Architecture is always in the middle…

Authors

  • Tim Gough Kingston University School of Architecture and Landscape

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7480/footprint.9.2.863

Abstract

This essay proposes an ontology of architecture that takes its lead from the bread and butter of architecture: a flat ontology opposed to Cartesianism in the sense that no differentiation between realms (body/mind, high/low) is accepted. The work of Spinoza and Deleuze is referred to in order to flesh out such an ontology, whose aim is to destroy the very desire for architecture and architectural theory to even pose the question about the difference between bread-and-butter architecture and high architecture. Architecture is shown to be of the nature of an assemblage, of a machine or a haecceity (to use Deleuze and Guattari’s phrase), and the implications of this in relation to the question of composition and reception are outlined.

Author Biography

Tim Gough, Kingston University School of Architecture and Landscape

Tim Gough is Senior Lecturer at Kingston University School of Architecture and partner in Robertson Gough, an artist-architect collaborative based in London, working on large and small scale architectural projects and competitions. Published papers include 'Cura', an essay in Curating Architecture and the City (2009); 'Let us Take Architecture' (publication and symposium at the Wordsworth Trust with artist Lucy Gunning, May 2007); 'Non-origin of Species – Deleuze, Derrida, Darwin', essay in the journal Culture and Organisation, 4 (December 2006); and 'Defiguration of space', an essay in Figuration-Defiguration, edited by Atsuko Onuki and Thomas Pekar, published by Iudicum Verlag, Munich: 2006.

References

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Published

2015-12-20

Issue

Issue # 17 | Autumn / Winter 2015 | The ‘Bread & Butter’ of Architecture

Section

Article

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