60/ Ecologies of Architecture III: Futurity, PhD Seminar MMXVI

ABE 008

Advanced Architectural Theory Research Seminars

Ecologies of Architecture III: Futurity

Course data

• Course Code: ABE 008
• Name of Course: Advanced Architectural Theory Research Seminars
• Course Type: Advanced courses on a range of topics involving architectural/urban theory, philosophy, cultural analysis and science
• Number of Participants: 10-12 participants
• Course Load: Active period: 28 hours contact (seminar) plus 28 hours self-study (preparation)
• Credits (Graduate School credits): 4 GS credits
• Course Dates and Times: Spring 2016, Mondays 14:30-18:00 (see detailed schedule below)
• Coordinator: Dr.ir. Heidi Sohn (Theory Section)
• Lecturer: Dr.ir. Andrej Radman (Theory Section)
• Teching Assistant: ir. Stavros Kousoulas (Theory Section)
• E-mail Lecturer: a.radman@tudelft.nl

About the Lecturer

Andrej Radman has been teaching design studios and theory courses at TU Delft Faculty of Architecture and The Built Environment since 2004. In 2008 he was appointed Assistant Professor of Architecture and joined the teaching and research staff of the Delft School of Design (DSD). As a graduate of the Zagreb School of Architecture in Croatia, Radman received a Master's Degree with Honours and a Doctoral Degree from Delft University of Technology. His current research focuses on new materialism in general and radical empiricism in particular. Radman is a member of the National Committee on Deleuze Scholarship, and production editor and member of the editorial board of the peer-reviewed architecture theory journal Footprint. He is also a licensed architect with a string of awards from national competitions, including the Croatian Association of Architects annual award for housing architecture in Croatia in 2002.

Course Description

Advanced Research Seminars

New realism describes a philosophical stance
that designates the era after so-called postmodernity.

(M. Gabriel, Why The World Does Not Exist, 1)

The Theory Section (formerly DSD) of the Architecture Department is offering a new doctoral seminar, entitled ‘Advanced Architecture Theory Research Seminars’, to PhD candidates and advanced researchers affiliated with the Graduate School whose research topics relate to architectural and urban theory, philosophy, and contemporary concerns of spatial, social. cultural and scientific relevance to the disciplines of design. The course is framed within a fortnightly seminar structure in which participants will engage in guided readings and group-discussions on the thematic of each individual session. Ultimately the aim is to generate an intense research environment in which all participants will not only gain knowledge on a specific topic, but will also develop a set of useful methodological and research skills. The course was launched in Spring 2014 with the pilot seminar ‘Ecologies of Architecture’ under the guidance of Andrej Radman (Theory Section). ‘Ecologies of Architecture II’ in 2015 dealt with the Affective Turn (A. Radman and S. Kousoulas). ‘Ecologies of Architecture III’ will be devoted to the concept of Futurity.

Ecologies of Architecture III (Spring 2016): Futurity

The key error of Western thought has been transcendence. We begin from some term which is set against or outside life, such as the foundation of God, subjectivity or matter … Transcendence is just that which we imagine lies outside (outside thought or outside perception). Immanence, however, has no outside and nothing other than itself. … Deleuze argues for the immanence of life. The power of creation does not lie outside the world like some separate and judging God; life itself is a process of creative power … To think is not to represent life but to transform and act upon life.
(C. Colebrook, Understanding Deleuze, xxiv)

New Materialisms in general, and the Affective Turn in particular, seem to be gaining momentum to such an extent that even some of the scholars of this affiliation urge caution. As it happens, many a logocentric thinker has been unjustly turned into a straw person. However, as far as the discipline of architecture is concerned, this otherwise healthy dose of scepticism is not only premature but also counterproductive. Somewhat paradoxically, architecture has historically undergone a gradual disassociation from the material realm and become an ultimate white-collar profession. The consequent withdrawal from reality ("into itself") has been seen either as (bad) escapism or as a (good) strategy of resistance. The urge to ward off the givens and to continue to contemplate alternatives is most worthy. Especially in the light of the recent tendency to jump on the band wagon of ¥€$ (is more) "pragmatic yet utopian [sic] third way." Architects seem desperate in their effort to catch up with the media. The spearhead of critical theory in architecture Michael Hays laments how the most theoretically aware contemporary architects have unfortunately rejected what he sees as the most important operative concept of the theory of architecture at the moment of its re-foundation in the 1970s, namely autonomy. But idealist bracketing comes at a price. Architects might end up painting themselves into a corner of impotence by depriving themselves of the means to intervene which, after all, has always been the main trait of (any) materialism. Time is a cultural construct amongst humanists unable to deal with entropy. As Eugene Holland admits, "any [posthuman] postmodern Marxism worthy of the name will want to abandon teleology and adopt contingency and emergence as better paradigms for understanding history." The best strategy of resistance seems to lie not in opposition but in (strategic) affirmation. The recognition of the present-future relation provides a point of departure for an ecological account of anticipation and/or creation akin to Stengers’ thinking par le milieu. What defines the concept of futurity is the inseparability of the event and its environment. Futurity is a condition of the present; it is anti-utopianism par excellence.

Schedule

February 15, 2016 / 14:30-18:00 / 1+.Oost.860

Session 1: Introduction

Colebrook: Futures (2015)

/+ Smith: The New (2008)/

February 29, 2016 / 14:30-18:00 / 1+.Oost.860

Session 2: Logos Spermatikos

Foucault: Theatrum Philosophicum (1970)

/+ Deleuze: Simulacrum (1983)/

March 14, 2016 / 14:30-18:00 / 1+.Oost.860

Session 3: Sentience

Shaviro: Fictions and Fabulations (2015)

/+ Magnani: Abduction (2009)/

April 04, 2016 / 14:30-18:00 / 1+.Oost.860

Session 4: Extro-Science Fiction

Meillassoux: SF and XSF (2015)

/+ Murphie: Neuroscience (2010)/

April 25, 2016 / 14:30-18:00 / 1+.Oost.860

Session 5: Accelerationism

Noys: Architectures of Accelerationism (2015)

/+ MacCormack: Cosmogenesis (2013)/

May 09, 2016 / 14:30-18:00 / 1+.Oost.860

Session 6: Subjectification

Watson: Schizoanalysis as Metamodeling (2008)

/+ Guattari: Machinic Eros (2015)/

May 23, 2016 / 14:30-18:00 / 1+.Oost.860

Session 7: Nomadic Ethics

Braidotti: Becoming Imperceptible (2006)

/+ Ansell-Pearson: Nietzsche (2010)/

June 06, 2016 / 14:30-18:00 / 1+.Oost.860

Session 8: Conclusion

Massumi: Like a Thought (2002)

/+ Illiadis: Simondon (2013)/

Learning Objectives

In a desperate attempt to catch up with forms of contemporary image culture, architects tend to forget where their strength lies. To speak of culture as forms of life, as Scott Lash argues, is to break with earlier notions of culture as representation, as reflection. It is to break with judgement for experience, with epistemology for ontology, and finally to break with a certain type of cognition for living. While accepting multiple scales of reality the Ecologies of Architecture opposes the alleged primacy of the ‘physical’ world discovered by physics. By contrast, it posits that what we have to perceive and cope with is the world considered as the environment. The emphasis is on the encounter, where experience is seen as an emergence which returns the body to a process field of exteriority. The ultimate goal of the Ecologies of Architecture is to debunk hylomorphism - where form is imposed upon inert matter from without and where the architect is seen as a god-given, inspired creator and genius – and to promote the alternative morphogenetic approach that is at once more humble and ambitious. Action and perception are inseparable at the ‘mesoscale’ which is commensurate with life. In other words, if the objects of knowledge are separated from the objects of existence, we end up with a duality of mental and physical objects that leads to an ontologically indirect perception. By contrast, the premise of the Ecologies of Architecture is that perceptual systems resonate to information. This ‘direct realism’ is grounded on the premise that, from the outset, real experience is a relation of potential structure – distribution of the sensible - rather than a formless chaotic swirl onto which structure must be imposed by cognitive process. The world is seen as an ongoing open process of mattering, where meaning and form are acquired in the actualisation of different agential virtualities. Following Deleuze's argument, it is possible to assert that the genetic principles of sensation are thus at the same time the principles of composition of the work of art(efact).

At the conclusion of each seminar / course the participants will have:

•   gained knowledge and understanding on the specific thematic and context of each seminar (content-based)

•   associated the contents of the seminar to his or her own research topic, expressing this relationship in concrete, relevant ways (argument-based)

•   developed skills relevant to carrying out advanced research: from following intensive readings and discussing them in a peer work-group, to preparing an academic research paper for publication (method-based)

Teaching Method

This course will follow a seminar structure and advanced research methods. Depending on the individual seminar leaders, the seminar will follow a series of formats, but generally will be based on fortnightly research output presentations, followed by a discussion on sources, references and bibliographies, which will involve the creation of an information nexus for the seminar discussions. The ultimate goal of each seminar is to assist the participants to develop reasoned and convincing argument, as well as to develop scholarly research papers for publication.

Required Reading

Braidotti, Rosi, “The ethics of Becoming Imperceptible” in Deleuze and Philosophy, ed. Constantin Boundas (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2006), pp. 133-159.

Colebrook , Claire, “Futures” (2015), unpublished paper.

Foucault, Michel, "Theatrum Philosophicum" in Critique, (No. 282, 1970), pp 885-908., .

Massumi, Brian, “Introduction: Like a Thought” in A Shock to Thought: Expressionism After Deleuze and Guattari, ed. Brian Massumi (London: Routledge, 2002), pp. xiii-xxxix.

Meillassoux, Quentin, Science Fiction and Extro-Science Fiction, trans. Alyosha Edlebi (Minneapolis: Univocal Publishing 2015), pp. 3-57.

Noys, Benjamin, “Architectures of Accelerationism”, ‘History and Critical Thinking Debates: Locating the Politics of Architecture Series’, Architectural Association School of Architecture (20 February 2015), .

Shaviro, Steven, “Fictions and Fabulations of Sentience: Introduction” (2015), Draft Introduction to Discognition: Fictions and Fabulations of Sentience (Forthcoming), .

Watson, Janell, “Schizoanalysis as Metamodeling”, Fibreculture 12, Metamodels (2008), .

Recommended Reading

Ansell-Pearson, Keith, “On the Miscarriage of Life & the Future of the Human: Thinking beyond the Human Condition with Nietzsche”, Nietzsche Studien 29, ed. Walter de Gruyter (2010), pp. 153-177.

Deleuze, Gilles, “Plato and the Simulacrum”, trans. Rosalind Krauss, October 27 (Winter, 1983), pp. 45-56.

Guattari, Félix, “Translocal: Tetsuo Kogawa interviews Félix Guattari” in Machinic Eros: Writings On Japan, eds. Gary Ganosko and Jay Hetrick (Minneaoilis: Univocal, 2015), pp. 17-41.

Illiadis, Andrew, “A New Individuation: Deleuze’s Simondon Connection@, Media Tropes eJournal IV/1 (2013), pp. 83-100, .

MacCormack, Patricia, “Cosmogenic Acceleration: Futurity and Ethics”, e-flux journal 46 (June 2013), pp. 1-8., < http://www.e-flux.com/issues/46-june-2013/>.

Magnani, Lorenzo, “Chapter 6: Abduction, Affordances, and Cognitive Niches” in Abductive Cognition: the Epistemological and Eco-Cognitive Dimensions of Hypothetical Reasoning (Berlin Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, 2009), pp. 317-359.

Murphie, Andrew, “Deleuze, Guattari, and Neuroscience” in Deleuze, Science and the Force of the Virtual, ed. Peter Gaffney (Minneapolis: Minnesota UP, 2010), pp. 330-367.

Smith, Daniel W, “Deleuze and the Production of the New” in Deleuze, Guattari and the Production of the New, eds. Simon O’Sullivan and Stephen Zepke (London and New York: Continuum, 2008), pp. 151-161.