Munich-based "03 Architects" have in recent years developed a distinctive way of working for urban spaces. No matter if the task is a warehouse for building materials, a kindergarden, or planning an entire new neighbourhood, "03 Architects " designs always look closely at the narrative qualities of the city. For this book the architects have invited the photographer Walter Mair for a dialogue on their work, concepts and methods. Mair documents "03 Architects " work with great sensitivity for their ideas, (...) but also for the context which the buildings reflect and enable, and thereby reaches beyond the classic architectural documentation. The architects respond to Mair s images in brief, associative texts. An introductory essay on the fundamental questions and problems of architectural photography by the renowned architectural critic and curator Hubertus Adam rounds out this book with its particular haptic and manufacturing quality. ". (shrink)

Introduction -- Historical essays -- The humanist brain : Alberti, Vitruvius, and Leonardo -- The enlightened brain : Perrault, Laugier, and Le Roy -- The sensational brain : Burke, Price, and Knight -- The transcendental brain : Kant and Schopenhauer -- The animate brain : Schinkel, Bötticher, and Semper -- The empathetic brain : Vischer, Wölfflin, and Göller -- The gestalt brain : the dynamics of the sensory field -- The neurological brain : Hayek, Hebb, and Neutra -- The phenomenal (...) brain : Merleau-Ponty, Rasmussen, and Pallasmaa -- Neuroscience and architecture -- Anatomy : architecture of the brain -- Ambiguity : architecture of vision -- Metaphor : architecture of embodiment -- Hapticity : architecture of the senses -- Epilogue: The architect's brain. (shrink)

Sculptors, architects, and painters are three professional groups that require a comprehensive understanding of how to manipulate spatial structures. While it has been speculated that they may differ in the way they conceive of space due to the different professional demands, this has not been empirically tested. To achieve this, we asked architects, painters, sculptors, and a control group questions about spatially complex pictures. Verbalizations elicited were examined using cognitive discourse analysis. We found significant differences between each group. Only painters (...) shifted consistently between 2D and 3D concepts, architects were concerned with paths and spatial physical boundedness, and sculptors produced responses that fell between architects and painters. All three differed from controls, whose verbalizations were generally less elaborate and detailed. Thus, for the case of sculptors, architects, and painters, profession appears to relate to a different spatial conceptualization manifested through a systematically contrasting way of talking about space. (shrink)

ABSTRACTDo physicians have a duty to sustain the pregnancies of women who die during the first or second trimester? Physicians cannot simply assume that the woman would have wished the pregnancy to continue, nor is it clear that the state has any interest in fetal life before viability. The conditions for beneficence‐based duties of fetal rescue will often be unmet, both because sustaining the pregnancy is not always a clear gain to the born child and because it may impose a (...) substantial burden on the benefactor. And duties of special relationship cannot readily be applied in these cases, as it is difficult to see how the relationship between someone who no longer exists and someone who does not yet exist can breed special duties. Further, to draw on Marx's distinction between the architect, who builds purposefully, and the bee, who cannot help what she is doing, I argue that human pregnancy is in a number of respects purposeful, creative, and deliberate, and that postmortem pregnancy, which follows the model of the bee, is a destructive icon that undercuts women's agency. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Do physicians have a duty to sustain the pregnancies of women who die during the first or second trimester? Physicians cannot simply assume that the woman would have wished the pregnancy to continue, nor (in the U. S., at any rate) is it clear that the state has any interest in fetal life before viability. The conditions for beneficence‐based duties of fetal rescue will often be unmet, both because sustaining the pregnancy is not always a clear gain to the (...) born child and because it may impose a substantial burden on the benefactor. And duties of special relationship cannot readily be applied in these cases, as it is difficult to see how the relationship between someone who no longer exists and someone who does not yet exist can breed special duties. Further, to draw on Marx's distinction between the architect, who builds purposefully, and the bee, who cannot help what she is doing, I argue that human pregnancy is in a number of respects purposeful, creative, and deliberate, and that postmortem pregnancy, which follows the model of the bee, is a destructive icon that undercuts women's agency. (shrink)

The leitmotif of the German contribution to the 12th Architecture Biennial in Venice, “desire“, is at the same time the topic of a survey among architects ; answers are given through drawings. What are you longing for? The response drawings are highly individual, diversity becomes programme: both in picture language and in the presentation in terms of content, reactions are quite different. But there is one thing they all have in common: the burning desire of something concrete. Sometimes it spreads (...) lightning-like on the observer, sometimes time is required for a contemplative involvement with form and content. The architectural sketch, as it may seem, degenerated into a side product of architectural work within the last years, is back! (shrink)

Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592), author of the Essays (published in successive, revised and expanded editions from 1580 until after his death), deserves to be recognized as the first) philosophic architect of modern liberalism, that is, a doctrine that advocates the advancement of individual liberty (under law), and consequently a reduction in the scope and purpose of government to securing what are represented by Montaigne’s successors (Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu, and the American Founders) as people’s inherent rights to their life, liberty, property, (...) and the “pursuit of happiness” as they conceive it. His outward, periodic professions of extreme conservatism and of homage to the Catholic Church are merely a rhetorical cover designed to protect the author from being persecuted (and his book from being banned). As a practitioner of what he describes as esoteric rhetoric (attributing it to the ancient political philosophers), Montaigne invites careful readers to see through his rhetorical concealment by noting how his conservative professions are undermined by the overall train of his reasoning and argument. Although Montaigne’s argument for liberal individualism may have gone too far in its influence over the long run (that is, the 21st century), we citizens of modern liberal regimes owe him a debt of gratitude for helping to liberate us from the reign of arbitrary monarchs, oppressive aristocrats, and clerical oppressors. (shrink)

Collective imagination has traditionally associated architecture with political and economic power. As a result, when quoting Edward Said: «Modern Western culture is, in large part, the work of exiles, émigrés, refugees», the last people we typically consider are exiled architects. But is the heritage left by exiled architects truly insignificant? Can we find expressions of their spiritual quest, new life experiences, nostalgic feelings, and aesthetic shocks in their works? When does Modernism cease to be a universal language and instead becomes (...) an existential language of the exile – and can they both coexist? The international conference Architects in Exile. Stories of New Spatial Experiences" aims to address these questions. (shrink)

In the mid-nineteenth century, the house sparrow ( Passer domesticus) was introduced to the United States, quickly spreading across the country. For a brief period in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the observation of sparrow behavior was something of an urban pastime. Traits such as intelligence, reason, persistence, and craftsmanship were conferred onto sparrows by American urbanites. This paper argues that sparrow intelligence was often conflated with domestication: the ability of the birds to adapt to living alongside humans. (...) Praise for the ingenuity of sparrows generally revolved around their nest building, particularly when such structures overcame the challenges posed by urban infrastructure and technology. Sparrows were far less praiseworthy when they caused electricity outages or contaminated water supplies. The sparrow in the United States demonstrates how the relationship between these anecdotes and their implications for animal minds was mediated by the technology and infrastructure of cities. Admirers of sparrows were not measuring the birds’ mental capacity, but rather their ability to adapt to human habitations. Sparrows were only granted intelligence once they had demonstrated their ability to become domesticated. (shrink)

In The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication, published in 1868, Darwin used the metaphor of the architect to argue in favor of natural autonomy and to clarify the role of chance in his theory of adaptive change by variation and natural selection. In this article, I trace the history of this important heuristic instrument in Darwin's writings and letters and suggest that this metaphor was important to Darwin because it helps him to explain the role of chance, and (...) gives an argument in favor of the free will. (shrink)

In a profile in the November, 2012 issue of the magazine Architect, activist-architect Raphael Sperry, a founder of the group Architects Planners & Designers for Social Responsibility discussed his petition to amend the AIA’s Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct to include a prohibition on “the design of spaces intended for long-term solitary isolation and execution.”1 This issue is both serious and timely. It deserves contemplative attention before any action is taken. The purpose of this letter is to provide the (...) the architecture profession a condensed analysis of the possible justification for taking the action Mr. Sperry advocates. After review and consideration, we are persuaded that Mr. Sperry’s proposal does merit action by the AIA. (shrink)

The role of public memory in a digital information age beckons us to explore how information is stored, managed, and circulated throughout various networks. Engaging with questions of public memory allows us to meditate on how we and future generations have developed processes and methods of information management that shape how knowledge emerges today. In order to understand how public memory interacts with networks of information, we must look at the systems and technologies that store, manage, and make publicly accessible (...) this information. Nathan R. Johnson's Architects of Memory: Information and Rhetoric in a Networked Archival Age serves as an important contribution to this task by historicizing the formation... (shrink)

This is a concise, coherent account of the relevance of Walter Benjamin "s writings to architects, locating Benjamin "s critical work within the context of ...

The Lancashire Independent College in Whalley Range, Manchester, was built to train Congregational ministers. As the first of a number of Nonconformist educational institutions in the area, it illustrates Manchester‘s importance as a centre of higher education generally and Nonconformist education in particular. The building was designed by John Gould Irwin in Gothic style, mediated through references to All Souls College in Oxford by Nicholas Hawksmoor, whose architecture also inspired Irwins Theatre Royal in Manchester. The College was later extended by (...) Alfred Waterhouse, reflecting the growing success of the institution, which forged links with Owens College and went on to contribute, with other ministerial training colleges, to the Universitys Faculty of Theology established in 1904. The building illustrates an interesting strand in early nineteenth-century architectural style by a little-known architect, and has an important place in the history of higher education in north-west England. (shrink)

À travers l’exemple des architectes, au moment de leur recherche d’un statut juridique face à leurs concurrents directs, les artisans maçons, nous nous interrogeons sur les raisons qui vont orienter cette profession naissante à se saisir de la coutume comme savoir juridique essentiel et structurant. Que ce soit dans la littérature pratique manuscrite, puis publiée, ­depuis le début du xviie siècle, ou bien à travers les volontés didactiques de leur Académie royale, la coutume semble être convoquée comme l’unique source du (...) droit de ces professions du bâtiment. Pourquoi ce choix alors que le droit romain, la jurisprudence, la réglementation technique présentent les règles de l’art de bâtir? La coutume d’abord, celle de Paris très rapidement, devient le soubassement d’une profession nouvelle. En effet, elle est enseignée aux architectes et elle leur est commentée, sous le titre emblématique des « loix des bâtiments ». Nous entrevoyons deux fondements à ce choix : d’une part, une raison politique extrinsèque donne accès via l’expertise à la possibilité pour l’architecte, comme le maçon depuis toujours, de dire la position juste dans le cadre du conflit judiciaire comme dans celui du conseil amiable ; d’autre part, une raison pratique intrinsèque – faisant écho à sa plasticité – permet de rendre efficace les éléments matériels qu’elle traite et réglemente. Toujours est-il que si la coutume apparaît comme exposant le « bon sens », elle n’existe que parce qu’elle est relayée par une certaine doctrine. Que serait la coutume sans ses commentaires? Notre étude est basée sur l’analyse de l’environnement politique et institutionnel de l’installation de la coutume comme source spécifique et utile de ces professions et des commentaires de coutumes réalisées successivement – et de plus en plus largement – par un charpentier, un médecin, un ingénieur et architecte du roi et par le professeur d’architecture de l’Académie et ses suiveurs. La coutume permet ainsi de réguler habilement les droits et obligations des différents titulaires des droits réels. (shrink)

In this article, we discuss Beauchamp and Childress’s treatment of the issue of moral status. In particular, we introduce the five different perspectives on moral status that Beauchamp and Childress consider in Principles of Biomedical Ethics and explain their alternative to those perspectives, raise some critical questions about their approach, and offer a different way to think about one of the five theories of moral status that is more in line with what we believe some of its leading advocates affirm.

Walter Benjamin has become a decisive reference point for a whole range of critical disciplines, as he constructed a unique and provocative synthesis of aesthetics, politics and philosophy. -/- Examining Benjamin’s contributions to cultural criticism in relation to the works of Max Ernst, Adolf Loos, Le Corbusier and Sigfried Giedion, this book also situates Benjamin’s work within more recent developments in architecture and urbanism. -/- This is a concise, coherent account of the relevance of Walter Benjamin’s writings to architects, locating (...) Benjamin’s critical work within the context of contemporary architecture and urbanism. (shrink)

Drawing on critical analyses of the internet inspired by Gilles Deleuze and the Marxist autonomia movement, this paper suggests a way of understanding the impact of the internet and digital culture on identity and social forms through a consideration of the relationship between controls exercised through the internet, new subjectivities constituted through its use and new labour practices enabled by it. Following Castells, we can see that the distinction between user, consumer and producer is becoming blurred and free labour is (...) being provided by users to corporations. The relationship between digital technologies and sense of community, through their relationship to the future, is considered for its dangers and potentials. It is proposed that the internet may be a useful tool for highlighting and enabling social connections if certain dangers can be traversed. Notably, current remedies for the lack of trust on the internet are questioned with an alternative, drawing on Zygmunt Bauman and Georg Simmel, proposed which is built on community through a vision of a ‘shared network’. (shrink)

Drawing on critical analyses of the internet inspired by Gilles Deleuze and the Marxist autonomia movement, this paper suggests a way of understanding the impact of the internet and digital culture on identity and social forms through a consideration of the relationship between controls exercised through the internet, new subjectivities constituted through its use and new labour practices enabled by it. Following Castells, we can see that the distinction between user, consumer and producer is becoming blurred and free labour is (...) being provided by users to corporations. The relationship between digital technologies and sense of community, through their relationship to the future, is considered for its dangers and potentials. It is proposed that the internet may be a useful tool for highlighting and enabling social connections if certain dangers can be traversed. Notably, current remedies for the lack of trust on the internet are questioned with an alternative, drawing on Zygmunt Bauman and Georg Simmel, proposed which is built on community through a vision of a ‘shared network’. (shrink)

The work of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari has been inspirational for architects and architectural theorists in recent years.

From the grotesque pavilions hidden in sixteenth century Italian gardens to the temporary structures in public space in the 70s and recent digitally augmented environments, architectures of play have long been designed to engage explorative experiences. The uncertainty of play allows us to probe new behaviors, to poke into the boundaries of subjectivity and to interact with people, things and systems in unexpected and unfamiliar ways. In this essay, we explore how an interactive system, situated in public space, may foster (...) explorative activities and enable the transformative power of play. Through the analysis of several computer-augmented architectures, we examine what interactive qualities might enhance the transformative power of play. Beginning with the Fun Palace, an early attempt to use cybernetics in order to encourage visitors to experiment with their habits, we move to contemporary projects including some of the author’s own work. The latter takes the advantage of existing public locations in order to insert exploratory play into everyday life. Through analysis of these projects, we discuss whether such environments raise our responsibility toward others within our surroundings; whether they enable us to transform our own established behaviors; and whether they empower us to reclaim public space. (shrink)

Technocracy is a contested concept, but it is typically associated with the exercise of political power justified by claims to expertise, and is often contrasted with populist forms of politics. In Power Without Knowledge, Jeffrey Friedman reframes the concept of technocracy as a form of politics oriented to solving social and economic problems, and thereby extends it to cover not only epistemic elites but ordinary people. This move usefully challenges the simplistic framing of populism and technocracy as opposites, but at (...) the expense of effacing other dimensions of democratic politics. Friedman also suggests that maximizing individuals’ exit opportunities will allow them to take advantage of their relatively reliable personal knowledge. The architecture of “exitocracy” would itself, however, be designed by experts who, as such, might be tempted to insulate the institutional architecture they design against democratic interference. (shrink)

Andrew Saint is General Editor of the Survey of London. His book is a study of relations between these two professions since their modern emergence in Europe and the US. Relations between the two professions are complex and varied. Sometimes it is the Renaissance fantasy, where the architect designs a masterpiece, then hands it to the engineer to figure out how to make it. Sometimes engineers are part of the design process, working closely with architects from the beginning. Other times, (...) engineers are doing the work we might expect architects to do, and producing buildings that continue to delight. The inventors of form may even belong to neither profession. Posterity remembers Eiffel as an engineer, though we more accurately think of him as a contractor-fabricator. There is more to the book than this descriptive history, though. Saint chronicles the rising tide of cant in the fond notion of the architect as Artist, with completely different skills and values from an engineer. An engineer is a technician, he makes things work. An architect is an artist, he make things beautiful. Any way you look at it, however, this dichotomy fails. In engineering, the invention of structure is, in part, aesthetic invention. Engineering forms are never calculated. There are calculations aplenty, but the form is not arrived at by calculation like a mathematical result. Engineering is a highly inventive practice, or can be. The invention of structure is just as “intuitive,” “irrational,” and “aesthetic” as anything in architecture. Then from the point of view of art, aesthetic accomplishment cannot be limited to design; it requires a work, and that it be well made. Le Corbusier tried to deny this and the result is revealing. For him the design is the architecturally important accomplish; the rest is just mechanics—an indifference to building that shows in all his work, which began to look shabby almost immediately. Inventive engineering has an aesthetic moment, and memorable architecture has a structural moment. Engineers must visualize and make aesthetic choices, and only architects who appreciate the work of engineering can take the invention of form to the limits of new technologies. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe goal of this paper is to locate indirect legislation within Bentham’s art of legislation, and to distinguish it, as far as possible, from direct legislation. Along the way, some parallels are drawn between indirect legislation on the one hand, and the Nudge theory of Thaler and Sunstein on the other. It will be argued that many expedients categorized by Bentham as indirect legislation are simultaneously exercises of direct legislation. Another set of indirect expedients act on knowledge, and involve efforts (...) to eliminate asymmetries of information between potential offender and potential victim by providing official standards and disseminating a plethora of factual information. Other forms of indirect legislation threaten the coherence of Bentham’s theory of law, firstly by regarding all government actions as exercises in legislation, and secondly by turning the formers of public opinion into legislators. Insofar as some forms of indirect legislation operate by sleight of hand, they conflict with Bentham’s commitment to transparency in the exercise of public power, reflecting a tension between reality and appearance which runs through his thought. (shrink)

The figure of the cordial host of the Academy, who invited the most gifted mathematicians and cultivated pure research, whose keen intellect was able if not to solve the particular problem then at least to show the method for its solution: this figure is quite familiar to students of Greek science. But was the Academy as such a center of scientific research, and did Plato really set for mathematicians and astronomers the problems they should study and methods they should use? (...) Our sources tell about Plato's friendship or at least acquaintance with many brilliant mathematicians of his day (Theodorus, Archytas, Theaetetus), but they were never his pupils, rather vice versa -- he learned much from them and actively used this knowledge in developing his philosophy. There is no reliable evidence that Eudoxus, Menaechmus, Dinostratus, Theudius, and others, whom many scholars unite into the group of so-called "Academic mathematicians," ever were his pupils or close associates. Our analysis of the relevant passages (Eratosthenes' Platonicus, Sosigenes ap. Simplicius, Proclus' "Catalogue of geometers", and Philodemus' "History of the Academy", etc.) shows that the very tendency of portraying Plato as the architect of science goes back to the early Academy and is born out of interpretations of his dialogues. (shrink)

This volume examines specifically the contribution of Homi K. Bhabha to the discourse and practice of architecture.

The social construction of space -- The anatomy of taste -- Towards a theory of cultural practice --Fields of cultural production -- Cultural practice, reflexivity and political action.

Lyotard, Leach contrasts 'the myth of the "domus" ' , the phenomenon of home, with a more alienated model of city life in a contemporary 'age of the ...

Introduction -- 1. General obligations. Conflicts of interest -- Uncompensated work -- Community service -- Pro bono work -- Living conditions -- Working conditions -- Layoffs -- Unequal pay -- 2. Obligations to the public. Repressive governments -- Corrupt politicians -- Public officials -- Public opinion -- Public bailouts -- Public reviews -- Public health -- Cultural differences -- 3. Obligations to the client. Self-destructive behavior -- Distrustful behavior -- Dishonest behavior -- Deceptive behavior -- Spendthrift behavior -- Solicitous behavior (...) -- Unrealistic expectations -- Manipulative situations -- 4. Obligations to the profession. Greed -- Insensitivity -- Jealousy -- Betrayal -- Treachery -- Unfairness -- Uncertainty -- Cheating -- 5. Obligations to colleagues. Office affairs -- Working hours -- Labor law violations -- Crediting coworkers -- Accommodating disabilities -- Firm bankruptcy -- Firm loyalties -- Untrustworthy colleagues -- 6. Obligations to the environment. Environmental hypocrisy -- Environmental conflicts -- Contextual conflicts -- Social justice -- Future generations -- Other species -- Reducing waste -- Reducing consumption -- Why ethics matters now. (shrink)