Architecture’s Theory

by Ingraham, Catherine

• ISBN13: 9780262544979
• ISBN10: 0262544970
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2023-04-18
• Publisher: The MIT Press

Summary

A collection of illuminating essays exploring what theory makes of architecture and what architecture makes of theory in philosophical and materialized contexts.

From poststructuralism and deconstruction to current theories of technology and nature, critical theory has long been closely aligned with architecture. In turn, architecture as a thinking profession materializes theory in the form of built work that always carries symbolic loads. In this collection of essays, Catherine Ingraham studies the complex connectivity between architecture's discipline and practice and theories of philosophy, art, literature, history, and politics. She argues that there can be no architecture without theory.

Whether considering architecture’s relationship to biomodernity or exploring the ways in which contemporary artists and designers engage in figural play, Ingraham offers provocative interpretations that enhance our understanding of both critical theory and architectural practice today. Along the way, she engages with a wide range of contemporary theorists, including Giorgio Agamben, Judith Butler, Jacques Derrida, Graham Harman, and Timothy Morton, considering buildings around the world, including the Palace of Culture in Warsaw, the Viceroy’s House complex in New Delhi, Mack Scogin and Merrill Elam's Wolfsburg Science Center project in Germany, and the Superdome in New Orleans. Approaching its subject matter from multiple angles, Architecture’s Theory shows how architecture's theoretical and artifactual practices have a unique power to alter culture.

Author Biography

Catherine Ingraham is a professor of architecture and urban design in the graduate architecture program at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. She was a visiting faculty member at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design from 2015 to 2019. A former editor of the journal Assemblage, she is the author of Architecture and the Burdens of Linearity and Architecture, Animal, Human.

Table of Contents

Preface: Questions for a Theorist with Aleksandra Stupar vii
Acknowledgments xv
Introduction 1
1 Slow Dancing: Circa 1987 13
2 "Nothing Will Come of Nothing" 25
3 Creative Omnipotence: Architectural Objects 41
4 Democratic Subjects 53
5 "This Earth Has Lines upon Its Face" 67
6 Amphitheater: The Proprieties in Question 89
7 Evidence of Absence 101
8 Evidence of Presence 117
9 Biomodernity 131
10 Faculties 141
11 A Natural History of the Stock Exchange 161
12 The Donkey's Way 183
Coda: Hospitality 207
Notes 213
Index 247