ABE 008

Advanced Architectural Theory Research Seminars

Ecologies of Architecture 11
Architectures of Enabling Constraints
A. Radman and S. Kousoulas, TU Delft Spring Semester 2024 

The Architecture Philosophy and Theory Group of the Architecture Department is offering ABE 008 seminar to PhD candidates and academic research staff, whose research topics relate to architectural and urban theory, philosophy, and contemporary concerns of spatial, socio-political, ethico-aesthetical, cultural and scientific relevance to the disciplines of design. 

The course is framed within a seminar structure every second Monday from 14:30-17:30 (Zoom meeting) during the spring term, in which participants will engage in guided readings and group discussions on the thematic of each individual session. The aim is to generate an environment in which all participants will gain knowledge on a specific topic, while developing a set of useful methodologies and research skills. 

The eleventh edition of the course Ecologies of Architecture will kick off in February 2024 under the guidance of Andrej Radman and Stavros Kousoulas. The Ecologies of Architecture XI will be devoted to the problem of causation. In Context Changes Everything, Alicia Juarrero proposes that coherence is induced by enabling constraints, not efficient causes, and that the resulting coherence is then maintained by constitutive constraints. Constitutive constraints, in turn, become governing constraints that regulate and modulate the way coherent entities behave. Using the tools of complexity science, Juarrero offers an anexact yet rigorous understanding of identity, hierarchy, and top-down causation, and in so doing, presents a new way of thinking about the design of the world. 

Learning Objectives

In a desperate attempt to catch up with forms of contemporary image culture, architects tend to forget where their strength lies. To speak of culture as forms of life, as Scott Lash argues, is to break with earlier notions of culture as representation, as reflection. It is to break with judgement for experience, with epistemology for ontology, and finally to break with a certain type of cognition for living. While accepting multiple scales of reality the Ecologies of Architecture opposes the alleged primacy of the ‘physical’ world discovered by physics. By contrast, it posits that what we have to perceive and cope with is the world considered as the environment. The emphasis is on the encounter, where experience is seen as an emergence which returns the body to a process field of exteriority. The ultimate goal of the Ecologies of Architecture is to debunk hylomorphism – where form is imposed upon inert matter from without and where the architect is seen as a god-given, inspired creator and genius – and to promote the alternative morphogenetic approach that is at once more humble and ambitious.

At the conclusion of each seminar / course the participants will have:

  • gained knowledge and understanding on the specific thematic and context of each seminar (content-based)
  • associated the contents of the seminar to his or her own research topic, expressing this relationship in concrete, relevant ways (argument-based)
  • developed skills relevant to carrying out advanced research: from following intensive readings and discussing them in a peer work-group, to preparing an academic research paper for publication (method-based) 

Teaching Method

This course will follow a seminar structure and advanced research methods. Depending on the individual seminar leaders, the seminar will follow a series of formats, but generally will be based on fortnightly research output presentations, followed by a discussion on sources, references and bibliographies, which will involve the creation of an information nexus for the seminar discussions. The ultimate goal of each seminar is to assist the participants to develop reasoned and convincing argument, as well as to develop scholarly research papers for publication. 

Reading

Alicia Juarrero, Context Changes Everything: How Constraints Create Coherence (MIT Press, 2023)
https://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-monograph/5600/Context-Changes-EverythingHow-Constraints-Create 
https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/14630.001.0001 

About the Lecturers

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. He is a member of the National Committee on Deleuze and Guattari Scholarship, and the production editor and member of the editorial board of the peer-reviewed architecture theory journal Footprint. Radman is a co-editor of Critical and Clinical Cartographies (EUP, 2017), Architecture of Life and Death (RLI, 2021), and The Space of Technicity (RLI, 2023). He is the author of Gibsonism (TUD, 2012) and Ecologies of Architecture: Essays on Territorialisation (EUP, 2021). He is also a licensed architect with a portfolio of built and competition-winning projects. Radman received the Croatian Association of Architects annual award for housing architecture in Croatia in 2002. In 2023, Radman was honoured as the recipient of the Mark Cousins Theory Award presented by DigitalFUTURES. This award recognises leading theorists in the field of architecture and design who have demonstrated the future thinking of the field.

Stavros Kousoulas is Assistant Professor of Architecture Philosophy and Theory 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 has published and lectured in Europe and abroad and is production editor and member of the editorial board of the peer-reviewed architecture theory journal Footprint. He is the author of the book Architectural Technicities (Routledge, 2022) and the edited volumes Architectures of Life and Death (RLI, 2021), Design Commons (Springer, 2022) and The Space of Technicity (RLI, 2023). 

Schedule

How to enroll

Please send an email with your name, mail address, start date, research group and title of your research to abe@tudelft.nl

Course Info

Course code
ABE 008

Course type
Advanced courses on a range of topics involving architectural/urban theory, philosophy, cultural analysis and science

Most appropriate for
PhD candidates at all stages

Costs
Free for PhD candidates of A+BE Graduate School

Number of participants
min. 8 /max. 15

Name of lecturer(s)/coach(es)
Dr.ir. Andrej Radman 
Dr.ir. Stavros Kousoulas

Course load
Active period: 24 hours contact (seminar) plus 24 hours self-study (preparation)

Graduate School credits
4

Assessment
Attendance and active participation

Period
Once a year in Spring

Upcoming course dates and times
Spring 2024, Mondays 14:30-17:30
(see detailed schedule in course description)

Contact
a.radman@tudelft.nl