Architecture and Design

Drops Dripped - WKCD - What Does It Do? - Techne - Faux Year Zero - Commercium as Ethics - Fictitious Space - The Module - The Image - Art, Love, Revolution. A version of this essay appeared in Gavin Keeney, "Else-where": Essays in Art, Architecture, and Cultural Production 2002-2011 (CSP, 2011), pp. 285-306.

Diaristic, mixed notes on: John Ruskin's The Poetry of Architecture (1837) and Modern Painters (1885); Caravaggio, Victorian Aesthetes, G.K. Chesterton, and Tacita Dean; Jay Fellows' Ruskin’s Maze: Mastery and Madness in His Art (1981); Slavoj Žižek at Jack Tilton Gallery, New York, New York, USA, April 23, 2009, “Architectural Parallax: Spandrels and Other Phenomena of Class Struggle”; “Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese: Rivals in Renaissance Venice”, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts, USA, March 15-August 16, 2009; Janet Harbord, Chris Marker: La Jetée (...) (2009); The Politics of the Envelope, Princeton Envelope Group (PEG), ARC504, Princeton School of Architecture, Princeton, New Jersey, USA, Friday, May 8, 2009; Rhode Island School of Design, Degree Project Reviews, Division of Architecture & Design, Providence, Rhode Island, USA, May 16, 2009; etc. (shrink)

Essays and documents surveying the post-communist architectural scene in the Czech Republic. - 1/ “Wild & Wilder” (1997) – A brief travelogue with comments on Kew Gardens, London, and Mies van der Rohe’s Villa Tugendhat (1930), Brno. 2/ “Angel City” (1999) – A short report on Jean Nouvel’s Golden Angel office tower in Smíchov, Prague. 3/ “Read & Weep: Scandal in Bohemia” (1999) – Essay on post-communist machinations within the architectural scene in the Czech Republic, including reports on: Jean Nouvel’s (...) Angel City and its critics; charges of “lite (postmodern) neo-functionalism” here and there; a cooked “open” competition for a proposed Kupka museum in an old mill on the island of Kampa (in the Vltava); a tourist-dodging transit through Josip Plečnik’s gardens at Prague Castle; and stories and legends regarding the Star Pavilion and oak wood at White Mountain. 4/ “The Body of the City” (2001) – Critique of Richard Meier and Partners’ proposed ECM Radio Plaza, a series of towers meant to complete an unfinished, communist-era “Rockefeller Center” in the Pankrác district of Prague. 5/ “Gnomic Works: The Sculptural Works of Kurt Gebauer” (2002) – Essay on the sculpture of Czech artist Kurt Gebauer with images from his exhibition in Zlín in 2001. 6/ “House of the Wind: May Day” (2004) – Prose poem written on May Day 2004 regarding wandering around Olšanské hřbitovy, a mostly 19th-century cemetery in the Žižkov district of Prague. 7/ “Architectural Eyewash” (2004) – An essay surveying: various complaints within the Czech architectural community regarding an outbreak of “architectural eyewash” in the 2004 Chamber of Architects’ Grand Prix competition; rumors and innuendo regarding a proposed Kupka museum on Kampa; complaints about Daniel Libeskind’s proposed Dalí House, Prague; etc. 8/ “Moravian Shadows” (2004) – Essay on “cultural shadows” in the context of Czech architecture, with a nod to Nietzsches’ The Birth of Tragedy. 9/ The Near & The Far: Moravian Garden (2006) – Notes and discurses on a very small, yet “immense” South Moravian country garden in Skryje, Czech Republic. (shrink)

The study of cultural evolution has taken on an increasingly interdisciplinary and diverse approach in explicating phenomena of cultural transmission and adoptions. Inspired by this computational movement, this study uses Bayesian networks analysis, combining both the frequentist and the Hamiltonian Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) approach, to investigate the highly representative elements in the cultural evolution of a Vietnamese city’s architecture in the early 20th century. With a focus on the façade design of 68 old houses in Hanoi’s Old Quarter (...) (based on 78 data lines extracted from 248 photos), the study argues that it is plausible to look at the aesthetics, architecture, and designs of the house façade to find traces of cultural evolution in Vietnam, which went through more than six decades of French colonization and centuries of sociocultural influence from China. The in-depth technical analysis, though refuting the presumed model on the probabilistic dependency among the variables, yields several results, the most notable of which is the strong influence of Buddhism over the decorations of the house façade. Particularly, in the top 5 networks with the best Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC) scores and p<0.05, the variable for decorations (DC) always has a direct probabilistic dependency on the variable B for Buddhism. The paper then checks the robustness of these models using Hamiltonian MCMC method and find the posterior distributions of the models’ coefficients all satisfy the technical requirement. Finally, this study suggests integrating Bayesian statistics in the social sciences in general and for the study of cultural evolution and architectural transformation in particular. (shrink)

Among the extant masterworks of Roman art, there is probably none that has generated more scholarly debate than the Portland Vase over the interpretation of its elegant frieze. No fewer than forty-four different theories attempting to interpret the scenes on the vase have appeared in the last 400 years. In the main, the theories fall into two categories, those relating the frieze to Greek myth, and those linking the figures to Roman personages. Moreover, there is no consensus whether the frieze (...) is two separate scenes or one continuous story. The obstacle to interpreting the frieze is that all but one of the figures lack identifying attributes. This paper will demonstrate (1) that in lieu of standard iconography, a synthesis of visual and literary tropes in the form of hidden letters, that is, cryptograms, tells the viewer how to read the frieze; (2) that scene A of the frieze illustrates specifically lines 26-30 of Catullus 64 by visually rendering the epithets and tropes used in those lines; (3) that visual reproductions of other tropes in Catullus 64 further substantiate the relationship between frieze and poem; (4) that scene B of the frieze is an intentional aberration from the poem; (5) that there is a complex and unfinished interaction between scenes A and B which the viewer must complete; and (6) that in the final analysis, the frieze duplicates both the theme and central structure of Catullus 64.10 . (shrink)

What ends should designers pursue? To what extent should they care about the societal and environmental impact of their work? And why should they care at all? Given the key influence design has on the way people live their lives, designing is fraught with ethical issues. Yet, unlike education or nursing, it lacks widespread professional principles for addressing these issues. -/- Rooted in a communitarian view of design practice, this lively and accessible book examines design through the lens of professions, (...) offering a critical vision that enables practitioners, academics and students of design in all disciplines to reflect on the practice’s overarching purposes. Considering how these are connected to others' flourishing and moulded by community interactions, "The Goods of Design" argues for a practice-based approach to cultivate professional ethics; it provides a normative direction that can meaningfully guide professional design activity, both individually and collectively. The volume also looks into the implications work has for the designer's self-growth as a person, offering ways to discover and navigate the complex tensions between personal and professional life. (shrink)

On paper, ‘smart cities’ are an easy sell. Thanks to the transformative power of information and communication technologies (the much-vaunted ‘internet of things’), smart cities purport to offer managers and bureaucrats a more harmonious and efficient means of reducing traffic, managing assets, and increasing public safety. However, I am dubious of these utopian sentiments. Indeed, I argue that the benefits that smart cities purport to provide cohere poorly with a number of our shared phenomenological intuitions about the relationships(s) between authentic (...) experience and technologised society. While many of these intuitions are, strictly speaking, pseudo-problems, they deserve our attention. The belief that technologised urban spaces somehow corrode our potential for authentic experience is one that carries enormous power, as Charles Taylor argues, authenticity is nothing less than the contemporary moral ideal. Consequently, it indelibly colours the relationships that we forge with our artefacts. These issues will only grow more pressing as our ‘dumb cities’, already so opaque to experience, give way to hyper-technologised ‘smart cities’. -/- However, it is possible to design our way out of these pseudo-problems. Assuming we accept my argument that the distinction between authenticity and the device paradigm is premised upon a certain kind of category error, there is no categorical or definitional reason why it is not possible for urbanised, technologised spaces to feel authentic, whether by virtue of their aesthetic properties, or because they facilitate ‘authentic’ behaviour. Indeed, I argue that ‘inauthenticity’ is an aesthetic rather than an ontological category (much like ‘ugliness’, or ‘boring-ness’), with feelings of inauthenticity serving as evidence of a basic failure of design. Redressing these failures of design requires that we adopt a novel approach to the design and use of technical objects—and particularly when these objects are the almost invisible, semi-autonomous constituents of the ‘smart city’. Consequently, in the concluding analysis of the chapter I outline how the feeling of authenticity can be invoked in the smart city and, consequently, how these failures of design can be avoided. (shrink)

'The most famous of sanctuaries of Asclepius had their origin from Epidaurus’, Pausanias writes in his Hellados Periegesis (‘Description of Greece’). All across the Aegean and beyond, word of the salutary reputation of Epidaurian divinity had spread. And as tales of Epidaurus’ sanctuary of Asclepius travelled the lands and crossed the seas, so did the urge to ensure that the Epidaurian success formula was, as we say, coming soon to a place near you. So we know Epidaurus had managed to (...) make a name for itself: all the way from the Argolid Peninsula to Asia Minor and the shores of Northern Africa. But what exactly had led to its rise in prominence? What about Epidaurus allowed for it to transcend its local cult-status? And how did its celebrated reputation and meaning change across places and time? What, in other words, is the story of what is often simply referred to as the sanctuary of Asclepius at Epidaurus? (shrink)

Every art-work has a different perceptual aspect that is related to some issues such as aesthetic perception and knowledge of users. The important point is how users get that and the difference between architectural perception and users that is a controversial issue in modern architecture and cause disagreement between users and designers. According to the importance of vernacular architecture and the need to adapt to its pattern with modern architecture, this paper aimed to evaluate principles of visual Gestalt and aesthetics (...) between users and designers (non-experts and experts1) in the traditional live district in Dezful city in Iran. The methodology of this research is combined with descriptive-surveying methods and field and library studies. So, a semi-structural interview by using a targeted questionnaire was distributed to the experts and non-experts to quantify the differences, and by describing and analyzing these data by SPSS statistical software, the root of the differences between these groups was identified. Due to the analysis of the data, besides searching, studying, and being in that district, two types of questionnaires between users and designers have been used. The result of this study shows that in the ancient city of Dezful, the opinions of experts and users also differ in terms of aesthetic perception so that for users, shape, and context, and experts, symmetry is the first principle. So unexpectedly, it can be argued that sensible visual Gestalt principles, such as symmetry and closure for experts, are of the highest importance, while these principles are of less importance to the user group. The findings of this study made it possible to compare the views and opinions of people and experts. It makes clear the difference between the perception criteria of those who create the landscape and the people who are confronted with and live in the environment. (shrink)

In view of the current progress of what has been named the ‘visual turn’ or the ‘pictorial turn’,1 it is exciting to witness Sam Rose’s return to early aesthetic formalist-modernism, which was so passionate about the medium, its appearance, and visuality. Rose’s project shares a recent inclination to think anew the advent of aesthetic modernism.2 It is founded on the presumption that visual art ought to be – and actually has always been – theoretically subsumed under one meta-project. This meta-project (...) does not necessarily have a clear telos, but it does have a history. In support of this view, Rose appeals to Stanley Cavell’s claim that ‘only masters of a game, perfect slaves to that project, are in a position to establish conventions which better serve its essence. This is why deep revolutionary changes can result from attempts to conserve a project, to take it back to its idea, keep it in touch with its history’ (p. 155). According to Rose’s post-formalist view, the idea of art’s meta-project is the idea of form. (shrink)

Trees belong to humanity’s heritage, but they are more than that. Their loss, through catastrophic fires or under business-as-usual, is devastating to many forms of life. Moved by this fact, we begin with an assertion that heritage can have an active role in the design of future places. Written from within the field of architecture, this article focuses on structures that house life. Habitat features of trees and artificial replacement habitats for arboreal wildlife serve as concrete examples. Designs of such (...) habitats need to reflect behaviours, traditions and cultures of birds, bats, and other animals. Our narrative highlights the nonhuman aspect of heritage, seeking to understand how nonhuman stakeholders can act as users and consumers of heritage and not only as its constituents. Our working definition states that more-than-human heritage encompasses tangible and intangible outcomes of historical processes that are of value to human as well as nonhuman stakeholders. From this basis, the article asks how the established notions of heritage can extend to include nonhuman concerns, artefacts, behaviours and cultures. As a possible answer to this question, the hypothesis tested here is that digital information can (1) contribute to the preservation of more-than-human heritage; and (2) illuminate its characteristics for future study and use. This article assesses the potential of three imaging technologies and considers the resulting data within the conceptual framework of more-than-human heritage, illuminating some of its concrete aspects and challenges. (shrink)

The aim of the study is to develop theoretic and methodological recommendations and practical activities for the positive social, managerial, organizational and economic development of historical and cultural tourist destinations. In theoretical terms: the role of historical and cultural tourist destination in the development of the region has been established; the historical and cultural tourist destinations have been identified; the author’s classification of historical and cultural tourist destinations has been developed basing tourist visiting activeness; the author’s methodological approach to the (...) diagnosis and creating tools for development of historical and cultural tourist destinations, comprehensively taking into account resource and factor components, has been presented. In practical terms: variations of the activities aimed at the positive development of historical and cultural tourist destinations have been proposed; the description of measures aimed at the creation of a historical and cultural complex on the example of the designed historical and cultural complex “Stara Samar” has been given. The results of the study are applicable for a wide range of historical and cultural tourist attractions: territories, landscapes and elements of landscapes, historical settlements, parks, film studios, historical and cultural heritage sites, history and culture monuments, burial sites, places of worship, sites of social cultural infrastructure. The author’s recommendations provide obtaining commercial results and ensuring a social and cultural effect for businessmen, managers, local communities in the management of existing or in the creation of new historical and cultural tourist destinations. (shrink)

A pdf sample that contains the cover, contents page, preface and the back cover with endorsements and blurb.

The fourth of eight chapters from my recently published book "Grace and Gravity: Architectures of the Figure." The argumentation builds on terminology introduced in the first three chapters, the most important being the phased structure of the figure: prefiguration, figuration, and transfiguration. Also, the earlier developed interdependence of movement and standstill, which we find both in beauty and in grace, is here expanded in the relationship between the mineral, animal, and vegetable.

Les vertus de l’écrit sur l’oîkos (l’habitation chez les grecques) ou les récits du Domus (l’habitation chez les romains) et les conditions dont ces derniers leurs favorisent l’écriture posent l’hypothèse sur la nature des relations qui existent entre l'expérience de l’habiter et sa sémantique spatiale, l’écrit des philosophes contemporains dans ce domaine est, cependant convergeant vers un savoir qui s’articule au niveau de la configuration d’un seuil interprétatif très complexe. En effet, en tant que précurseurs dans la compréhension de la (...) demeure humaine, les philosophes s’interrogent souvent dans leurs écrits sur l’existence d’un réel concept de l’habiter, est-il marqué par une rupture entre sa conception architecturale et son instanciation physique ? Où peut-on distinguer l’écart qui réside entre la synchronie de la conception et la réalisation diachronique du projet architectural de l’habiter ? (shrink)

The post-conflict societies of Bosnia and Kosovo continue to be plagued by the deleterious effects of ethno-nationalism and ethnic enclaves. Unfortunately, this mix impedes both democracy and peace building within these Balkan countries. One way to promote such building is for these enclaves to collapse, thereby allowing multiethnic societies to develop. This essay proposes that enclaves be dealt with physically by ridding them of those evocative objects that help to create and maintain enclaves. By getting physical in this way, however, (...) we find ourselves in a dilemma, caught on the horns of legality and expediency. Yet there is a promising path between the horns that involves civic design. This essay offers a physicalist theory of managing these impediments to democracy and peace building, beginning with four hypotheses, followed by an abstraction and mathematization in the form of a matrix, a dilemma arising from these hypotheses, and possible solutions. (shrink)

A common understanding of the role of a game developer includes establishing (or at least partially establishing) what is interactively and perceptually available in (video)game environments: what elements and behaviors those worlds include and allow, and what is – instead – left out of their ‘possibility horizon’. The term ‘possibility horizon’ references the Ancient Greek origin of the term ‘horizon’, ὄρος (oros), which denotes a frontier – a spatial limit. On this etymological foundation, ‘horizon’ is used here to indicate the (...) spatial and operational boundaries that a (video)game environment affords its players. This book chapter discusses a particular feeling that emerge in relation to playful encounters with the ‘possibility horizons’ of videogames. I am referring here to the realization, as a player, that a game environment can be experientially exhausted and is, as such, ultimately banal. In other words, I will examine how our deliberate engagement with the interactive environments of digital games can trigger sensations that are analogous to what Romantic authors referred to as Weltschmerz (‘world-weariness’). (shrink)

Старовинним об’єктам, які створені давніми майстрами та демонструють колишні моди й технології, завжди гарантована увага нащадків. Що давніший об’єкт, то більше захоплення та інтерес він викликає. У центрі уваги статті – дерев’яна архітектура м. Чернігова ХІХ – початку ХХ ст., прикрашена різьбленням, яка представляє традиційну забудову міста в позаминулому столітті і є безсумнівною естетичною та художньою, а інколи – й історичною цінністю. У статті охарактеризовано стан, кількість та райони розташування в Чернігові дерев’яних будинків, що мають історико-культурну або естетичну цінність, порушено (...) питання щодо їх збереження, окреслено шляхи їх використання як туристичних ресурсів. -/- . (shrink)

Die Rezeption von Walter Benjamins Arbeiten ist von einer Paradoxie durchzogen: Obwohl Konsens darüber besteht, dass er seine Begriffe in ›enger Fühlung‹ mit dem jeweiligen Material entwickelt, werden seine Schriften häufig ohne ein eigenständiges Studium seiner Quellen gelesen, losgelöst vom jeweiligen Problem- und Debattenzusammenhang. Das verstärkt den Eindruck einer Esoterik seiner Texte und kann zu der Annahme verleiten, Benjamin entnehme Motive willkürlich aus seinem Material- und Quellenstudium und nutze sie als Vehikel eines an sich schwer in eine Tradition einzuordnenden Denkens. (...) Die Autorinnen und Autoren des vorliegenden Bandes legen das Gewicht auf Benjamins Material, sei es Literatur, Theater, Metaphysik, Rechts- und Moralphilosophie, Zeitschriftenprojekte, soziale Bewegungen oder Stadtarchitektur. Anhand von Texten unterschiedlicher Werkphasen untersuchen sie das Verhältnis von Material und Begriff aus beiden Blickrichtungen. Dieses Vorgehen ermöglicht es, auch Licht auf theoretische Beziehungen und Arbeitszusammenhänge zu werfen, die bisher eher unbeachtet blieben. (shrink)

As highlighted by the post-Cartesian discourse across philosophical schools, Western thought had been struggling for a long time with conceiving interconnectedness. The problematic of Western dualism is most apparent with the so-called mind-body problem, but the issue does not only relate to the separation of body and mind but also the separation of living beings from their environments. Asian philosophy, on the other hand, has had a long history of thinking relations. The paper argues that an architectural philosophy that is (...) open for a dialogue with Asian views would allow for a new approach to conceptualising the interconnectedness of minds, bodies, environments, and cultures. Linking Asian and Western aesthetics with a discourse on ecology, and setting it into dialogue with contemporary theories of architecture, the paper also refers to recent research on embodiment that is engaging from a new point of view with the natural sciences, and that appears to confirm positions of traditional Chinese philosophy. Reconsidering traditional Chinese art and aesthetics, the paper suggests, could initiate a new eco-poetic way of thinking the built environment and its design in favour of a future that is more than smart. (shrink)

Industrial heritage has become a very matter of debate among experts as the most significant reminder of the industrial era, it also is of great examples of 20th-century heritage. Nowadays, industrial heritage sites are suffering from intense physical conditions and are being intruded by massive economic projects since they are located in favorable places of towns and possess vast spaces. Conservation methods have mostly been limited to the surroundings of industrial heritage sites and have not considered the extended areas connected (...) to the site. The resolutions should be sought throughout these questions: How do outstanding values of an industrial heritage site affect its buffer zone mapping? Or what should a buffer zone map encompass to protect specific values of an industrial heritage site? During this research ample of evidence is seen which firstly depicts the appreciation of industrial heritage and the tendency to conserve them among the host countries. The main result concluded is a guideline based on the similarities and differences between various types of industrial heritage and their impacts on determining boundaries and zones. In case of increasing the number of case studies, the results of this paper can aid in charge organizations to take more effective measure in developing plans to determine boundaries and zones for different types of industrial heritage sites. The data gathered for this paper was collected through library resources about industrial heritage and basically from academic and universal management manuals of buffer zones. The information chiefly is adopted from registration files received by the world heritage committee of UNESCO. The method of this research is case study research and the method for analysis is descriptive-analytical. (shrink)

Through an interdisciplinary examination of sixteenth-century theatre, Visual Experiences in Cinquecento Theatrical Spaces studies the performative aspects of the early modern stage, paying special attention to the overlooked complexities of audience experience. Examining the period’s philosophical and aesthetic ideas about space, place, and setting, the book shows how artists consciously moved away from traditional representations of real spaces on stage, instead providing their audiences with more imaginative and collaborative engagements that were untethered by strict definitions of naturalism. In this way, (...) the book breaks with traditional interpretations of early modern staging techniques, arguing that the goal of artists in this period was not to cater to a single privileged viewer through the creation of a naturalistically unified stage but instead to offer up a complex multimedia experience that would captivate a diverse assembly of theatre-goers. (shrink)

Inclusive design prescribes addressing the needs of the widest possible audience in order to consider human differences. Taking differences seriously, however, may imply severely restricting “the widest possible audience”. In confronting this paradox, we investigate to what extent Rawls’ theory of justice as fairness applies to design. By converting the paradox into the question of how design can be fair, we show that the demand for equitability shifts from the design output to the design process. We conclude that the two (...) main questions about justice find application in design: the question about the standards of justice and the question about its metrics. We endorse a Rawlsian approach to the former, while some revision may be due regarding the latter. (shrink)

A recent version of the view that aesthetic experience is based in empathy as inner imitation explains aesthetic experience as the automatic simulation of actions, emotions, and bodily sensations depicted in an artwork by motor neurons in the brain. Criticizing the simulation theory for committing to an erroneous concept of empathy and failing to distinguish regular from aesthetic experiences of art, I advance an alternative, dynamic approach and claim that aesthetic experience is enacted and skillful, based in the recognition of (...) others’ experiences as distinct from one’s own. In combining insights from mainly psychology, phenomenology, and cognitive science, the dynamic approach aims to explain the emergence of aesthetic experience in terms of the reciprocal interaction between viewer and artwork. I argue that aesthetic experience emerges by participatory sense-making and revolves around movement as a means for creating meaning. While entrainment merely plays a preparatory part in this, aesthetic engagement constitutes the phenomenological side of coupling to an artwork and provides the context for exploration, and eventually for moving, seeing, and feeling with art. I submit that aesthetic experience emerges from bodily and emotional engagement with works of art via the complementary processes of the perception–action and motion–emotion loops. The former involves the embodied visual exploration of an artwork in physical space, and progressively structures and organizes visual experience by way of perceptual feedback from body movements made in response to the artwork. The latter concerns the movement qualities and shapes of implicit and explicit bodily responses to an artwork that cue emotion and thereby modulate over-all affect and attitude. The two processes cause the viewer to bodily and emotionally move with and be moved by individual works of art, and consequently to recognize another psychological orientation than her own, which explains how art can cause feelings of insight or awe and disclose aspects of life that are unfamiliar or novel to the viewer. (shrink)

This thesis presents a study of transcendent experiences — experiences of connection with something greater than oneself — focusing on what they are, how artefacts support them, and how design can contribute to that support. People often find such experiences transformative, and artefacts do support them — but the literature rarely addresses designing artefact support for TXs. This thesis provides a step toward filling that gap. The first phase of research involved the conduct and analysis of 24 interviews with adults (...) of diverse spiritual perspectives, using constructivist Grounded Theory methods informed by relevant literature and by studies performed earlier in the PhD programme. Analysis found that TXs proceed in three phases — creating the context, living the experience, integrating the experience — and that artefacts support two phases and people desire enhancements to all three. This TX framework supports and extends experience structures from the literature: it recognises the top-level categories as phases in a cycle where integration may alter future contexts, and it extends the structure of TX by incorporating the relationships of artefacts and of enhancement desires to the phases of these experiences. This extended structure constitutes a grounded theory of transcendent user experience. The second phase involved the design and conduct of three “Transcendhance” game workshops for enhancing transcendence, which incorporated themes from the grounded theory and aimed to elicit design ideas in an atmosphere of imagination, fun, and play. Participants sketched 69 speculative ideas for techno-spiritual artefacts, and analysis mapped them to TX phases and identified possible extensions inspired by relevant research. The great majority of ideas mapped to the phase Creating the Context, with very few mapping to Living the Experience, which suggests that context may be easier than lived experience to understand and address directly. This point is especially important for experiences such as TX that are tricky to define, impossible to arrange or anticipate, and thus unsuitable for straight-forward “classic” user experience methods. The final phase involved the elaboration of workshop ideas to explore the extension of design fiction for TUX. Analysis related design fiction to the TX phases and suggested features that affect design ideas’ potential for TUX design fiction. This phase ended with the proposal and analysis of three new forms of design fiction — extended imaginary abstracts, comparative imaginary abstracts, and design poetry — using workshop ideas to illustrate the forms, their construction and use, and their benefits to TUX design. Transcendhance workshops and TUX design fictions approach techno-spiritual design peripherally, “sneaking up” on lived experience by addressing context and enabling the consideration of ineffable experience through storytelling, metaphors, and oblique imagery. This thesis combines the grounded theory of transcendent user experience with the Transcendhance workshop process and new forms of design fiction, presenting peripheral design as a promising strategy for facilitating design to enhance transcendent experience. (shrink)

What can the creation of artificial habitats to replace old-growth forests tell us about the process, value and future of design? This chapter takes a concrete and provocative example and uses it to rethink design as a gradual, ecological action. To illustrate this understanding, the chapter begins with a description of a proposal to provide artificial habitats for wild animals such as birds, bats and invertebrates. The controversial idea to replace rapidly disappearing old-growth trees with artificial structures puts in doubt (...) habitual assumptions about the clients, procedures and goals of design. This example is of relevance to all design because the need to provide artificial habitats to nonhumans will be increasingly common under the influence of such phenomena as global warming or urbanisation. … The invention of artificial structures in place of natural habitats is described in this chapter as an incitement that highlights the need for further research into values, participants and methods of design. This discussion concludes with a proposal for an attitude of modesty in the face of increasingly overwhelming volumes of information as well as in the presence of an even greater ignorance about the futures of nondeterministic, volatile and incompletely controllable natural systems. The dilemma of design in these conditions is in the tension between its remit to act and the uncertainty that inescapably underlies any creative endeavour. (shrink)

Der Landschaftsarchitekt geht bei der Gestaltung von Landschaften immer wieder mit Natur um. Auf welche Weise soll er dies tun? Auf diese Frage gibt der vorliegende, naturethische Beitrag eine Antwort. Zunächst kläre ich, was das Tun des Landschaftsarchitekten ausmacht und was hier unter „Natur“ zu verstehen ist. Zweitens nenne ich drei Argumente dafür, dass der Landschaftsarchitekt Natur schützen soll: Das Existenzargument, das ästhetische Argument in empirisch-demokratischer Form und das pathozentrische Argument. Drittens untersuche ich, wie der Landschaftsarchitekt mit Natur umgehen soll, (...) falls er sie nicht schützen will oder kann, sondern in sie eingreifen will oder muss. Dabei zeigt sich, dass es verschiedene Kriterien zu berücksichtigen gilt, die miteinander auch in Widerspruch geraten können. Am Ende zeige ich, wie diese Widersprüche aufzulösen sind. (shrink)

A short position paper on how we can preemptively anticipate and design nanotechnology-safe futures.

Modernism has provided a strong case for technoprogressivism, innovation and speculation on future possibilities. However, drastic and often devastating consequences have followed modernism such as global warming and mass biodiversity loss. In Leonardo Caffo and Azzurra Muzzonigro’s new book, a case for posthumanism as a means for envisioning and rethinking futures studies is argued and practical means by which those futures can be realized are outlined.

The Tannhäuser Gate. Architecture in science fiction films of the second half of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century as a component of utopian and dystopian projections of the future. -/- The films of science fiction genre from the second half of the 20th and early 21st century contained many visions of the future, which were at the same time a reflection on the achievements and deficiencies of modern times. In 1960s, cinematographic works were dominated by optimism (...) and faith in the possibility of never-ending progress. The disappearance of political divisions between the blocs of states and the joint exploration of the cosmos was foreseen. The designers undertook cooperation with scientists, which manifested itself in showing cosmic constructions far exceeding the real technical capabilities. Starting from the 1970s, pessimism and the belief that the future will bring, above all, the intensification of negative phenomena of the present began to grow in films. Fears of the future were connected with indicating various possible defects and insoluble contradictions between them. When, therefore, some dystopian visions illustrated the threat of increase in crime, others depicted the future as saturated with state control mechanisms and the prevalence of surveillance. The fears shown on the screens were also aroused by the growth of large corporations, especially by their gaining political influence or staying outside the system of democracy. The authors of the films also presented their suspicions related to the creation of new types of weapons by corporations, the use of which might breach the current legal norms. Particular objections concerned research on biological weapons and the possible spread of lethal viruses. The development of robotics and research into artificial intelligence, which must have resulted in the appearance of androids and inevitable tensions in their relations with humans, also triggered fear. Another problem for film-makers has become hybrids that are a combination of people and electronic parts. Scriptwriters and directors likewise considered the development of genetic engineering, which led to the creation of mutant human beings. A number of film dystopias contemplated the possibility of the collapse of democratic systems and the development of authoritarian regimes in their place, often based on broad public support. This kind of dystopia also includes films presenting the consequences of contemporary hedonism and consumerism. The problem is, however, that works critical of these phenomena were themselves advertisements for attractive products. (shrink)

In der Architekturkritik finden sich oft ethische Bewertungen. Haben diese einen Einfluss auf den architektonischen Wert von Bauwerken? Und in welcher Beziehung steht der ethische Wert architektonischer Werke zu ihrem ästhetischen Wert? Ich verteidige die folgenden Antworten, die einen moderaten Moralismus mit Bezug auf Architektur definieren: Ein architektonisches Werk ist in manchen Fällen (1) architektonisch kritisierbar (oder lobenswert), insofern es ethische Mängel (oder Vorzüge) hat, (2) ästhetisch kritisierbar (oder lobenswert), insofern es ethische Mängel (oder Vorzüge) hat, und (3) ethisch kritisierbar (...) (oder lobenswert), insofern es ästhetische Mängel (oder Vorzüge) hat. (shrink)

Within dramatherapy and psychodrama, the term ‘de-roling’ indicates a set of activities that assist the subjects of therapy in ‘disrobing’ themselves from their fictional characters. Starting from the psychological needs and the therapeutic goals that ‘de-roling’ techniques address in dramatherapy and psychodrama, this text provides a broader understanding of procedures and exercises that define and ease transitional experiences across cultural practices such as religious rituals and spatial design. After this introductory section, we propose a tentative answer as to why game (...) studies and virtual world research largely ignored processes of ‘roling’ and ‘de-roling’ that separate the lived experience of role-play from our everyday sense of the self. The concluding sections argue that de-roling techniques are likely to become more relevant, both academically and in terms of their practical applications, with the growing diffusion of virtual technologies in social practices. The relationships we can establish with ourselves and with our surroundings in digital virtual worlds are, we argue, only partially comparable with similar occurrences in pre-digital practices of subjectification. We propose a perspective according to which the accessibility and immersive phenomenological richness of virtual reality technologies are likely to exacerbate the potentially dissociative effects of virtual reality applications. This text constitutes an initial step towards framing specific socio-technical concerns and starting a timely conversation that binds together dramatherapy, psychodrama, game studies, and the design of digital virtual worlds. (shrink)

Ludwig Wittgenstein famously declared that philosophy “ought really to be written only as a form of poetry,” and he even described the Tractatus as “philosophical and, at the same time, literary.” But few books have really followed up on these claims, especially as they relate to the special literary and artistic period in which Wittgenstein worked. This book offers the first collection to address the rich, vexed, and often contradictory relationship between modernism—the twentieth century’s predominant cultural and artistic movement—and Wittgenstein, (...) one of its preeminent and most enduring philosophers. In doing so it offers rich new understandings of both. Karen Zumhagen-Yekplé and Michael LeMahieu bring together scholars in both twentieth-century philosophy and modern literary studies to put Wittgenstein into dialogue with some of modernism’s most iconic figures, including Samuel Beckett, Saul Bellow, Walter Benjamin, Henry James, James Joyce, Franz Kafka, Adolf Loos, Robert Musil, Wallace Stevens, and Virginia Woolf. The contributors touch on two important aspects of Wittgenstein’s work and modernism itself: form and medium. They discuss issues ranging from Wittgenstein and poetics to his use of numbered propositions in the Tractatus as a virtuoso performance of modernist form; from Wittgenstein’s persistence metaphoric use of religion, music, and photography to an exploration of how he and Henry James both negotiated the relationship between the aesthetic and the ethical. -/- Covering many other fascinating intersections of the philosopher and the arts, this book offers an important bridge across the disciplinary divides that have kept us from a fuller picture of both Wittgenstein and the larger intellectual and cultural movement of which he was a part. (shrink)

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

The article devoted to one of the lesser-known monasteries of our country, the Saint-Dormition Cosmas male monastery located in the Alexandrovsky district of Vladimir region. On the basis of archival and published materials, the author considers the founding date of the monastery that varies in different lists of life of St. Cosmas of Yakhromsk. In addition, the author concludes that the miraculous finding of the Yakhromsk icon of the Blessed Virgin by St. Cosmas could happened twenty years earlier than it (...) is considered. That can also change the date of the founding of the monastery. In the article, the author studies the question of the origin of the St. Cosmas of Yakhromsk and concludes that St. Cosmas could be a relative of the Gur’evs-Sekerins, the famous Russian boyar family, which is among the ancestors of A. S. Pushkin. The author of the article also tells about the shrines of the Cosmas monastery and their fate nowadays. It is suggested that the Yakhromsk icon of the Blessed Virgin Mary that is currently kept in the Annunciation Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin could be the icon that was revealed to the St. Cosmas, with which he went to the Kiev-Pechersk monastery, where he was tonsured. If this assumption is true, the Image of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Yakhromsk described by the famous Russian art historian N.P. Kondakov in 1912 is a more recent copy of this icon. The author also gives a brief outline of the history of the monastery in pre-revolutionary and Soviet times and tells about Vladimir restorers, who saved the monastery from destruction in the 1960-1980s. At the end of the article, the author raises the question about the possibility of new archaeological study and scientific-based restoration of the Dormition Cathedral of the monastery including the restoration of its historical five-headed shape, which is typical to such monuments of the 17th century. (shrink)

This article is basically an artist's statement published in connection with a major interdisciplinary art project currently in development (completion date estimated to be 2020).

Although hypointellectuals have long been a part of our cultural landscape, it is in post-conflict societies, such as those in Bosnia and Kosovo, that there has arisen a strong need for a different breed of intellectual, one who is more than simply a social critic, an educator, a person of action, and a compassionate individual. Enter the non-partisan intellectual—the hyperintellectual. It is the hyperintellectual, whose non-partisanship is manifested through a reciprocating critique and defense of both the nationalist enterprise and strong (...) interventionism of the International Community, who strives to create a climate of understanding and to enlarge the moral space so as to reduce the divisiveness between opposing parties. It is in this way that the hyperintellectual acts as a catalyst for the creation of a democratic culture within the civil societies of Bosnia and Kosovo. (shrink)

Evidence affirms that aesthetic engagement patterns our movements, often with us barely aware. This invites an examination of pre-reflective engagement within cities and also aesthetic experience as a form of the pre-reflective. The invitation is amplified because design has political implications. For instance, it can draw people in or exclude them by establishing implicitly recognized public-private boundaries. The Value Sensitive Design school, which holds that artifacts embody ethical and political values, stresses some of this. But while emphasizing that design embodies (...) implicit values, research in this field lacks sustained attention to largely unconscious background biases or values, rooted in cultural attitudes and personal interests, that lead theorists and planners—often too narrowly—to promote design organized around specific values such as defensibility. In examining these points, I draw on J. J. Gibson, a central figure for some writing on aesthetics and cities, and whom pragmatists and phenomenologists in turn influenced. Taking a cue from pragmatists in particular, I argue Gibson’s perceptual theory of affordances entails a theory of values, meaning our perception and therewith movements are inherently value-based. I advocate design that accounts for relatively constantly held values such as safety, while also handling the vast pluralism that exists and not crushing the aesthetic vibrancy of city life. (shrink)

Self-reflexive videogames are videogames designed to materialize critical and/or satirical perspectives on the ways in which videogames themselves are designed, played, sold, manipulated, experienced, and understood as social objects. This essay focuses on the use of virtual worlds as mediators, and in particular on the use of videogames to guide and encourage reflections on technical, interactive, and thematic conventions in videogame design and development. Structurally, it is composed of two interconnected parts: -/- 1) In the first part of this essay, (...) I will discuss NECESSARY EVIL (Gualeni et al., 2013), an experimental videogame that I designed as a self-reflexive virtual artifact. With the objective of clarifying the philosophical aspirations of self-reflexive videogames – and in order to understand how those aspirations can be practically pursued – I will dissect and examine the design decisions that contributed to the qualities of NECESSARY EVIL as an example of “playable philosophy”. -/- 2) Taking off from the perspectives on self-reflexive videogames offered in the first part of the essay, the second half will focus on virtual worlds as viable mediators of philosophical thought more in general. In this section, I will argue that, both through the practice of game design and through the interactive experiences of virtual worlds, twenty-first century philosophers have the possibility to challenge the often-unquestioned understanding of written discourse as the only context in which philosophical thought can emerge and be developed. (shrink)

Problems and questions originally raised by Robert Nozick in his famous thought experiment ‘The Experience Machine’ are frequently invoked in the current discourse concerning virtual worlds. Having conceptualized his Gedankenexperiment in the early seventies, Nozick could not fully anticipate the numerous and profound ways in which the diffusion of computer simulations and video games came to affect the Western world. -/- This article does not articulate whether or not the virtual worlds of video games, digital simulations, and virtual technologies currently (...) actualize (or will actualize) Nozick’s thought experiment. Instead, it proposes a philosophical reflection that focuses on human experiences in the upcoming age of their ‘technical reproducibility’. -/- In pursuing that objective, this article integrates and supplements some of the interrogatives proposed in Robert Nozick’s thought experiment. More specifically, through the lenses of existentialism and philosophy of technology, this article tackles the technical and cultural heritage of virtual reality, and unpacks its potential to function as a tool for self-discovery and self-construction. Ultimately, it provides an interpretation of virtual technologies as novel existential domains. Virtual worlds will not be understood as the contexts where human beings can find completion and satisfaction, but rather as instruments that enable us to embrace ourselves and negotiate with various aspects of our (individual as well as collective) existence in previously-unexperienced guises. (shrink)

William Whewell’s work on historical science has received some attention from historians and philosophers of science. Whewell’s own work on the history of German Gothic church architecture has been touched on within the context of the history of architecture. To a large extent these discussions have been conducted separately. I argue that Whewell intended his work on Gothic architecture as an attempt to (help) found a science of historical architecture, as an exemplar of historical science. I proceed by analyzing the (...) key features of Whewell’s philosophy of historical science. I then show how his architectural history exemplifies this philosophy. Finally, I show how Whewell’s philosophy of historical science matches some developments in a science (biological systematics) that, in the mid-to latenineteenth century, came to be reinterpreted as a historical science. I comment briefly on Whewell as a potential influence on nineteenth century biology and in particular on Darwin. (shrink)

The objective of the paper is the methodological presentation of the basic principles towards a critical interdisciplinary approach for studying the history of monuments restoration, valid for different cultures. The proposed integrated framework offers the possibility to study and document monuments restoration in various spatial levels e.g. global, continental, international, national, regional, and local. The conceptual and methodological aspects are based on the following fundamental pillars a) the development of science and technology, including relevant history of education, b) the evolution (...) of the restoration philosophy, c) the incorporation of the above in restoration projects at a lower level, d) the infiltration of the above in restoration interventions at the lowest level. The author expects that the above successive and/or parallel levels of scientific branches can contribute effectively to the analysis, synthesis and comparative assessment of the aspects and criteria that influenced monuments restoration timeline. The challenge for the researcher of the monuments restoration history is the adjustment of the whole process to his own –under research- level in such a way as to take advantage of all theinterdisciplinary inputs creating, thus, inventive links and stimulating new information and knowledge. The above are briefly tested in the case study of Thessaloniki, Macedonia, Greece. Such an inductive approach will enable all disciplines to devote their finest efforts towards understanding, documenting and studying monuments restoration history and, thus, support effectively a sustainable future for the world’s cultural heritagel audience. (shrink)

Theory without concepts is blind. Concept without ideas is empty. Ideas lead a researcher to find some phenomenon. Certaintly, phenomenon isn’t come partially or separately. Every act, habit, mindset, and human behavior in everyday activity rise up categorization. The task of researcher is to find out that categorization. Behind that situation and absolutely when we involve with participant, sometimes we can’t avoid from our contruct of ideas or concepts. Sometimes between real context and research perspectives comes differing. So, the important (...) thing is how our theory can describe phenomenon and has clarity of definition in matter of terminology. (shrink)

El arte no es solamente una fuente inagotable de goce estético, es además una huella, una evidencia de nuestro pasado histórico. A partir del arte es posible remitirnos a nuestra raíz cultural, y es por eso que la obra artística constituye una parte importante del patrimonio de un pueblo. Es evidente el estrecho vínculo entre el patrimonio artístico y la identidad cultural; por eso es importante dar un justo valor a ese patrimonio que, a su vez, se reflejará en la (...) consolidación de una identidad propia. De esas expresiones tomamos únicamente las de la arquitectura de algunas iglesias barrocas. En ellas podemos notar una serie de variables del mestizaje cultural. La arquitectura del barroco novohispano, como uno de los lenguajes del arte, generó una reflexión sobre la identidad del individuo iberoamericano. (shrink)