Architecture & Indeterminacy

Architecture & Indeterminacy 1 1755-068 ISSN: ii ISSN: 1755-068 www.field-journal.org vol.1 (1) About Introduction Welcome to field: the free journal for the discussion of critical, theoretical, political and playful perspectives on all aspects of architecture. field: is an international peer-reviewed journal and an open electronic forum. It was established to make architectural discourse and research available to, and aware of, the widest possible field. We are committed to being open and free with regards to our process and structure. field: plans to produce special issues devoted to particular themes with guest editors. Submissions are invited. How to Submit field: is interested in contributions in a variety of formats including academic articles, book and film reviews, interviews, photo essays and other experimental modes of representation. All contributions must be presented in English and should not have been published or submitted for publication in another forum in the UK. Translations of work published in languages other than English crediting details of previous publication will be considered. For further information on field: and how to submit please visit www.field-journal.org How to Print and Bind All contributions should be electronically submitted to [email protected]. Postal address: field: School of Architecture Arts Tower Western Bank Sheffield S10 2TN Sewn Japanese Binding iii ISSN: 1755-068 www.field-journal.org vol.1 (1) Contents Architecture and Indeterminacy field: volume 1, issue 1 (October 2007) Editorial 1 Architecture and Indeterminacy Renata Tyszczuk, Doina Petrescu Articles The Meaning of Use and Use of Meaning 4 Peter Blundell-Jones …badlands, blank space, border vacuums, brown 10 fields, conceptual Nevada, Dead Zones ... Gil Doron Atmospheres — Architectural Spaces between 24 Critical Reading and Immersive Presence Ole W. Fischer Architectural History’s Indeterminacy: Holiness 42 in southern baroque architecture Helen Hills The Active Voice of Architecture: An Introduction 62 to the Idea of Chance Yeoryia Manolopoulou Trading Indeterminacy — Informal Markets in 73 Europe Peter Mörtenböck, Helge Mooshammer The Indeterminate Mapping of the Common 88 Doina Petrescu iv ISSN: 1755-068 www.field-journal.org vol.1 (1) Contents The Space of Subculture in the City: Getting Specific 97 about Berlin’s Indeterminate Territories Dougal Sheridan Architecture and Contingency 120 Jeremy Till A quick conversation about the theory and practice of 136 control, authorship and creativity in architecture Kim Trogal, Leo Care Games of Skill and Chance 146 Renata Tyszczuk Notes on Contributors 164 1 ISSN: 1755-068 www.field-journal.org vol.1 (1) Editorial Architecture and Indeterminacy Editorial Renata Tyszczuk, Doina Petrescu When we sent out our call for papers for Architecture and Indeterminacy, as part of the Theory Forum we were organising at Sheffield, we didn’t know what to expect. We were interested in indeterminacy as a suspension of the precise meaning of an architectural object action or idea. Our invitation to contribute to the discussion suggested that indeterminacy in architecture could be physical, material, social and political; it could be both theoretical and pragmatic, cognitive and experiential. We hoped that it would be an inspiring topic and generate an interesting response because it was open, not prescriptive and offered a forum, a shared space to address the ways in which architecture is a dynamic practice. Our research confronts the recognition that architecture incorporates interlocking yet distributed fields of knowledge, social practices and economic forces. However, architectural discourse has become anxious about itself, about its status, its contingency and its position with respect to these related yet disparate fields of interest. Architecture and Indeterminacy proposed to investigate those moments where there was a questioning of the disciplinary limits of theorising and practicing architecture. At the same time we had started to imagine where the ‘outputs’ of events, workshops and activities in Sheffield and beyond, could be located. We had started to think that books were no longer the obvious place — partly because of the prohibitive costs of publication and partly because of the difficulty encountered by many (non academics) in finding or accessing the material. We were interested in developing a context where our work and research could be reflected on, but also where reflection on the material and immaterial conditions in which our practice as architects is engaged would be made possible. We were interested in a space of creative and critical production and not the habitual display of knowledge. This is how field: came about. 2 www.field-journal.org vol.1 (1) Editorial The journal field: is not an empty location waiting to be filled but hopefully will continue to be discursively formed and reformed through our practices of research and engagement. This inaugural issue of field: is therefore focused on the indeterminate fields of architectural practice, education and discourse. Architecture and Indeterminacy connects disparate work, weaving narratives and arguments that bring together critical writing, creative and exploratory practice, different media and documentation. The topic was a challenge to rethink some of the ways in which we think and practice architecture; to question some of the meanings we ascribe to cities, to buildings, to social formations to individual experiences. Peter Blundell Jones’ short essay reviewed architecture’s traditional investment in the symbolic, its ‘use of meaning’ and its capacities to encapsulate and embody ‘meaning of use’. Gil Doron’s discussion of the ‘dead zone’, those places habitually overlooked or avoided in cities, places on the edge, places of conflict and negotiation; reveals these ‘indeterminate’ spaces as contested space rather than neutral or ‘empty’. Ole Fischer explores a number of recent attempts by practitioners and theorists to grapple with the indeterminacy of ‘atmosphere’; among them Diller and Scofidio’s ‘Blur’ building and Olafur Eliasson’s ‘Weather Project’. Helen Hills’ article opens with a discussion about the potential and shortcomings of interdisciplinary thinking for architectural debate. She presents Deleuze’s concepts of ‘immanence’, ‘intensity’ and ‘rhizome’ as indeterminate ways of engaging with the spiritual in Baroque architecture. Yeoryia Manolopoulou’s article posits itself as an introduction to an ‘architecture of chance’. She argues for the acceptance of ‘chance’ and ‘the contingent’ along with the assertion that architecture can and already does use this condition to advantage. Peter Mörtenböck and Helge Mooshammer looked at informal markets as micro-sites of paradoxical and indeterminate cultural production, as part of their work on the EU funded project ‘Networked Cultures’. 3 www.field-journal.org vol.1 (1) Editorial Doina Petrescu discussed the practices of tracing and senses of place in the work of Fernard Deligny with autistic children. It detailed an alternative, properly indeterminative, practice of the ‘common’, through ways of mapping. Dougal Sheridan draws on personal experience of the changing nature of Berlin for his discussion of sub-culture and the actual specificity of the city’s ‘indeterminate’ territories. Jeremy Till’s discussion wrests architecture from its comfort zone — where it is often characterised as a discipline whose primary remit is to resist contingencies — and instead to embed it in a wider set of social and economic responsibilities and circumstances. Kim Trogal and Leo Care’s contribution combines architectural theory, criticism and personal dialogue in an exploration of their experience of architectural education and the aspirations of contemporary architectural practice to resist ‘determination’. Renata Tyszczuk’s article develops a series of reflections on modes of indeterminacy through the themes of narrative, imagination, experiment, games and shadows. Thinking ‘indeterminacy’ invites a questioning of how architecture is constructed, produced and inhabited. The inaugural issue of field: Architecture and Indeterminacy is therefore the start of a conversation about architecture and also an invitation to comment, to respond and above all to engage in a forum for practice and research. 4 ISSN: 1755-068 www.field-journal.org vol.1 (1) The Meaning of Use and Use of Meaning The Meaning of Use and Use of Meaning Peter Blundell Jones Studies of indigenous buildings across the world have revealed time and again, that dwelling structures have served as symbolic representations of the world as it was understood by the peoples that produced them. Thus the concept advanced by William Lethaby in his early book, Architecture Nature & Magic that ‘the development of building practice and ideas of 1 world-structure acted and reacted on one another’ has repeatedly been W.R. Lethaby, Architecture Nature 1 & Magic (Duckworth: London, 1956) substantiated. Examples too numerous to list can be found in the pages of p. 16. (reprint of the 1928 version Guidoni’s Primitive Architecture,2 or Oliver’s more recent Encyclopaedia published in The Builder, which in turn of Vernacular Architecture,3 but to gauge the full richness of possibility updated Lethaby’s book Architecture, Mysticism, and Myth of 1892). one needs to consult deeper ethnographies. A good example is Marcel Griaule’s Conversations with Ogotemmeli, the classic text on the Dogon.4 2 Enrico Guidoni, Primitive Architecture

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