Architecture As Agency

WOMANIST THEOLOGY is a form of reflection that places the religious and moral perspectives of Black women at the center of its method. Issues of class, gender (including sex, sexism, sexuality, and sexual exploitation), and race are seen as theological problems. Womanist theology takes old (traditional) religious language and symbols and gives them new (more diverse and complex) meaning. This form of theological reflection cannot be termed "womanist" simply because the subject is Black women's religious experiences. The key for womanist theology is the use of an interstructured analysis employing class, gender, and race. This kind of analysis is both descriptive (an analysis and sociohistorical perspective of Black life and Black religious worldviews) and prescriptive (offering suggestions for the eradication of oppression in the lives of African Americans and, by extension, the rest of humanity and creation). A key feature of womanist theology is its evolving characte...

WOMANIST THEOLOGY is a form of reflection that places the religious and moral perspectives of Black women at the center of its method. Issues of class, gender (including sex, sexism, sexuality, and sexual exploitation), and race are seen as theological problems. Womanist theology takes old (traditional) religious language and symbols and gives them new (more diverse and complex) meaning. This form of theological reflection cannot be termed "womanist" simply because the subject is Black women's religious experiences. The key for womanist theology is the use of an inter-structured analysis employing class, gender, and race. This kind of analysis is both descriptive (an analysis and sociohistorical perspective of Black life and Black religious worldviews) and prescriptive (offering suggestions for the eradication of oppression in the lives of African Ameri-cans and, by extension, the rest of humanity and creation). A key feature of womanist theology is its evolving charac...

There is no doubt that the role of product designers has changed considerably, not least with the rise of human-centred design. While Papanek’s 1971 “Design for the Real World: Human Ecology and Social Change” seemed radical at the time, his ideas seem entirely at home in the 21 century, including his call to adopt more social responsibility in design. These views are echoed in the contemporary findings of professionals and researchers associated with ICSID, the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design. The focus has shifted, from the designer as the expert to the user, or community, as the expert in their own environment; and Co-design, Participatory design, and Universal Design are but a few examples of such people-focussed design approaches. And, as design is increasingly used as a tool for social development, the exposure of designers to vulnerable individuals and communities has increased. While research fields such as the social sciences have a long history of d...

Een eenvoudige zoektocht naar "Social Design" via Google levert een paar honderd miljoen resultaten op. De invulling van de term sociaal design is al even divers te noemen. De verschillende definities gaan nu eens sterker in op het sociaal aspect (design als driver for change), het mediatechnologisch aspect (een ontwerpmethode voor online genetwerkte omgevingen) of een ecologische insteek (waarbij sustainability en ecologisch ontwerpen centraal staan). In de onderzoeksgroep Social Spaces (Media & Design Academie, Genk, KULeuven) is sociaal design de methodologie waar het merendeel van de onderzoeksprojecten op steunt. Social Spaces tracht het sociale karakter van media, kunst en design te verkennen. Ons begrip van sociaal design is gebaseerd op een technologische, sociale en culturele invalshoek, vertrekt van een multidisciplinair team en ziet een ontwerp niet als eindig, maar als iets dat open en uitdagend is, een risky thing.

This chapter attests to the antiquity of architecture’s practical and poetic involvement with justice by describing three ancient Greek plays in which ‘architects’ figure into the dramatization of just acts. The plays to be discussed include: Aeschylus’ fragmentary Dikē Play, Aristophanes’ comedy Peace, and Euripides’ satyr play Cyclops.

This paper explores the notion of ethics in the built environment, and professional accountability, topics which are generally sidelined or given little direct consideration in teaching and practice. However, this status quo is increasingly being questioned. Built environment educators and practitioners need now to develop the intellectual and skill resources to address new questions, formulate a position, and set guidelines to be able to incorporate and make these 'measurable' in the performance of educators and practitioners, and for achieving a level of accountability.

The paper will present the general development of definitions in the field of ethics. It will then focus on architecture, where ethical considerations may have spatial implications, as spatial characteristics are a reflection of thinking on opportunity, access and equity.

These concepts are at the core of the University of Johannesburg's UJ_UNIT2, Architecture and Agency: Design, Make, Transform. UJ_UNIT2 aims to explore the boundaries between architecture and planning, building and city, and architecture and infrastructure. At its core, UJ_UNIT2 is essentially about people, wherein the built environment functions as a 'mediator' and 'interface' between individual and collective needs.

The following essay sketches varieties of imagination operative in the best architectural work. It was published in Warehouse Journal, a student-edited journal produced annually by the Faculty of Architecture, University of Manitoba. Student editors for Warehouse 25 were, Alena Rieger and Ally Pereira-Edwards.

"This paper argues for a pre-theoretical and pro-theatrical understanding of theory. To begin, it considers the Greek tradition of theōria as practiced around the fifth century BCE in the period just before Plato appropriated the cultural practice of theōria as a model for philosophical inquiry. As will be shown, this proto-philosophical practice of theōria was profoundly theatrical, which is to say, spectacular and dramatic in social, situational, and symbolic ways. Such events of theōria involved diverse citizens participating as active witnesses in recurring festivals that had both intimate and far-reaching political, religious, and aesthetic significance. Reflecting on some present-day settings and occasions for practicing theory, this paper concludes with a disciplinary provocation: the re-engagement of theōria’s fundamental theatricality can reanimate the social, situational, and symbolic dimensions of architectural theory, without sacrificing either its relative independence or its capacity for heuristic wonder.
      Before theory was a thing, it was a practice. In ancient Greece theōria was a spatiotemporal practice thoroughly intertwined with socio-political experiences and endeavors. The cultural practice of theōria involved traveling to a foreign place, primarily for the sake of witnessing a spectacular festival and/or consulting an oracle, then returning home to share with others an account of events seen and understandings gained. All three stages of theōria – traveling, spectating, and returning with a report – were vitally important. Individuals would temporarily leave behind the familiarity of their local conditions, assumptions, and problems to immerse themselves in intensely social, synesthetic, and metaphysical encounters at a Panhellenic festival. They would then return home with the obligatory challenge of communicating the truth of what was witnessed to those who stayed behind...." — Lisa Landrum

In architectural design studio’s, we necessarily -and willingly- make abstraction of reality. During design processes and as end results students mostly produce representations of architectural intentions: drawings, models and texts. These processes serve as simulations of “real” architectural design processes. However useful this educational method has proven to be, it disadvantages and excludes topics that have become increasingly relevant in today’s everyday life and/or in contemporary architectural practice.

This method inevitably reduces complexities. The environment is often trimmed down to only the physical surroundings: social, economic and cultural factors are easily neglected. Also the experiential dimension of built architecture is oversimplified by avoiding a real-life confrontation of architecture and its users in all its complexity and ambiguous, conflicting diversity.
Making abstraction of reality in design processes demands problem-solving, deterministic strategies and consolidates the position of students/architects as knowing experts. It leaves little room for conflicts and contradictions, doesn’t allow for multiple truths to exist simultaneously, and doesn’t cope with changing and uncertain dynamics. Consequently, skills and competences such as negotiating, facilitating and aptly responding to uncertain, changing conditions are neglected.
Representations by students do not represent a future reality but mainly communicate intentions. Everything that falls in the gap between intentions and reality -such as unexpected findings, unforeseen (dis)advantages, accidental qualities- is lost.

In 2013, a master-studio architecture started at the Antwerp University that aims to explicitly deal with these topics. It confronts students with the diverse complexities and dynamics of contemporary (architectural) reality, stimulates them to rethink and experiment with design methods, and question the role of architecture -and of the architect- in contemporary society.
Actually building architectural designs made by students for educational purposes would obviously be too expensive and time-consuming. So a laboratory situation had to be created, analogue to architecture but cheaper, faster and more flexible. The idea was to reduce the scale of a usual master-project in favour of heightened complexity by designing and building temporary constructions on a 1:1 scale. These architectural installations can simulate architecture in a compact, condensed fashion and as such offer freedom to experiment.

Six master-students have started working last October in two groups of three students each on different projects, according to personal interests. They both aim to build a construction in public space in Antwerp in May 2014.
One group is researching how bodily perception of architectural space through movement can lead to new focusses in the architectural discipline, especially concerning design-methodologies and the position/role of the designer. They have formed a design-collective with several professional dancers and a filmmaker. Through collective workshops they are experimenting with design-strategies and looking for alternative dynamic subject-oriented criteria as a basis of architectural design.
The other group is researching how architecture can serve as a socio-cultural agent. They are working with a class of new -some illegal- immigrant youngsters (OKAN: Onthaal-Klas-Anderstalige-Nieuwkomers). These students are exploring the boundaries of architecture concerning social, intercultural and political impact, with a special focus on communication as an essential part of the design-process.

The elaborate Major sakkos of Metropolitan Photios of Russia (1408-31) is one of the finest surviving examples of medieval liturgical vestments.  In this paper, the shape, architectonics, and decoration of this canopy-like object is compared to the church and to the holy tent known from Mosaic traditions, thereby raising questions of materiality and conceptual framing of the sacred.  By analyzing ritual performance within a Byzantine-rite church and practices of defining sacred space with specific materials, this paper suggests the transferability of the architectonics of textile and masonry canopies into sakkos.  When Metropolitan Photios wore this conspicuously superb “garment of glory and beauty,” he reenacted the “living icon of Christ,” Jesus as the High Priest, and His mystical re-birth in the sanctuary.  Within this “spatial living icon,” the sakkos framed the ritual and spiritual transformation of the human body as well as the dynamics within the performative spaces of God’s manifestations.

This paper reflects on the role of computation in speculative design. It suggests that found, unexpected traces of computational processes can amplify designers’ imagination. This theme is considered through a reflection on a practical workflow that pays close attention to the artifacts of algorithmically generated mesh geometries. The resulting interpretation of found artifacts as active participants in design processes is innovative in the field where computational objects (such as meshes) are typically thought of as neutral tools. Reconsideration of meshes as objects with agency can be extended to other computational entities, resulting in significant implications for design thinking and design craftsmanship.

The task of architecture is usually understood as an aesthetic or utilitarian endeavor; my study of the ethical approach provides an expanded perspective.  Drawing from Karsten Harries’ The Ethical Function of Architecture, I argue that architecture presents interpretations of an ethos for a specific time and place.  Architecture’s ethical task can be performed by moral agents who interpret the built environment according to their community’s ethos and Christian conceptions of justice and human flourishing. Interpreters should assess whether architectural projects support justice and liberation goals as these interpreters respond to contextual and normative questions about their communities and specific buildings.  In the presentation of this paper, I use images from the US Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. to demonstrate how an interpreter would critique an architectural work in this way, determining if their built environment interprets an appropriate community ethos and serves the common good.