
Dr.ir. A. (Andrej) Radman
Dr.ir. A. (Andrej) Radman
Profile
Expertise
Architecture Theory | Affect Theory | Affordance Theory | Radical Empiricism | Ecologies of Architecture | New Materialism
Research
My research relies on Radical Empiricism as a means of tapping, not into the solipsistic world-of-design, but into the relations of exteriority or the design-of-world. This anti-representational disposition resonates strongly with the ethico-aesthetic realist approach that seeks to circumvent obstacles in the formal structures of power in favour of an affirmative constructivist (meso)politics of matter. It concentrates on the notion of priming, which occurs not on the level at which actions are decided, but on the pre-subjective and impersonal level at which the very capacity for action forms. As Robin Evans, the architectural progenitor of the Affective Turn, surmised, the goal-oriented action (volition) cannot in any serious way be used as a design criterion because âfreedom of action is never a de facto established condition but always a nascent possibility.â This antecedent level of potentialisation (desire) is proto-epistemological, yet already ontological, in that it concerns change in the life-formâs degree of enablement in and towards its umwelt. The onto-topological commitment stipulates that experience is not an event âin the mindâ. Rather, the mind emerges from the interaction with the milieu. The life-form never pre-exists an event, hence the prefix âlifeâ or, more to the point, the urban-life-form. Simpler still, action, perception and environment are located on a continuum. It is from this plastic perspective of Relational Thinking that we need to challenge the predominant homeostatic principle of substance in architectural thinking, in favour of the metastable â âanexactâ yet rigorous â transversal principle of process.
Teaching
My architectural practice has always influenced my work as a theorist beyond the facile qualification of practice as an application of theory or, conversely, as its inspiration. This double bind has served me greatly with respect to my capacity to develop architecture education programs that meet both the rigorous demands of research as well as the strenuous requirements of professional design training. After all, the only non-totalising and hence immanent theory is the one in becoming, as sense is never given but must be made. To paraphrase Spinoza, we do not yet know what architecture can do.
Biography
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 Radmanâs 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. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8914-1197
Publications
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2023
Allagmatics of Architecture
From Generic Structures to Genetic Operations (and Back)
A. Radman -
2023
Architectureâs Allagmatics
A. Radman
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2022
From Epiphylogenesis to General Organology
Introduction to âThe Epiphylogenetic Turn and Architecture: In (Tertiary) Memory of Bernard Stieglerâ, Footprint 30
R.A. Gorny / A. Radman -
2022
Generalised chromaticism
the ecologisation of Architecture
A. Radman -
2022
Groundless Grounds
A. Radman
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Media
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2023-07-05
Alagmatika arhitekture: od generickih struktura do genetickih operacija
Appeared in: ideje.hr
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2022-06-16
Philosophy takes architecture out of its comfort zone
Prizes
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2023-7-30
Mark Cousins Theory Award
Andrej Radman is the recipient of the 2023 DigitalFUTURES Mark Cousins Theory Award. These awards are given to exceptional architects, designers and researchers, who have made significant, innovative and impactful contributions to the fields of architecture and computational design. The Awards Ceremony took place during the Closing Ceremony for the DigitalFUTURES online workshops on Sunday 30 July 2023. The Theory Award presentation starts at 2:14:16: https://www.youtube.com/live/PBmige0uXwU?feature=share
Closing Ceremony for the DigitalFUTURES online workshops
Ancillary activities
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2023-01-01 - 2025-01-01