Architecture and Philosophy: Reflections on Arakawa and Gins

Authors

  • Jondi Keane
  • Evan Selinger

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7480/footprint.2.2.691

Abstract

This essay is a critical review of a recent Arakawa and Gins conference – an event that brought phenomenology and architecture into productive dialog through the advancement of interdisciplinary inquiry into the subtle and complex ways that embodied activity structures cognition and perception. To provide the reader with sufficient context to appreciate the ensuing discussion of Arakawa and Gins’s concepts and hypotheses, we open with an overview of their previous collaborations. We then transition to analysis of a unique installation called 'Reading Room', and, immediately afterwards, provide exegetical commentary on select conference presentations. This commentary emphasizes phenomenological perspectives, especially ideas that Don Ihde and Shaun Gallagher conveyed. We conclude by outlining some of the most promising horizons of thought that the conference brought to our consideration.

Author Biographies

Jondi Keane

Jondi Keane is an arts practitioner and critical thinker and Senior Lecturer at Griffith University in Australia. Over the last 25 years, Dr. Keane has exhibited, performed and published in the USA, UK, Europe and AUS. His multidisciplinary research on embodiment has taken the form of the publication of essay in Janus Head Issue 9.2, 2007, the current issue of Ecological Psychology Journal, forthcoming volumes Deleuze: Image and Text and Arakawa and Gins: Philosophy and Architecture and a collection on applying practice-led research - as well as producing creative outcomes such as the READING ROOM installation at the Slought Foundation/ UPenn, April 2008 and Tuning Fork performances at Judith Wright Centre for Contemporary Art, Nov. 2008. Dr. Keane is currently working on a book on the artists-turned-architects Arakawa and Gins.

Evan Selinger

Evan Selinger is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Rochester Institute of Technology, USA. His research focuses on phenomenology and the philosophies of technology and science. Recent publications include several edited and co-edited books: Chasing Technosciences: Matrix for Materiality; Postphenomenology: A Critical Companion to Ihde; The Philosophy of Expertise; Five Questions: Philosophy of Technology; New Waves in Philosophy of Technology; and Rethinking Theories and Practices of Imaging.

Downloads

Published

2008-06-01

Issue

Issue # 3 | Special issue | Architecture and Phenomenology

Section

Review article

License

  1. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
  2. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.