Article

• Agency and Architecture: How to Be Critical? (Scott Lash and Antoine Picon, in conversation with Kenny Cupers and Isabelle Doucet. Comments by Margaret Crawford)

  Agency is a notion that brings together a variety of concerns that currently echo in diverse segments of the architectural debate. This article, in the form of a conversation, addresses this multifarious notion and attempts to bring to the fore points of intersection between agency-related concerns too often perceived as disconnected. The article has been assembled out of separate interviews with three prominent scholars who have, from different fields, made particular contributions to this theme: Antoine Picon, historian of architecture and technology; Scott Lash, professor of sociology and cultural studies; and Margaret Crawford, professor in architecture and urban studies. This conversation interrogates agency theoretically, and does so through three major questions. One question relates to agency’s binary coupling with structure, perhaps one of the most central concepts in the understanding of modern society. Secondly, because agency is intimately linked to the idea of ‘other’ possible actions and futures, it assumes intentionality and criticality, both of which resonate strongly in the architectural debate. Finally, in order to understand agency better within the specific context of architecture, the article addresses the condition of the architectural object and its relation to the individual and the social.

  Agency is a notion that brings together a variety of concerns that currently echo in diverse segments of the architectural debate. This article, in the form of a conversation, addresses this multifarious notion and attempts to bring to the fore points of intersection between agency-related concerns too often perceived as disconnected. The article has been assembled out of separate interviews with three prominent scholars who have, from different fields, made particular contributions to this theme: Antoine Picon, historian of architecture and technology; Scott Lash, professor of sociology and cultural studies; and Margaret Crawford, professor in architecture and urban studies. This conversation interrogates agency theoretically, and does so through three major questions. One question relates to agency’s binary coupling with structure, perhaps one of the most central concepts in the understanding of modern society. Secondly, because agency is intimately linked to the idea of...

  Agency is a notion that brings together a variety of concerns that currently echo in diverse segments of the architectural debate. This article, in the form of a conversation, addresses this multifarious notion and attempts to bring to the fore points of intersection between agency-related...

  Scott Lash, Antoine Picon, Margaret Crawford

  7-20

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• Autarky and Material Contingencies in Italian Architectural Debate (1936-1954)

  On 3 October 1935, Mussolini’s fascist regime invaded Ethiopia with undesired but foreseeable consequences for its imperialist aims: four days after the conquest, the Society of Nations imposed economic sanctions, promoting an international economic blockade. This soon translated in both a control of foreign currencies in order to purchase iron and steel on the international markets, and a vociferous campaign discouraging the use of materials that were demanded by the military endeavour. Architecture as a discipline and all the industrial activity around it suffered from government directions as well as the scarcity and control of commodities. Hence, its discourse accommodated to the new material situation. National and autochthonous values came to the fore, promoting local materials like wood or stone for construction as well as artificial and newly created ones.

  By the end of the 1930s and beginning of the 1940s the dispute about available materials became one of the main concerns in Italian architecture. If during the immediate past the defence of modern materials was traditionally articulated around technical and social values, the battle in interwar Italy was understood in political and economic terms. After stigmatising modern materials such as iron and steel as ‘antinational’, the dispute between those who recognised in modern techniques a threat to traditional Italian architecture, and those embracing the formal and intellectual basis of the modern movement, became predominantly ideological and represented both sides of the political spectrum. This paper examines the way these interwar debates were shaped by economic policy, political ideology, and material scarcity, and in turn affected architectural production during Italy’s postwar reconstruction.

  On 3 October 1935, Mussolini’s fascist regime invaded Ethiopia with undesired but foreseeable consequences for its imperialist aims: four days after the conquest, the Society of Nations imposed economic sanctions, promoting an international economic blockade. This soon translated in both a control of foreign currencies in order to purchase iron and steel on the international markets, and a vociferous campaign discouraging the use of materials that were demanded by the military endeavour. Architecture as a discipline and all the industrial activity around it suffered from government directions as well as the scarcity and control of commodities. Hence, its discourse accommodated to the new material situation. National and autochthonous values came to the fore, promoting local materials like wood or stone for construction as well as artificial and newly created ones.

  By the end of the 1930s and beginning of the 1940s the dispute about available materials became one of the...

  On 3 October 1935, Mussolini’s fascist regime invaded Ethiopia with undesired but foreseeable consequences for its imperialist aims: four days after the conquest, the Society of Nations imposed economic sanctions, promoting an international economic blockade. This soon translated in both a...

  Pep Avilés

  21-34

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• Vernacular Architecture as Self-Determination: Venturi, Scott Brown and the Controversy over Philadelphia's Crosstown Expressway, 1967-1973

  Between 1967 and 1972 Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown worked on two projects simultaneously. One culminated in Learning from Las Vegas, their renowned contribution to architectural theory; the other reflected their political engagement in the so-called Crosstown Controversy. In this project, Venturi and Scott Brown spoke on behalf of a citizens’ initiative opposing a proposed inner-city expressway in the South Street area of Philadelphia. The aesthetic criticism exemplified in their study of Las Vegas found parallels in the political critique embodied by the alternative scheme they developed for the Philadelphia citizen group. This scheme proposed to revalorise the vernacular architecture of the existing neighbourhood, against the wholesale demolition implied in the official plans for the Crosstown Expressway.

  This article investigates the connections between aesthetic ideals and social concern in the work of Venturi and Scott Brown. Embedding the discussion on architectural theory in the concrete context of urban history reveals important links between intellectual discourse and political action. Venturi and Scott Brown’s repeated reference to social aspects of architecture can only be understood, so this article demonstrates, if we analyse the concrete engagements in which they developed their projects. The South Street project offers a concrete occasion wherein the architects were forced to adopt a political position.

  Between 1967 and 1972 Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown worked on two projects simultaneously. One culminated in Learning from Las Vegas, their renowned contribution to architectural theory; the other reflected their political engagement in the so-called Crosstown Controversy. In this project, Venturi and Scott Brown spoke on behalf of a citizens’ initiative opposing a proposed inner-city expressway in the South Street area of Philadelphia. The aesthetic criticism exemplified in their study of Las Vegas found parallels in the political critique embodied by the alternative scheme they developed for the Philadelphia citizen group. This scheme proposed to revalorise the vernacular architecture of the existing neighbourhood, against the wholesale demolition implied in the official plans for the Crosstown Expressway.

  This article investigates the connections between aesthetic ideals and social concern in the work of Venturi and Scott Brown. Embedding the discussion on...

  Between 1967 and 1972 Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown worked on two projects simultaneously. One culminated in Learning from Las Vegas, their renowned contribution to architectural theory; the other reflected their political engagement in the so-called Crosstown Controversy. In this...

  Sebastian Haumann

  35-48

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• The Art of Displacement: Designing Experiential Systems and Transverse Epistemologies as Conceptual Criticism

  With architects and designers increasingly facing problems that are neither predictable nor simple but highly complex, a particular synthesis of design intelligence and creativity is required. If the art of being a professional is becoming ‘the art of managing complexity’, what are the ‘boundaries’ of professional practice? ‘Trans-disciplinarity’, for example, requires liminal or neither/nor thinking (thus ‘boundary concepts’ remain a core concern). A concern with boundaries and ‘edges’ implies in turn a concern with ‘relationality’ (i.e. how we establish relations, positions, borders between different disciplinary priorities and methods) and thence a problem that affects how we think of disciplinarity, interdisciplinarity, networks of various kinds, and trans-disciplinarity – that of ‘substance’, ‘content’ or ‘matter’.

  This paper subjects design research, theory and practice to transverse epistemologies, attempting a ‘flow of transformations’ via such themes as authorship, remediation, smuggling, disruptive innovation, performative knowledge, and gesture versus identity. It brings together an ars combinatoria of conceptual criticism, trans-disciplinary practice as ‘disruptive innovation’, Michael Speaks’s notion of ‘design intelligence’ and Margaret Boden’s three types of creativity – combinatorial, exploratory, and transformational – seeking thereby to suggest new structures that might yield ‘transdisciplines’.

  Departing from two separate points – Bruno Latour’s call for ‘earthly accounts of buildings and design processes’ and Jack Burnham’s identification of a paradigm shift from an ‘object-oriented’ to a ‘systems-oriented’ culture – the paper describes the formation of a new interdisciplinary practice, experience design (the design of meaningful experience across time), as a form of ‘epistemological Conceptualism’. This prioritises critical thinking and strategy, requiring designers, in the words of Ronald Jones, ‘capable of addressing cross-disciplinary problems by designing the social, political, economic and educational “systems” that give them greater reach, responsibility, influence and relevance’. Ultimately, therefore, any delirious promise of epistemological transformation must remain secondary to questions of ‘relevance’ and ‘impact’.

  With architects and designers increasingly facing problems that are neither predictable nor simple but highly complex, a particular synthesis of design intelligence and creativity is required. If the art of being a professional is becoming ‘the art of managing complexity’, what are the ‘boundaries’ of professional practice? ‘Trans-disciplinarity’, for example, requires liminal or neither/nor thinking (thus ‘boundary concepts’ remain a core concern). A concern with boundaries and ‘edges’ implies in turn a concern with ‘relationality’ (i.e. how we establish relations, positions, borders between different disciplinary priorities and methods) and thence a problem that affects how we think of disciplinarity, interdisciplinarity, networks of various kinds, and trans-disciplinarity – that of ‘substance’, ‘content’ or ‘matter’.

  This paper subjects design research, theory and practice to transverse epistemologies,...

  With architects and designers increasingly facing problems that are neither predictable nor simple but highly complex, a particular synthesis of design intelligence and creativity is required. If the art of being a professional is becoming ‘the art of managing complexity’, what are the...

  Rolf Hughes

  49-64

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• Notes on Post-criticality: Towards an Architecture of Reflexive Modernisation

  Since around 2002, the performance of critical theory in architecture and the humanities has itself undergone a critical re-evaluation. Authors representing divergent perspectives, from theory’s perennial naysayers to the standard bearers of critical theory themselves, have converged towards a similar conclusion: judged by outcomes, critical theory has proven ineffective at best, and arguably, corrosive to human progress. In architecture, the debate has revolved around the identification of a ‘critical architecture’ in education and production since the 1970s. In apparent rejection of the isolation and purity of critical architecture’s orthodoxy, Rem Koolhaas and others have chosen engagement with the forces (and commissions) of late capitalism to which the term ‘post-criticality’ has been applied.

  Beyond the confining dichotomies of the post-criticality debate is a perspective offered by sociologists Ulrich Beck, Scott Lash and Anthony Giddens on what they have called a ‘second modernity’ or ‘reflexive modernisation’. This literature re-contextualises the modern-postmodern pairing within the larger trajectory of modernity and identifies a characteristic distinction from former modernities in the term ‘reflexivity’. Where high modernism pursued utopian ideals of pure form and functional simplicity, reflexive modernisation acknowledges contingency in human systems establishing feedback loops that trigger course corrections in the process of modernisation itself.


  Operating against the ossifications of twentieth-century modernity, reflexivity opens prospects for a second modernisation characterised by a heightened capacity to deal with complexity and time. Speculative architectures of reflexive modernisation benefit from a re-engagement in real-world problems, particularly at the scale of the city. To what extent can considerations of political economy, culture, globalisation, and environmental crisis be translated into the explicit performance criteria and computational parameters? What role is there for tools forged in the fires of ‘critical architecture’ in the emerging architectural creativity increasingly characterised by complexity, provisional outcomes, and unpredictable form?


  Since around 2002, the performance of critical theory in architecture and the humanities has itself undergone a critical re-evaluation. Authors representing divergent perspectives, from theory’s perennial naysayers to the standard bearers of critical theory themselves, have converged towards a similar conclusion: judged by outcomes, critical theory has proven ineffective at best, and arguably, corrosive to human progress. In architecture, the debate has revolved around the identification of a ‘critical architecture’ in education and production since the 1970s. In apparent rejection of the isolation and purity of critical architecture’s orthodoxy, Rem Koolhaas and others have chosen engagement with the forces (and commissions) of late capitalism to which the term ‘post-criticality’ has been applied.

  Beyond the confining dichotomies of the post-criticality debate is a perspective offered by sociologists Ulrich Beck, Scott Lash and Anthony Giddens on what they...

  Since around 2002, the performance of critical theory in architecture and the humanities has itself undergone a critical re-evaluation. Authors representing divergent perspectives, from theory’s perennial naysayers to the standard bearers of critical theory themselves, have converged towards...

  Robert Cowherd

  65-76

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• Theatrical Tectonics: The Mediating Agent for a Contesting Practice


  This paper posits the idea that the theme of agency in architecture is parallactic. It discusses the tectonic as an agent through which architecture turns into a state of constant flux. The intention is to promote a discourse of criticality, the thematic of which is drawn from the symptoms that galvanise architecture’s rapport with the image-laden culture of late capitalism. In an attempt to log the thematic of a contested practice, this essay will re-map the recent history of contemporary architecture.

  Exploring New Brutalism’s criticism of the established ethos of International Style architecture, the first part of this paper will highlight the movement’s tendency towards replacing the painterly with the sculptural, and this in reference to the contemporary interest in monolithic architecture. Having established the import of tectonics for the architecture of Brutalism, the paper then argues that in the present situation, when architecture – like other cultural products – is infatuated with the spectacle of late capitalism, a re-thinking of the Semperian notion of theatricality is useful. Of interest in the tectonic of theatricality is the work’s capacity to bring forth the division between intellectual and physical labours, and this in reference to architecture’s reserved acceptance of technification for which the aforementioned division is vital.

  Particular attention will be given to two projects, Zaha Hadid’s Phaeno Center and OMA’s Casa da Musica, where architectonic aspects of New Brutalism are revisited in the light of the tectonic of theatricality.

  This paper posits the idea that the theme of agency in architecture is parallactic. It discusses the tectonic as an agent through which architecture turns into a state of constant flux. The intention is to promote a discourse of criticality, the thematic of which is drawn from the symptoms that galvanise architecture’s rapport with the image-laden culture of late capitalism. In an attempt to log the thematic of a contested practice, this essay will re-map the recent history of contemporary architecture.

  Exploring New Brutalism’s criticism of the established ethos of International Style architecture, the first part of this paper will highlight the movement’s tendency towards replacing the painterly with the sculptural, and this in reference to the contemporary interest in monolithic architecture. Having established the import of tectonics for the architecture of Brutalism, the paper then argues that in the present situation, when architecture – like other cultural...

  This paper posits the idea that the theme of agency in architecture is parallactic. It discusses the tectonic as an agent through which architecture turns into a state of constant flux. The intention is to promote a discourse of criticality, the thematic of which is drawn from the symptoms...

  Gevork Hartoonian

  77-96

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• Beyond Discourse: Notes on Spatial Agency


  This article investigates the word ‘agency’ in relation to the role, responsibility and power of the architect. Using Anthony Giddens’s formulation of agency, we discuss the transformative potential of architecture where the lack of a predetermined future is seen as an opportunity and not a threat. Four episodes describe related instances of architectural practice as spatial agency: muf, OSA, Santiago Cirugeda and The New Architecture Movement. The paper concludes with an urgent call for architects to face up to their political and environmental responsibilities.

  This article investigates the word ‘agency’ in relation to the role, responsibility and power of the architect. Using Anthony Giddens’s formulation of agency, we discuss the transformative potential of architecture where the lack of a predetermined future is seen as an opportunity and not a threat. Four episodes describe related instances of architectural practice as spatial agency: muf, OSA, Santiago Cirugeda and The New Architecture Movement. The paper concludes with an urgent call for architects to face up to their political and environmental responsibilities.

  This article investigates the word ‘agency’ in relation to the role, responsibility and power of the architect. Using Anthony Giddens’s formulation of agency, we discuss the transformative potential of architecture where the lack of a predetermined future is seen as an opportunity and...

  Tatjana Schneider, Jeremy Till

  97-112

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