Spectres

Architectural Theory as Hauntology

Abstract

The contemporary sensibility seems increasingly accustomed to observing the blind spots of reality. Architecture, less interested in drawing future visions, channels its utopian tension into scrutinising the past, laying bare in its investigations those absent from History, the lesser stories, what has been forgotten, and what remains unresolved. Following the clues scattered in sociologist Avery Gordon’s book Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination, I will refer to this mode of work as ‘hauntology’ to examine the operational strength of architectural design theory in the present era. The essay, that, essentially seeks to bring Gordon’s social theories into the discipline of architectural theory, suggesting the need to restore the relation between architecture and society, is structured as a theory-fiction about architecture. The first part builds the premises for the subsequent ones, defining words ‘theory’ and ‘spectre’ and the results of their crash. The second part observes a concrete case in which a piece of a city has disappeared while remaining in place. The third part concerns the architectural element ‘space’ that re-emerges when considering architectural theory as an observation of the intangible. Finally, the conclusions will leave the essay somewhat suspended, opening up the necessity for a spectrology of architecture.