Placing Technology

An Interview with Yuk Hui

Authors

  • Yuk Hui Erasmus University Rotterdam
  • Samuel Koh Bauhaus-Universität Weimar
  • Dulmini Perera

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.59490/footprint.18.2.7723

Abstract

In this interview, the editors met with Professor Yuk Hui, the originator of the notion of cosmotechnics, to discuss the implications of cosmotechnical thinking for architecture, urbanism and design. While Hui's work contains strong implications for architecture and spatial disciplines, he has rarely addressed them directly. In this far-ranging discussion, Hui brings together diverse topics, including the philosophy of Lewis Mumford, the cross-cultural history of cybernetics, and technology's connection to sacred space.

Author Biographies

Yuk Hui , Erasmus University Rotterdam

Yuk Hui is professor of philosophy at Erasmus University Rotterdam, where he holds the Chair of Human Conditions. He is the author of several monographs that have been translated into a dozen languages, including On the Existence of Digital Objects (2016), The Question Concerning Technology in China: An Essay in Cosm otechnics (2016), Recursivity and Contingency (2019), Art and Cosmotechnics (2021), Post-Europe (2024) and Machine and Sovereignty (2024). He is the convenor of the Research Network for Philosophy and Technology and has been a juror for the Berggruen Prize for Philosophy and Culture since 2020.

Samuel Koh, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar

Samuel Koh is a PhD candidate at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar. His research examines the role of science and technology in the shifting narratives of human purpose in urban planning. His dissertation examines key moments in the history of Western urban thought, focusing on how cosmological ideas have transformed the goals and values of the urban professions. He currently teaches graduate courses on urban history and theory at the Technische Hochschule Nürnberg.

Dulmini Perera

Dulmini Perera is a lecturer and researcher at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar. Her research focuses on the systemic relations between ecological questions and questions concerning technology within the design context. She has published extensively on histories, theories and methods that emerge from design’s encounters with other disciplines that engage with complex living systems (particularly cybernetics, systems sciences and process philosophies) and how the social and political aspects of these encounters keep influencing our present-day knowledge and practice models. Her current research on ecology, technology and cosmology is supported by the DFG (Germany), grant number 508363000. .

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Published

2025-02-10

Issue

Vol. 18 No. 2 (2024): Issue # 35 | Engaging Cosmotechnical Difference in Architecture and Urbanism: Cosmologies, Technologies, Worlds

Section

Interview

License

Copyright (c) 2025 Yuk Hui, Samuel Koh, Dulmini Perera

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