Architecture

Over the past fifteen years most advanced education programmes within Schools of Architecture have been questioning the parameters and requirements of doctoral research both in terms of content and form. This double issue of Footprint was motivated by the question of where the field stands today. Footprint 10|11 presents nine contributions from both recently defended and developing PhD candidates from a variety of institutions. The diversity of their work, as well as the similarities found in the submissions, offers a partial view into research topics currently addressed in PhD programmes within Schools of Architecture.

The Situationist International introduced the creative, psychological, desiring individual as a counterweight to the utopian schemes of the modernist city. The resistance formulated throughout situationist principles underlies many contemporary activist urban practices. Nevertheless, the situationist approach to the city incorporated an affirmation of utopian thought. This totalizing aspect of modernist thought, still present in contemporary discourse, constrains our understanding of the potential of micro-interventions in the city. Although the “right to the city” may be crucial to reclaiming an active engagement with our urban environment, this paper discusses some limitations of situationist ideas, arguing that current urban practice requires a new discourse beyond the by now well-known frame of resistance and negation.

Many architectural projects of the 1960s incorporated early visions of potentially networked futures. As cheerfully imperfect as these visions were (relating more to a pop-sensibility of a progressive technology that knew no bounds and presented no threats), they offer us in hindsight a clear view of the questions we continue to struggle with today in terms of cyberspace and its relation to community and physical space. Projects such as the 1969 'Electronic Tomato' by Archigram hint at the development of the iPod, while Constant's 'New Babylon' is more deeply networked. The transposition of these projects makes it clear that the position of the individual and its relation with the community or the collective is still being reconfigured. Have we moved into the era of the iPod, where we can entirely enclose ourselves in the capsule prefigured in the projects of Archigram, or have we become one with our environment through the 'extensions of man,' as Marshall McLuhan might suggest? Cyberspace promises permanent connectivity but has ramifications in physical space. Although cyberpunk literature offers many examples of connectivity and a reconfiguration of the collective, the architecture projects of the 1960s made them tangible. While the projects of the 1960s literally transposed the network onto physical space, the question should be approached more in terms of complementarity. The existence of 'light communities' in cyberspace is based on affinities, while the traditional sense of Gemeinschaft is based on (long-term) physical proximity. I would argue that approaching these projects from the perspective of contemporary cybercomunities offers us a way to rethink our contemporary cities in order to incorporate both the fluidity of communities as we know them from cyberspace, while still including the various groups that one might encounter in the space of the street but not in the virtual realm of elective affinities.

The influence and position of the ‘Generation 74’ in Flemish and international architecture
Five well-known architects who studied together in Ghent, Marie-José Van Hee, Christian Kieckens, Marc Dubois, Paul Robbrecht and Hilde Daem, can be considered as leading protagonists of their generation. From their education at Sint-Lucas Institute and the Academy of Fine Arts to the present day, their professional careers and legacy have been of great importance to the development of Flemish architecture. In their early works and writings, they established a distinct architectural language, rooted in historical knowledge and with a reflection to art and craftsmanship. Architecture was singled out as a spatial phenomenon with an autonomous logic grounded in inhabitation and experience. This generation represents a significant turn towards architectural autonomy in Flanders which resonated with similar international developments in the late 1970s. Moreover they played a decisive role in the emancipation and professionalization of the architectural culture in Flanders.

The natural response to terrorism is to bunker down—to increase the thickness of concrete, and expand the distance between public spaces and the fragile institutions within them. What if we responded differently to terrorism? What if we acknowledge vulnerability, encourage dialogue, and move ahead with the faith that openness and generosity will, in the long run, prevail? This article discusses the proposal for the House of One in Berlin, a project that offers an alternative view on religious structures.

For over 30 years Architecture in the Netherlands has provided an indispensable overview of Dutch architecture for everyone with a professional or more general interest in the subject.

The Yearbook is the international showcase for Dutch architecture. The three editors select special projects that have been completed in the preceding year and describe the most important developments that influence Dutch architecture.

OMGEVINGSDENKEN AGORA 2019 -2 hebben als een negatief. In zichzelf hebben ze geen morele superioriteit (of inferioriteit), maar ze kunnen wel tot actie overgaan en staan daarmee aan het begin van de vorming van nieuwe structuren, zoals we recent hebben gezien met het succes van de gele hesjes in het afdwingen van fiscale aanpassingen. Occupy heeft een bescheiden effect gehad, #metoo een groter. De Arabische lente van 2009 was zichtbaar in zowel de stadsruimte als de digitale ruimte. Steeds vaker strekt het effect van digitale media ver voorbij de stadsruimte. Kunnen de inzichten van Park ook helpen in het begrijpen van digitale menigten? Dat heeft te maken met wat Edward Shils ooit identificeerde als de centrale vraag van Park: de opname van het individu in het collectieve zelf-bewustzijn. De massa en het publiek zijn eigen entiteiten die een 'algemene wil' belichamen. Hoewel de publieke ruimte en het rationele discours nog altijd van groot belang zijn voor een weloverwogen inrichting van beleid en richtlijnen, is deze fundamentele studie van de 'algemene wil' toch relevant naarmate we steeds vaker geconfronteerd worden met verschillende groepen, belangenverenigingen, bewegingen of tijdelijke flash mobs. De analytische kaders van Park zijn vooral gericht op de interactie tussen individuen, waardoor ze nog altijd een interessant perspectief bieden in een tijd waarin de fysieke openbare ruimte slechts een deel is van de werkelijkheid die wij ervaren.

For over 30 years Architecture in the Netherlands has provided an indispensable overview of Dutch architecture for everyone with a professional or more general interest in the subject.

The Yearbook is the international showcase for Dutch architecture. The three editors select special projects that have been completed in the preceding year and describe the most important developments that influence Dutch architecture.

The work of Oswald Mathias Ungers and Rem Koolhaas is examined as intellectual legacy of the 1970s for architecture today. Particularly in the United States, this period focused on the autonomy of architecture as a correction to the social orientation of the 1960s. Yet, these two architects pioneered a more situated autonomy, initiating an intellectual discourse on architecture that was inherently design-based. Their work provides room for interpreting social conditions and disciplinary formal developments, thus constructing a `plausible' relationship between the two that allows the life within to flourish and adapt. In doing so, they provide a foundation for recalibrating architecture today.

This issue of Footprint explores the potential role of analytic philosophy in the context of architecture’s typical affinity with continental philosophy over the past three decades. In the last decades of the twentieth century, philosophy became an almost necessary springboard from which to define a work of architecture. Analytic philosophy took a notable backseat to continental philosophy. With this history in mind, this issue of Footprint sought to open the discussion on what might be offered by the less familiar branches of epistemology and logic that are more prevalent and developed in the analytic tradition. The papers brought together here are situated in the context of a discipline in transformation that seeks a fundamental approach to its own tools, logic and approaches. In this realm, the approaches of logic and epistemology help to define an alternate means of criticality not subjected to personalities or the specialist knowledge of individual philosophies. Rather the vari...