities of urban space are reduced to a finite script to be pieced together through Benjamin’s constructivist method of historical observation. The textuality of the dialectical image will be elaborated on by discussing it in relation to the practice of translation. This discussion will be further contextualised by discussing a cadre of German/Austrian planners and architects who attempted to translate architectural idioms between cultural identities in Kemalist Era Turkey. The article concludes with a short recapitulation on the dialectical image as both an object of scrutiny and a method of observation, one which also takes into consideration the specific historicity of the observer.
The Architecture of a Lifetime: Structures of Remembrance and Invention in Walter Benjamin and Aldo Rossi
Authors: Paeleman Jolien
Published: November 2023

This article presents the result of research on the influence of Walter Benjamin’s thinking in the work of Italian architect Aldo Rossi (1931–1997). In present-day architectural criticism, Aldo Rossi’s oeuvre still constitutes a rich subject for discussion because of its resistance to easy pinpointing, even if Rossi himself explained his theories and methods of design on numerous occasions. In his writings, among these A Scientific Autobiography, Rossi quotes from a collection of Benjamin’s memoirs: Berlin Childhood around 1900. The architect believes that these short prose pieces express better than anything else what he himself had not been able to explain in his writing. In this paper I intend to show the poignancy of the words Rossi referred to and the implications they had on his architecture by offering close comparisons of Benjamin’s and Rossi’s autobiographical writings. In addition, this study examines how one of Rossi’s most famous architectural artefacts, the ossuary of San Cataldo cemetery at Modena, can be viewed as a coalescence of a Benjaminian thought-image, thereby fortifying the philosopher’s presence in modern architecture.
Benjamin and Koolhaas: History's Afterlife
Authors: Hsu Frances
Published: November 2023

Dialectical images are at the core of the methods suggested by two books written four decades apart yet published around the same time. The Arcades Project (first published as Das Passagen-Werk in 1981) and Delirious New York (1978) use images to critique established modes of historical interpretation. Each proposes a methodology of historical speculation based on the interpretation of fragmentary visual phenomena. Both construct alternative historical narratives about the impact of technology, mass culture and economy on the city. This essay contrasts and compares the similarities and differences between the respective authors’ treatments of the nineteenth century arcade and the Manhattan skyscraper to examine how the strategies and definitions suggested by Benjamin and Koolhaas address the function of images as tools for critical architectural analysis and knowledge.
Reclaiming Political Urbanism in Peace Building Processes: The Hands-on Famagusta project, Cyprus
Authors: Stratis Socrates , Akbil Emre
Published: November 2023

This case study is about reclaiming a political form of urbanism before the potential Cyprus reunification by enhancing, through the Hands-on Famagusta project, ‘agonistic’ collective practices across the Cypriot divide.
Urban Terrorism: St. Peter’s Square, Vatican City
Authors: Tan Daniel
Published: November 2023

In the wake of the 2015 Paris attacks that claimed 130 lives, and in response to FBI warnings about threats by the Islamic State terrorist group, stringent security measures were pre-emptively imposed on St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City to deter possible attacks. The very nature of exclusion and control brought about by the securitisation corrodes the inherent nature of what the square previously symbolised: a sanctuary where all could enter and be welcome. Using the case of St. Peter’s Square, this work illuminates the three main contradictions between security and architecture apparent in practice today, as a way to understand the role of architecture in contributing to a convivial city under the conditions of terrorism.
New Figurations in Architecture Theory: From Queer Performance to Becoming Trans
Authors: Gorny Robert Alexander , Heuvel Dirk van den
Published: November 2023

The editorial introduction to this Footprint issue maps some of the latest developments in the field of queer studies and the realm of architecture and urban design. The aim is for a productive exhange between the fields since queer theory can be instrumental in moving beyond the heteronormative dominance in architectural thinking, which is characterized by an essentialist approach based on binary notions, rather than an understanding of architecture as an interface in material processes of becoming and producing differences. After a brief discussion of the history of exchanges between queer studies and architectural history and theory, the authors propose to complement the notion of queering with the new developments in the field of trans studies, which propose to rethink architecture in terms of a materialist understanding of buildings as bodies which are in a constant flux of change and becoming instead of fixed and stable objects or identities.
Opening up Bodyspace: Perspectives from Posthuman and Feminist Theory
Authors: Kokoula Xenia
Published: November 2023

A rethinking of space, a rethinking of the body and a rethinking of a design processes involving both are long overdue within space-related disciplines. Over the last decades, architectural discourse has been invigorated by opening up container conceptions of space, by exploring a new dynamic understanding of space and focusing on its production processes. But a systematic, theoretically-informed understanding of the body along the same terms has yet to be achieved. Such a search for new visions and concepts of corporealities can start at different places. This essay attempts a cross-disciplinary, speculative foray into the terrain of posthuman, nonhuman and feminist theory. From this diverse body of scholarship it is possible to develop theses for open, permeable and inextricably entangled bodies inhabiting an equally dynamic space. These theses are examined not only within their own disciplinary discourses but also as aesthetic categories and spatial organisation principles aimed at tentatively exploring the implications for space-related disciplines including architecture and design.
Louis H. Sullivan: that Object He Became
Authors: Snyder Dan
Published: November 2023

Louis H. Sullivan constructed a world view based on a hierarchy of powers. Over this hierarchy he placed the emotion of sympathy. Characterising it as another power he described sympathy as a way of being in communion with the world that manifests in a fusion of identities. Through a close reading of his writings with particular attention paid to his often-encrypted references to Walt Whitman, together with a close reading of selected sources from his library, this essay interrogates his understanding. Sensitive to the question of ‘queering’, it focuses on his conception of fused identities and its effects on gender and sexuality. It excavates an understanding that suggests that Sullivan deliberately constructed an alternative epistemology that overcame a whole host of bipolar oppositions to include male and female. He opted instead for an emotive and fluid ontology where the fixed category of being dissolves in vital consubstantiation – and it was eroticised. Suggesting a uniquely queer stance, Sullivan insists that without a clear vision of it, one may never understand architecture.
Me as a Building
Authors: Angelidakis Andreas
Published: November 2023

Andreas Angelidakis works between the various fields of curating, theory, architecture and the arts. In his position text the author reflects on the way he develops new narrative and design methods as part of a personal project of a challenging self-reflexive and psychological nature. States of being become inherently fluid as illustrated by the project Troll, which Angelidakis suggests is an autobiographical project, in which a building wants to leave the city to become a mountain: human bodies transition into nature into architecture, and back again. Describing his work and growing up in his hometown Athens Angelidakis discusses architecture and queer identities in terms of being ‘unauthorised’.
The Diagrammatic Inquiry of Architectural Media
Authors: Bertram Peter
Published: November 2023

According to the philosopher C.S. Peirce the diagram is a system of interrelated parts that operates in a manner similar to another system of interrelated parts. It is a mental map of relations. It drives an open-ended inquiry on a given problem. In architectural discourse a diagram is often defined as a particular form of drawing. It is a simplified image and/or it uses a notation system. In this context, the latter is termed a digital diagram. However, an architectural medium has material properties that influence both the making and the translation of the drawing. It is both a singular artefact and a set of instructions for actions undertaken in another space than that of the medium. This article introduces the notion of an immanent diagram to discuss how the composition of a drawing is distributed. The proposition is that the architectural diagrammatic inquiry operates in the struggle between digital and analogue diagrams. I develop the argument using a traditional architectural drawing as a starting point. In the last section, I discuss a contemporary computer based design practice in which drawings and prototype modelling constitute a heterogeneous technological environment.
Calling Rowe: After-lives of Formalism in the Digital Age
Authors: Giamarelos Stylianos
Published: November 2023

Emmanuel Petit recently invoked the work of Colin Rowe to render a discussion of architectural precedent relevant for the digital age. Questioning Petit’s approach, this article explores the implications latent in this invocation. In so doing, it highlights their misalignments with the current concerns of digital design practitioners. The article thus focuses on the question of a possible after-life of Rowe’s formalism for the digital age. It starts by charting its genealogical development from Rudolf Wittkower’s humanist grids to Peter Eisenman’s ‘post-functionalist’ pursuits of autonomous form and Greg Lynn’s ‘pliant’ geometries. This showcases the dual historical effect of Rowe’s analytical formalism. From the late 1940s to the present, his disciples employed it both as a historiographical model and as a generative mechanism for architectural design. The history of Rowe’s formalism is therefore intertwined with the contemporary concerns of digital design practitioners, including Petit’s question of theorising precedent. The digital design practitioners’ assertions of autonomy are historically rooted in Rowe’s analytical formalism. In the final instance, Rowe’s analysis was carried out from the perspective of modernist humanism, and this historically remained the case in its various versions from Wittkower to Eisenman. Updating Rowe, as Petit suggested, would therefore only perpetuate a modernist outlook in a postmodern age. A formalism for the present cannot ignore the enduring points of the postmodern critique that preceded it. In conclusion, a contemporary variant of formalism needs to address the debates around its possible synthesis with contextualist concerns. To do so, it also needs to engage with the poststructuralist critiques of the intervening decades. Some examples from recent literature exemplify such an approach. They could therefore serve as useful precedents towards an integrated formalism for the present.
Good Life Now
Authors: Anderson Corinna
Published: November 2023

Cedric Price’s architecture approaches time and space atypically, focusing primarily on the needs and desires of the user. His ‘short-life’ housing system, designed in 1970–1972 in response to a national crisis of housing provision, takes consumer choice as the organising principle of its design. Its formal flexibility blurs the separation between the house and workplace, while its customisability and disposability reduces the family home to an expendable commodity. The short-life house accommodates a lifestyle of precarity characteristic of neoliberal society, aligning with neoliberal discourses on society emergent in Britain at the beginning of the 1970s.
On Display
Authors: Zilberman Nitzan
Published: November 2023

The focal point of this essay is the turn from the display of objects to the display of environments, a change that blurs the line between the body and the display, and arguably absorbs the subject into the object. This turn is enabled by the digital age, as well as ‘the experience economy’, and is manifested in the rise of immersive display systems. The Selfie Museum epitomizes this cultural shift. In the Selfie Museum, subject and object aren’t the sole dichotomies that are conflated; physical space combines with the virtual image; the still moment merges in the temporal experience; and two-dimensional projections are overlaid onto three-dimensional structures. As a result, architects become ‘experience designers’, virtual reality is a mode of design practice, and an ‘instagrammable’ moment is a project deliverable. In this essay I simultaneously acknowledge these changes and critique them. At the same time, I offer the combination of apparent oppositions as a potential new set of tools that can help rethink aspects of the architecture discipline and profession. By studying the Selfie Museum as both an architectural typology and a socio-political entity, I challenge the traditional museum as an institution, classic body image perceptions, and the common concept of a tourist destination.
Conditioned Exchange
Authors: Torisson Fredrik
Published: November 2023

The emergence of financial institutions such as the exchanges or bourses of northern Europe in the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries made possible the emergence of speculation in financial instruments. Speculation evolved into a game with its own logic, and the implied ethos of the speculator prioritised abstract notions and self-interest.

This article investigates the relation between this ethos of speculation and architecture in this timeframe. During this period, the architecture of the exchanges transformed; what was a square with an inside at the outset gradually became an enclosed institution with representative façades toward the end of the period. The transition of the physical environment of exchange and the increasingly complex financial instruments interact, and this interaction is traced through a sequence of exchange-structures inspired by one another.

The question explored is: what is the relationship between the emergence of an ethos of speculation and the architectural space of the exchange? This relationship can be discussed in terms of a different kind of conditioning that has less to do with industrialisation, but which could, in extension, form a starting point for discussions on architecture’s role in the formation and conditioning of homo œconomicus.
The Architecture Competition: A Beauty Contest or a Learning Opportunity?
Authors: Biau Véronique , Zetlaoui-Léger Jodelle , Weber Bendicht
Published: November 2023

The architecture competition is a high point of interaction between very diverse actors, architecture specialists or not. However, is it really an opportunity for exchange and shared learning? Based on surveys conducted in France and in several European countries on behalf of the French Ministry of Culture, this contribution aims to identify the conditions that foster the interactions inherent to competitions, the possible scope of these exchanges and the rationale behind them. When the competition is a chosen procedure, it is most often perceived as a moment of generating ideas that opens a professional debate and also addresses the general public. When it is mandatory, the competition is guided by another logic: that of ensuring the fairness and transparency of the joint choice of a project and a service provider as well as the legality of the contract concluded with the latter. Depending on the place given by decision-makers to this legal and contractual dimension, the nature and scope of the debates around the competition vary widely. If the legalistic approach dominates, it tends to limit interactions. However if the contracting authority adopts a more open approach to the competition, from programming to the dissemination and capitalisation of its results, it can make a real process of collective deliberation and favour the growth of shared competence.
One Map, Multiple Legends
Authors: Roei Noa
Published: November 2023

Abstract

This paper investigates the blurred borders between civilian and military ways of envisioning, experiencing and mediating space in the context of Israel political geography. It does so by way of a close reading of Detroit, a short video work by Amir Yatziv where the construction plans of an urban combat training facility in the Israeli desert are the focus of attention (2009). Taking Detroitas a point of departure, I will present a number of works of art that address the phenomenon in which a military-inflected construction of space yields material and cognitive consequences, naturalising the military’s status as the guiding principle of daily life. Within this sub-genre of critical city- and landscape imagery in Israeli art, Yatziv’s work stands out as it turns the focus from the land itself towards its mediation. This approach, I argue, is highly productive for critical anti-military visual projects, as it directs attention towards those who code and decode urban military landscapes, and highlights the fact that while the borders between military and civilian mediations of space may be blurred, they are not lost just yet.

Keywords:

Social geography; critical cartography; Israeli art; militarism, Israel-Palestine; simulacrum, maps and mapping.
'New Classical' Contemporary Architecture
Authors: Chabard Pierre
Published: November 2023

Cet article s’attache à retracer la généalogie des idées portés par le réseau anglo-saxon d’architectes new classical qui partagent le souhait de renouer avec les traditions prémodernes et avec une « architecture classique », largement idéalisée et réinventée. Résonnant avec les arguments réactionnaires et identitaires de la droite populiste actuelle, cette doctrine architecturale s’est structurée au tournant des années 1980 au plus fort des débats autour du postmodernisme et s’est développée depuis lors, en dehors des scènes courantes de l’architecture contemporaine, à la faveur d’importants relais politiques (notamment, au Royaume Uni, celui du Prince de Galles) et de la structuration d’un cadre institutionnel et d’une commande spécifiques. Au-delà de leur positionnement stylistique, les protagonistes de cette new classical architecture revendiquent une volonté de revenir aux modes de construction artisanaux traditionnels et manifestent un certain rapport au temps résolument anti-historiciste qui rejoint ce que Zygmunt Bauman a appelé la retrotopia.
End Times and Architectural Style on the Christian Campus
Authors: Engler Rachel
Published: November 2023

This paper examines the idea of architectural style on evangelical Christian campuses built during the Cold War, a period during which religious cosmologies came into contact with the prospect of nuclear disaster, allowing for a temporary alliance between secular and religious visions of the end of human history. In this context of Cold War-era end-of-the-world thinking, and in relation to the biblical anticipation of the apocalypse, I consider the contrasting choices of so-called futuristic and neo-vernacular idioms in the building projects of television evangelists. What does it mean to revive styles of the past, or to build in a mode oriented toward the future, when the end of history is imminent? Design undertaken within the framework of assumed apocalyptic narratives troubles notions of permanence and durability—historically vital terms for thinking about building. The paper takes two primary case studies: Robertson’s Regent University in Virginia Beach, which hosts the Christian Broadcasting Network and was built in a “Jeffersonian” vernacular; and Oral Roberts’s Tulsa university, unique at the time for its gilded modernism.
Re-Imagining a 'We' Beyond the Gathering of Reductions
Authors: Athanasiadou Lila , Klumbyte Goda , Rouvroy Antoinette
Published: November 2023

In this article Lila Athanasiadou and Goda Klumbytė engage in a conversation with Antoinette Rouvroy to revisit Guattari’s "Three Ecologies" and discuss their dynamics in and for the digital age. While a lot of the discourses on algorithms and digital future invoke catastrophic imaginaries of totalizing control, this conversation works with a propositional format, teasing out affirmative politics by pointing to spaces of potentiality within the environmental, the social and the mental realm. Starting from the environmental ecology and thinking of data as a waste, Rouvroy discusses  planetary exhaustion as the result of the depletion of natural resources, forced labour practices and the assumption that data hold the answers to the problems posed by global capital. Proposing a space for material experimentation, she speculates on the potential of emerging subjectivities that remain irreducible to data flows. Within social ecology, Rouvroy advocates for the urgency to center digital policy as the space in which the new forms of institutions emerge in order to reorient the power of computation towards the commons. Lastly, within the mental ecology, Rouvroy reconceptualizes the legal subject as a performance that operates within the proliferation of asignifying data signs, reimagining a “we” beyond the gathering of reductions.
Simondoniana
Authors: Kodalak Gokhan , Kousoulas Stavros
Published: November 2023

Kodalak’s essay revisits Gilbert Simondon as a postwar philosopher, who formulated a new way of conceiving individual modalities—from crystals, technical objects and biological organisms to psychic phenomena and social collectives. Simondon’s metaphysical conception of ontogenesis—that explains how individuals emerge from a pre-individual field of metastable potentials through processes of individuation—helped him reconceive technical objects, no longer as passive automata, but as exuberant individuals, active and full of life, with irreducible modes of existence of their own. With this new vision, Simondon invites us to rethink our relationship with technical objects beyond the mythological attitudes of technocracy, technophilia, and technophobia, which can be further developed today for reconceiving architecture’s own technical modes of existence and charged relations with technology.

            Kousoulas’ essay begs the question: Why Simondon in a volume dedicated to Stiegler? It is not that Stiegler’s oeuvre cannot be examined without referring to the crucial influence that Simondon had for his thought. More important than this, it is only through Simondon that Stiegler makes sense. Simondon is keen to remind us that sense, first and foremost, stands for directionality: to make sense is to grasp a direction. Without Simondon’s critical reformulation of our technological becoming, Stiegler’s project remains null. In a non-zero-sum game, Stiegler through Simondon and (retroactively) Simondon through Stiegler, produce the norms and values of a directing sense that can indeed compel us to engage in our worldly endeavours with neganthropic care.
Architect of Nothingness
Authors: Sarıçayır Ecem
Published: November 2023

Architect Frank van Klingeren was most active during the 1960s and 1970s in the Netherlands. In response to the social and urban challenges of the time, Van Klingeren developed various experimental architectural forms and concepts. This essay discusses his comparatively well-known community centres De Meerpaal and Het Karregat by focusing on his commitment to unfinished architecture, open plan through wall-less designs, and his insistent attempt at creating social encounters through these spatial principles. To provide historical contextualisation of these architectural principles I engage with a theoretical framework developed by Esra Akcan which provides the first full-fledged conceptualisation of open architecture. I look at archival materials such as Van Klingeren’s poems, essays, and interviews as well as the designs of his community centres and their reception in national and international journals and newspapers. In addition to extending our knowledge of Van Klingeren’s seldom studied architectural practice, this essay aims to contribute to the concept of openness in architectural studies with the case of Van Klingeren’s spatial practice.
Platforms for Dwelling
Authors: Vass Lorinc , Cloutier Roy , Sylvia Nicole
Published: November 2023

Under contemporary capitalism and platform urbanism, domesticity distorts to take on new forms. Dwelling is simultaneously decentralised and re-distributed via digital and urban networks. This article argues that these new forms of dwelling necessitate new modes of critique – ones primed for this networked, spatially distributed condition. It proposes to supplement typological and topographical approaches to dwelling with the more ‘anexactly rigorous’ relational cartography offered by the field of topology.

The article begins with an outline of topology, drawing on mathematics, philosophy and geography towards a reconceptualisation of architecture as a boundary-drawing apparatus. The topological condition of modern dwelling is then retraced as a genealogy of interpenetrating edifices, mediating membranes, and prosthetic equipment, which have prefigured present-day formations of domesticity. The second half of the article trains this topological lens onto three architectural tendencies in response to platform urbanism: convivial arrangements of networked living, commoning platforms and thresholds, and counter-protocols of distributed domesticity. Through unpacking these trajectories, the article illustrates the potential that a topological approach engenders via new modes of mapping, critiquing, resisting and subverting the unequally distributed agency and power underlying the circuits of platform urbanism.
The Digitalisation of Swedish Housing
Authors: Torisson Fredrik
Published: November 2023

So called ‘smart’ built environments operate in a peculiar temporal nexus: they are simultaneously just around the corner, already here, and yesterday’s news. This is usually put down to hype and hyperbole, but it may well be argued that smart built environments do indeed exist across temporal dimensions – only not in the way we imagine them to.

Instead of speaking of a digital turn in housing, we would be better served by employing the plural: digital turns. In fact, once we begin to unravel the history of how the idea of what we today call smart technology has been implemented in multi-household rental dwellings since the early 1980s, a pattern emerges.

The article charts how landlords and others have placed smart devices that monitor, encourage or discipline tenants to behave in certain ways. This is a parallel story to the dream of a leisure-centred technology-enabled house of the future. This parallel story is darker and centres on the transformation of the dwelling through its digitalisation.
Dwelling in the Digital Age
Authors: Picon Antoine
Published: November 2023

Dwelling appears as a complex entanglement of dreams and realities, mental representations, and concrete practices. Here the question of its evolution in the digital age is approached at three levels. Firstly, what are the changes that it brings to the concrete experience of the built environment that have accompanied the rise of digital technologies? The Covid19 pandemic has contributed to reveal some of them, but the full picture is still far from clear. Secondly, how are these changes related to this different understanding of the human that is often dubbed as a transition towards a ‘posthuman’ condition, Thirdly, the least evident to address: will these shifts lead to the emergence of new spatial organizations and programs? Central to the argument developed here is that there is a deep relation between dwelling and the constitution of human subjectivity. Dwelling in the digital age is thus inseparable from the question of the evolution of what it means to be human in our contemporary societies.
The ‘Agency of Mapping’ in South Asia: Galle-Matara (Sri Lanka), Mumbai (India) and Khulna (Bangladesh)
Authors: Shannon Kelly
Published: November 2023

The territories – cities and landscapes – of South Asia are under incredible transformation due to man-made and natural conditions. Globalisation is spatially leaving its imprint as cities and landscapes are progressively being built by an ever-more fragmented, piecemeal and ad-hoc project modus – funded by established and new-found fortunes of national and international developers and lenders, development aid projects and (often corrupt) governments. At the same time, ‘natural’ disasters are increasing in severity and frequency – due to climate change and the flagrant disregard of the environment in the relentless dive to impose imported terms of reference for modernisation and urbanisation. The challenges and strategic importance of realising urban design in South Asia’s contemporary context of borrowed visions, abstract land-use planning and a diminishing political will are, obviously, innumerable. How to qualitatively intervene as an urbanist in such a context? This paper will argue that an understanding of contexts, based on fieldwork, is necessary in order to project feasible urban visions and strategic urban design projects that can make more evident particular sites’ inherent qualities and creatively marry ecological, infrastructural, and urbanisation issues by solutions that cut across multiple scales and sectoral divisions. Interpretative mapping is a first step to transform a territory. An understanding of the context and the reading of sites are necessary in order to create modifications that have logic and relate to the particularities of places and situations. Three scales of mapping (territorial, urban, and tissue) will be presented. The territories/cities investigated are the southwest (Galle-Matara) coast of Sri Lanka, Mumbai, the economic engine of India, and Khulna, the third largest city in Bangladesh.