Mapping Controversies in Architecture

Mapping Controversies in Architecture PDF

Author: Albena Yaneva

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-05-13

Total Pages: 144

ISBN-13: 131710093X

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The book tackles a number of challenging questions: How can we conceptualize architectural objects and practices without falling into the divides architecture/society, nature/culture, materiality/meaning? How can we prevent these abstractions from continuing to blind architectural theory? What is the alternative to critical architecture? Mapping controversies is a research method and teaching philosophy that allows divides to be crossed. It offers a new methodology for following debates surrounding contested urban knowledge. Engaging in explorations of on-going and recent controversies and re-visiting some well-known debates, the analysis foregrounds, traces and maps the changing sets of positions triggered by design: the 2012 Olympics stadium in London, the Welsh parliament in Cardiff, the Heathrow airport runway extension, the Sydney Opera House, the Eiffel Tower. By mobilizing digital technologies and new computational design techniques we are able to visualize the variety of factors that impinge on design and track actors' trajectories, changing groupings, concerns and modalities of action. The book places architecture at the intersection of the human and the nonhuman, the particular and the general. It allows its networks to be re-established and to run between local and global, social and technical. Mapping controversies can be extrapolated to a wide range of complex phenomena of hybrid nature.

Mapping Controversies in Architecture

Mapping Controversies in Architecture PDF

Author: Professor Albena Yaneva

Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published: 2013-06-28

Total Pages: 148

ISBN-13: 1409482987

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The book tackles a number of challenging questions: How can we conceptualize architectural objects and practices without falling into the divides architecture/society, nature/culture, materiality/meaning? How can we prevent these abstractions from continuing to blind architectural theory? What is the alternative to critical architecture? Mapping controversies is a research method and teaching philosophy that allows divides to be crossed. It offers a new methodology for following debates surrounding contested urban knowledge. Engaging in explorations of on-going and recent controversies and re-visiting some well-known debates, the analysis foregrounds, traces and maps the changing sets of positions triggered by design: the 2012 Olympics stadium in London, the Welsh parliament in Cardiff, the Heathrow airport runway extension, the Sydney Opera House, the Eiffel Tower. By mobilizing digital technologies and new computational design techniques we are able to visualize the variety of factors that impinge on design and track actors' trajectories, changing groupings, concerns and modalities of action. The book places architecture at the intersection of the human and the nonhuman, the particular and the general. It allows its networks to be re-established and to run between local and global, social and technical. Mapping controversies can be extrapolated to a wide range of complex phenomena of hybrid nature.

Five Ways to Make Architecture Political

Five Ways to Make Architecture Political PDF

Author: Albena Yaneva

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2017-05-18

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13: 1474252362

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Five Ways to Make Architecture Political presents an innovative pragmatist agenda that will inspire new thinking about the politics of design and architectural practice. Moving beyond conventional conversations about design and politics, the book shows how recent developments in political philosophy can transform our understanding of the role of the architect. It asks: how, when, and under what circumstances can design practice generate political relations? How can architectural design become more 'political'? Five central chapters, which can be read alone or in sequence, explore the answers to these questions. Powerfully pragmatic in approach, each presents one of the 'five ways to make architecture political', and each is illustrated by case studies from a range of contemporary situations around the world. We see how politics happens in architectural practice, learn how different design technologies have political effects, and follow how architects reach different publics, trigger reactions and affect different communities worldwide. Combining an accessible introduction to contemporary political concepts with a practical approach for a more political kind of practice, this book will stimulate debate among students and theorists alike, and inspire action in established and start-up practices.

The Image of the City

The Image of the City PDF

Author: Kevin Lynch

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 1964-06-15

Total Pages: 212

ISBN-13: 9780262620017

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The classic work on the evaluation of city form. What does the city's form actually mean to the people who live there? What can the city planner do to make the city's image more vivid and memorable to the city dweller? To answer these questions, Mr. Lynch, supported by studies of Los Angeles, Boston, and Jersey City, formulates a new criterion—imageability—and shows its potential value as a guide for the building and rebuilding of cities. The wide scope of this study leads to an original and vital method for the evaluation of city form. The architect, the planner, and certainly the city dweller will all want to read this book.

Latour for Architects

Latour for Architects PDF

Author: Albena Yaneva

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2022-03-30

Total Pages: 180

ISBN-13: 1000546543

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Bruno Latour is one of the leading figures in Social Sciences today, but his contributions are also widely recognised in the arts. His theories ‘flourished’ in the 1980s in the aftermath of the structuralism wave and generated new concepts and methodologies for the understanding of the social. In the past decade, Latour and his Actor-Network Theory (ANT) have gained popularity among researchers in the field of architecture. Latour for Architects is the first introduction to the key concepts and ideas of Bruno Latour that are relevant to architects. First, the book discusses critically how specific methods and insights from his philosophy can inspire new thinking in architecture and design pedagogy. Second, it explores examples from architectural practice and urban design, and reviews recent attempts to extend the methods of ANT into the fields of architectural and urban studies. Third, the book advocates an ANT-inspired approach to architecture, and examines how its methodological insights can trace new research avenues in the field, reflecting meticulously on its epistemological offerings. Drawing on many lively examples from the world of architectural practice, the book makes a compelling argument about the agency of architectural design and the role architects can play in re-ordering the world we live in. Following Latour’s philosophy offers a new way to handle all the objects of human and nonhuman collective life, to re-examine the role of matter in design practice, and to redefine the forms of social, political and ethical associations that bind us together in cities.

Architectural Anthropology

Architectural Anthropology PDF

Author: Marie Stender

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-07-20

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 1000398382

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This book prompts architects and anthropologists to think and act together. In order to fully grasp the relationship between human beings and their built environments and design more livable and sustainable buildings and cities in the future, we need new cross-disciplinary approaches combining anthropology and architecture. This is neither anthropology of architecture, nor ethnography for architects, but a new approach beyond these positions: Architectural Anthropology. The anthology gathers contributions from leading researchers from various Nordic universities, architectural schools, and architectural firms as well as prominent international scholars like Tim Ingold, Albena Yaneva, and Sarah Pink – all exploring, developing, and innovating the cross-disciplinary field between anthropology and architecture. Several contributions are co-written by architects and anthropologists, merging approaches from the two disciplines in order to fully explore the dynamics of lived space. Through a broad range of empirical examples, methodological approaches, and theoretical reflections, the anthology provides inspiration and tools for scholars, students, and practitioners working with lived space. The first part focusses on homes, walls, and boundaries, the second on urban space and public life, and the third on processes of creativity, participation, and design.

Architecture after Covid

Architecture after Covid PDF

Author: Albena Yaneva

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2022-12-29

Total Pages: 193

ISBN-13: 1350271098

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As the COVID-19 pandemic began to unfold in 2020, the lives of billions across the world were transformed. Marching across continents, the invisible killer caused unprecedented disruption worldwide, leading architects and designers to rethink how to design cities and adapt their practice so that we might continue to live together in the future. Architecture after COVID is the first book to explore the pandemic's transformative impacts upon the architectural profession. It raises new questions about the intertwined natures of architectural production, science, society, and spatial practice – questions which had lain latent in the profession for years, but which the COVID pandemic brought to the fore. The book explores how the pandemic modified the spatial conventions of everyday life in the city, and looks in detail at how it has transformed building typologies. It also shows how the continuing risk of pandemics leads us to rethink the social dimension of architecture and urban design; and ultimately proposes a radical re-evaluation of the conditions of architectural practice – making a compelling argument about the changing agency of architectural design and the importance of designers in re-ordering the post-pandemic world. Packed with interviews and case-studies from a wide range of contemporary design practices, Architecture after COVID will inspire debates among architectural practitioners and theorists alike. The broad view of the approach and the depth of the professional issues at stake mean that this book will offer key insights for the discipline long beyond the scope of the COVID pandemic – as it explores the long-lasting bond between city, science and society as the 'new normal' begins to emerge.

Digital Methods

Digital Methods PDF

Author: Richard Rogers

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2015-08-21

Total Pages: 281

ISBN-13: 026252824X

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A proposal to repurpose Web-native techniques for use in social and cultural scholarly research. In Digital Methods, Richard Rogers proposes a methodological outlook for social and cultural scholarly research on the Web that seeks to move Internet research beyond the study of online culture. It is not a toolkit for Internet research, or operating instructions for a software package; it deals with broader questions. How can we study social media to learn something about society rather than about social media use? Rogers proposes repurposing Web-native techniques for research into cultural change and societal conditions. We can learn to reapply such “methods of the medium” as crawling and crowd sourcing, PageRank and similar algorithms, tag clouds and other visualizations; we can learn how they handle hits, likes, tags, date stamps, and other Web-native objects. By “thinking along” with devices and the objects they handle, digital research methods can follow the evolving methods of the medium. Rogers uses this new methodological outlook to examine such topics as the findings of inquiries into 9/11 search results, the recognition of climate change skeptics by climate-change-related Web sites, and the censorship of the Iranian Web. With Digital Methods, Rogers introduces a new vision and method for Internet research and at the same time applies them to the Web's objects of study, from tiny particles (hyperlinks) to large masses (social media).

The Making of a Building

The Making of a Building PDF

Author: Albena Yaneva

Publisher: Peter Lang

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 9783039119523

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Drawing on rare ethnographical material of architects at work at the Office for Metropolitan Architecture of Rem Koolhaas in Rotterdam in the period 2001-2004, this text offers a novel account of the social and cognitive complexity of architecture in the making.

New Geographies

New Geographies PDF

Author: Stephen Ramos

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2009-09

Total Pages: 152

ISBN-13: 9781934510131

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New Geographies journal aims to examine the emergence of the “geographic,” a new but for the most part latent paradigm in design today—to articulate it and to bring it to bear effectively on the social role of design. Although much of the analysis of this context in architecture, landscape, and urbanism derives from social anthropology, human geography, and economics, the journal aims to extend these arguments to the impact of global changes on the spatial dimension, whether in terms of the emergence of global spatial networks, global cities, or nomadic practices, and how these inform design practices today. Through essays and design projects, the journal aims to identify the relationship between the very small and the very large, and intends to open up discussions on the expanded role of the designer, with an emphasis on disciplinary reframings, repositionings, and attitudes.