Shattering the black box: Technicities of architectural manipulation

Kousoulas, Stavros

doi:10.1177/1478077118801937

Shattering the black box

Title

Shattering the black box: Technicities of architectural manipulation

Author

Kousoulas, Stavros (TU Delft OLD Architectural Theory)

Date

2018

Abstract

This article attempts to reverse a fallacy often met in architectural theories and practices: that of a supposed input which through processes of what one can broadly call translations generates a built output. The input–output fallacy produces an architectural black box that treats both architectural thinking and doing as a mere process of projecting, representing and annotating ‘properly’ what will later be executed. On the contrary, a manipulative account of architecture as an active process of ecological engineering will pave the way for not only reversing the fallacy but also towards a particular understanding of architectural practices: architectural technicities and their reticular, affective potentials. Drawing on the theories of Gilbert Simondon, André Leroi-Gourhan, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, I will examine how architecture can be genealogically approached as a reticular technicity which evolves by a reciprocal concretisation of its technical objects and a generalisation of its active practitioners: no longer the application of transcendental design rules, of symbolic deductions or statistical inductions but rather abductive heuristics of affective techniques; no input nor output but practices of sensorial amplification via material manipulation and vice versa.

Subject

Abduction
Concretisation
Simondon
Leroi-Gourhan
Technicity

To reference this document use:

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:89d451d7-3869-4815-9aff-debf2c710f43

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1177/1478077118801937

ISSN

1478-0771

Source

The International Journal of Architectural Computing, 16 (4), 295-305

Part of collection

Institutional Repository