Transmodality, or What it Means to Have Intelligence

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.59490/footprint.19.1.7867

Abstract

Footprint 36 features eight contributions that each in their own way examines how the discipline of architecture may contribute to resisting stupidity and relearning how to think by moving beyond disaffected apocalyptic forms of reasoning, imagining and creating. In the context of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the Sixth Extinction, we propose to reframe the concept of stupidity as the inability to discern between the singular (remarkable) and the ordinary (trivial), and not to confuse it with a failure to offer the ‘right’ solution (optimisation). Following Henri Bergson’s understanding of problematisation, the concept of stupidity that we collectively examine is thus understood as the incapacity to properly determine a problem. Its near synonym ‘idiocy’ by definition prevents us from seeing beyond our narrow interests and ready-made solutions, thereby blocking environmental awareness and the possibility of trans-individuation, that is, of living and transforming collectively.

Author Biographies

Stavros Kousoulas, Delft University of Technology

Stavros Kousoulas is assistant professor of architecture philosophy and theory, and research coordinator at the Theories, Territories, Transitions section at the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, Delft University of Technology. He studied architecture at the National Technical University of Athens and at TU Delft. He received his PhD cum laude from IUAV Venice. He is the executive editor of Footprint. He is the author of the monograph Architectural Technicities (Routledge, 2022) and the edited volumes Architectures of Life and Death (RLI, 2021), Design Commons (Springer, 2022), The Space of Technicity (TUD Open, 2024) and Noetics without a Mind (TUD Open, 2024).

Andrej Radman, Delft University of Technology

Andrej Radman is assistant professor of architecture philosophy and theory, and coordinator of the Ecologies of Architecture research group at the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, Delft University of Technology. Over the past two decades Radman’s research has focused on the nexus between architecture and radical empiricism. His latest publication is Ecologies of Architecture: Essays on Territorialisation (EUP, 2021). In 2023, Radman was honoured with the Mark Cousins Theory Award presented by DigitalFUTURES. This award recognises leading theorists in the field of architecture and design who have demonstrated forward-thinking perspectives in the field.

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Published

2025-06-20