The framework of this work is situated between the typological issue about the epistemological definition of art spaces, and their role as consequence within the city, and a personal interest in the kind of attention art demands in space for a specific engagement. It is in the place where art is displayed that the knowledge about it is produced. Within the art system, a distortion in the value of art has been staged by the increasing significance of the role of private collectors in investing in contemporary art and legitimating their collections trough the echoes of certain art spaces’ typologies. As consequence, private collectors become the accepted ‘manager of consciousness,’ and the former distance between collectors and museum is confused, and the museum academic capacity is being replaced. Here, the question of how a private collection is presented to the world became particularly urgent. In response to this context, the construction of two specific narratives embedded in two contemporary art spaces for two private art collections has been delineated not in a deconstruction of values, but contextualised in-culture within the realm of architecture and its position towards the system. Seeking a condition of nearness to the art world has been necessary in order to trace the encounters, or relationships which would construct the notion of place for contemporary art, and the values of the prelude to it. A certain alertness and respect towards the other and the world can be achieved in the art gallery that is otherwise often elusive, since what the art gallery as site does that ‘real life’ does not is that it forces the issues of attention – towards the space, the place and the other. Especially in this context, “considerations of where implies more than an ontology of position.” The fiction of the art space started from the definition of the collection as first assemble to relate art to places and spaces, since the structure and identity of it became fundamental. A section through two collections and their collectors tries to trace the ways and rules which define the different spatial implications of art, in order to relate different specificities to the word, to find them a place within the world. The role of architecture has been a negotiation between narratives, the one of the existing place which I found as connected to the specificity of the two collections I was dealing with, and the one of the artwork within the collection itself. And in measuring the one with the other, a staged uncertainty would lead to a certain awareness of the place one is in, and how does it relate with the collection itself, and with the world. I believe architecture has to offer a framework that should elicit reactions – it cannot be, as consequence, neutral. I do think that the role of architecture in relation with art it is not so different from the one of storytelling in “establishing the rights of intensity” of encounters. Since eventually, everything become visible through relationships.

This body of research attempts to investigate the role of shopping typologies and their reciprocal relation with (ex-) Yugoslav Croatia, through (three) exemplary cases (the neighborhood department store, the city department store and the shopping center) by looking at three themes such as: their creation of centrality, the continuation of the public and the composition of program. The three main cases are Nama Trnsko, robna kuca RI, and Koteks and Gripe sports- and shopping center. It describes how the various types of shopping-buildings had either an installing or introductory role for the public/city/neighborhood around them; and/or an enhancing or supporting role, enhancing existing movement/centrality within the center/public. The main discussed themes in existing discourse (within as well as outside of HR) are housing and education, but ideologically the shopping typologies functioned as another trajectory towards modernity. On the architectural level, the types adopted certain ‘traditional’ or typical department store elements, such as the arcade and open plan. Increasingly implementing regional elements. On an urban scale, it would (literally) take the center position in new neighborhoods but (sometimes simultaneously) enhancing circulation flows in the area is not uncommon, as well as offering a mixed program that goes beyond shopping alone. As a final evaluation, the research shows the typologies have certainly evolved since then. The public character or role of the typologies has partially evaporated, and as urban entities they have become (partially) isolated. Often, what was once a single department store, has now split up into several smaller shops within the original building or have gone (partially) out of use. The shift from socialist to neo-liberal economy (accompanied by a violent transition) has altered the role of the typologies. The question arises, did the typologies as a trajectory to emancipation succeed? Have the fantastic visions of modernist architects and urbanists given society the physical structure to emancipation?

How to construct the commons with the power of play? How to reactivate leftover public spaces in central Bogota by architectural interventions that stimulate playful actions? I shift my focus from buildings to the ground surfaces, and redesign them into a constellation of “2.5D architectural composition”. “2.5D” refers to an abstract composition of the ground surface, including composing different ground materials on the planer dimension (2D), and create minor vertical level difference by sinking, elevating, folding and undulating (0.5D). These compositions become abstract playgrounds. They should be unconventional as the playful quality is achieved by manipulating the ground surface rather than adding playful objects. Yet, they are humble as the minor level difference and usage of familiar materials enable them to merge into the local context. I expect that these “2.5D playgrounds” will bring Bogota citizens together, stimulate their playful actions, and enable them to recognize the scattered playgrounds in the city as a constellation of “playful commons”.

The context in which (landscape) architects and urban designers work today poses new challenges for which conventional planning and design tools seem to be unfit. We have to recognise that every place is a complex and layered phenomenon, a physical platform of lived space. Complex locations like Sarajevo and its mountain, its bobsleigh track, with a particular geological, political, social and cultural history, demand analysis and design approaches that take into account the experience on the ground, the lived space, the different layers and meanings of a site, the experience of movement and time. Furthermore, the central position of the designer in the transformation process needs to be questioned by demands for participation and even co-creation with the different urban actors, which require specific tools that take into account the multiple stories embodied in a place. Top-down design and planning has increasingly made way for a complex process that involves many actors, creating a need to redefine the question of what design is. Rather than a linear, rational character of traditional planning, a shift towards more open design approaches should be made, which take into account experiential responses to the sites at hand, and which allow more relational ways of doing. My aim is that through the cinematic narrative and the use of film as a method, I open up the possibilities for a new reading of the void, beyond the existing interpretation, a new understanding of the bobsleigh track as an open space. Open space as a space for opportunity, imagination, un-programmed and free for uses not yet conceived, accepting changes in the mode of life. The space is to be shaped by the users. Forms should emerge spontaneously as an effect of human activity and are not defined beforehand in its manifestation. Within this open construct, the bobsleigh track is accessible and interpretable in various ways, thus preserving the void. By showing a multiplicity of viewpoints the void is preserved, maintaining its temporary appro- priation by different users, and giving it a place in the larger urban landscape. The user has to reflect and engage in a personal dialogue with the urban landscape. This is not a pre-determined role, but an active and open-ended part. More than simply leading to a final representation, this could be used to develop an architectural strategy as a structure in which time has room to breathe, and to let aging, growth and even decay unfold.

This graduation project is the result of the ambition of generating a public intervention in an extremely complex and challenging environment, translating in a space of mediation between different - social and morphological - realities, able to embrace urban fact in all its facets and contradictions.

This book is the result of the research conducted in the P1 phase of the graduation studio ‘Positions in Practice’ of the chair Methods and Analysis in the department for architecture and the built environment, TU Delft.

The Thing Itself: AA Files and the Fates of Architectural Theory explores architecture’s relationship with its editing. This is ostensibly discussed through the lens of a particular architectural journal, AA Files (part of a long tradition of journals produced by the Architectural Association in London since its inception in the mid-nineteenth century; and four issues of which form an accompanying second volume to this thesis), which in turn leads to a historical, semantic and polemical examination of what this dissertation contends are the three principal components of any architectural journal: its text (that is, its relationship to words, language and writing); its images (that is, architecture’s visual grammar and iconography) and finally its fundamental subject (that is, the architect themselves). The research is bookended, in its introduction, by an analysis of Victor Hugo’s novel Notre-dame de Paris (1831/32), whose celebrated protagonist, Quasimodo the hunchback, is overshadowed in architectural terms by its even more celebrated formulation – ‘this will kill that’ (meaning, that with invention of the printing press in the fifteenth century, architecture’s responsibility to carry thoughts, ideas, images, had been destroyed). Echoes to the resonances of this formulation then reappear throughout each of the dissertation’s parts, before the conclusion more explicitly identifies the theoretical consequences of Hugo’s much-quoted mantra, and more generally frames the preceding parts of this dissertation through its advocacy of a specific model of writing, image-making, publishing, teaching and essentially considering architecture. @en

This research project focuses on how decisions made by practitioners, articulating rural housing in Sub-Sahara Africa, contribute to the decreasing level of self-reliance inhabitants have regarding their housing. Multiple case studies on Mt. Elgon proved that inhabitants have a significantly higher self-reliance level, comparing traditional to modern housing. To study this phenomenon in practice and to articulate suitable design support the Design Research Methodology was chosen. The research clarification pinpointed inhabitant capacities as the key-contributor to self-reliant housing. Household survey outcomes proved that large numbers of rural inhabitant’s desire housing which they have insufficient capacities for. Indicating that the inhabitants experience a disparity between existing and desired housing capacities, moreover an inability to bridge this disparity independently, and consequently require external help. Architect seemed most appropriate to offer this help as it consist of sociocultural, engineering and design tasks. Architects are not trained in inhabitant capacity evaluation and as no suitable design tools existed, this research project developed the required design support, its application requirements and the impact measurements. These were then tested in a pilot project on Mt. Elgon. The findings were used to evaluate the support’s impact and suitability. The support tool users found it suitable to assess and integrate inhabitant capacities into housing solutions. The impact shows that the support group families have sustained their family’s level of self-reliance unlike the control group. The developed technological design, with modifications, could be used not only in rural Kenyan communities, but also help others around the continent.@en

The aim of this thesis is twofold. First, it offers a ‘theoretical reading’ of a historically important architectural entity – namely the bazaar – in order to propose a synthetic understanding of its complexity and to explore the multiplicity of forces and regimes involved in the bazaar’s [historical] formation. Second, by conceptualizing the architecture of the bazaar, this thesis explores the relation between architecture and territory, inhabitation and infrastructure in the context of the Iranian Plateau. In doing so, this thesis contributes to the production of an architectural knowledge which encourages a contextual studying of complex spatial regimes and mechanisms as their prime forces for intervention. The notion of the bazaar is complex. Not only does it have implications in diverse disciplines, but it also carries various definitions. Depending on the context in which it is used, the bazaar can be depicted as a place, a form of economy, a social class or a way of life, and thus it can embody the notion of a city, a territory or even it can be expanded to the region known as the Middle East or the Islamic world. Within this wide spectrum of possible meanings, the bazaar has been the topic of discourse in architecture and urban history, as well as anthropology, sociology, economics and political science. The inherent complexity of the notion of the bazaar is attributable to its intermediate position, i.e. its relation to the territory and various ways of life, its spatial complexity, i.e. a space of movement and a place of public and the collective, and the superposition of different scales between architecture and the city. This implies that research on the bazaar needs to deviate from purely typological or urban morphological studies. Rather it needs to devote simultaneous attention to people as well as the numerous spatial interrelations involved in its formation. This means that an architecture is possible which gives form to the accumulation of complex cultural, social, economic and administrative relations. While it enables connection and integration, it provides scope for confrontation and encounter. The first chapter provides an overview of various conceptions, definitions and perceptions of the bazaar. This chapter will demonstrate that a proper discursive framework that allows us to grasp the spatial complexity of the bazaar is, in fact, missing. While architecture and urban studies have focused mainly on describing and classifying the bazaar’s structural and morphological presence, other disciplines have hardly recognized its physical importance in the process of forming various interrelations. This chapter concludes that the bazaar is not simply an architectural object, rather it is an entity which is territorial. This means that the bazaar’s formation has been closely related to the ways in which the territory has been managed and inhabited. Subsequently, this research conceptualizes the architecture of the bazaar by revisiting its ‘whereness’ and ‘whatness’, using the ‘territory’ as a theoretical framework. While ‘whereness’ addresses the characteristics of ‘where’ the bazaar is historically located, ‘whatness’ is concerned with what the bazaar is and what it does. In this process, it is important to note that ‘whereness’ and ‘whatness’ are closely linked to each other, and they are both simultaneously a precondition and product. The second part of the thesis – which includes chapters three and four – presents an understanding of the ‘whereness’. This part seeks means and lenses to open a discussion on territory both as a precondition and product. These two chapters discuss the geographical condition – and what I call the geopolitics of the in-between, through which two kinds of territorialities take form: i.e. the extensive territoriality of the nomadic spatialized through distribution and movement and the intensive territoriality of the sedentary spatialized through managerial knowledge of dehqan to inhabit a land. The coexistence, encounter and assimilation of these territorialities has had an impact on the state-form and the social and economic system on the Iranian Plateau in general and the spatial formation of the bazaar as an intermediate. The third part of this thesis focuses on the issue of ‘whatness’. This part – chapters five and six – re-examines the established knowledge on the bazaar as a physical and spatial entity by experimenting within two kinds of territorialities proposed in the previous chapters. In other words, the bazaar is seen as an assemblage of various territorial regimes rooted in the extensive nomadic territoriality and intensive sedentary territoriality. This not only pertains to the relation between movement and inhabitation, space and place in the bazaar’s physical structure, but also in its social and legal organization, topology and logistical system. Thus, the bazaar goes beyond the mere circulation space; rather it is perceived as an infra+structure which is situated within the city and operated as the city’s main [public] place. The present thesis examines the possibility of constructing a discursive platform for studying the bazaar as a complex architectural entity. It posits a critical reading of the bazaar’s primary spatial idea, suggesting that a territorial reading of the bazaar can provide a valuable alternative lens for looking beyond mere preservation concerns or the purely formal imitations that are normally applied when examining the current condition of the bazaar in Iranian cities. It can help to redefine the intermediate position of the bazaar as a way of discovering new orders and hierarchies within and without the city.@en

Context is a crucial concept in architecture, despite the frequent ambiguity around its use. It is present in many architectural thoughts and discussions, while a critical discursive reflection is absent from contemporary architectural theory and practice. Situated within this schizophrenic condition in which the notion is both absent and present, this study aims at creating a historical and theoretical basis for a contemporary discussion on context. Discussions on context or alike notions had always existed in the field of architecture but the debate intensified and developed as a multi-layered body of knowledge in the 1950s, when various architects, theorists and teachers cultivated several perspectives on context as to address some of the ill effects of modern architectural orthodoxy and the destructive effects of post- war reconstructions. Despite being a topic of layered and productive debate in the post-war years, context lost popularity in the critical architectural discourse of the 1980s when it was absorbed by postmodern historicism and eclecticism, co-opted by traditionalists and conservationists, and consequentially attacked by the neo-avant-gardes for its blinkered understanding. This research presents a critical archaeology of the context debate, aiming to reclaim the notion by uncovering its erased, forgotten and abandoned dimensions. To do so, it challenges the governing paradigm of 1980s postmodern architecture by making inquiries into the history and genealogy of its particular trajectories with a criticism from within. Taking 1980 as a starting point, coinciding with the First Venice Architecture Biennale, the research traces the debate on context back to the 1950s through an in-depth study and interpretation of the ideas and works of Aldo Rossi, Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown and Colin Rowe. This reverse chronology reveals that in the works of these protagonists the understanding of context has shifted from “place to memory”, from “spatial to iconographic” and from “layers to object”, where the former categories still hold the capacity to recover the notion as a critical concept that is intrinsic to the architectural design process. In brief, by drawing upon the vast resources available in different media, such as exhibitions, archival materials, student projects, publications, buildings, etc., the study constructs an outline of “the context thinking” as it was articulated in architectural culture in the period between 1950s and 1980s.@en

How can we better understand and explain the phenomena of architectural composition and perception? The aim of this research is to systematically and imaginatively (re)consider the conditions of architectural composition, whilst doing justice to the operational and the aesthetic issues of design. The ambition is to contribute towards generating a deeper, more objective understanding, concerning the craft of architectural design and consequently: the art of architecture. To unravel the expressive themes that are at interplay in a designed object and to demonstrate their combined workings, formal characteristics are identified and conceptual and analytical models were developed. These are applied and tested in case-studies. The Patterns & Variations study as a whole has been a laboratory and testing-ground for a variety of steadily evolving assumptions, interpretations, and applications that have been generated over a number of years. It is the closing piece of an extensive, personal search, which has sought to bridge the gap between practice, education, research and theory.@en

A Flat Theory presents a first step toward a yet-to-be-completed, larger project: a genealogy of apartments. While centering on the historical formation of apartments, it does not offer a straight-forward history of apartments or flats. Rather, as a contribution to a wider history of the present, it draws together the first synthetic study of the complex processes through which apartments have initially taken form. To do so, it proposes an eco-systemic and assemblage-theoretic extension of genealogical modes of inquiry so as to draw together an epiphylogenetic mapping of this complex process. After situating and specifying this approach, A Flat Theory charts three converging lineages that mark the ‘material-discursive’ formation of appartamenti and appartements as an (I) architectural concept, (II) spatial phenomenon, and (III) residential system during the 1540–1780s in western Europe@en

The modern emphasis on authenticity and the individual not only caused an ‘astonishing flowering of poetry and music’ and ‘the rise of the novel’ states the philosopher Hannah Arendt in her well-known book The Human Condition, but also the fall and ‘decline of the more public arts, especially architecture.’ In this study Hans Teerds takes up the challenge to address the public aspects of architecture, as they emerge from the political philosophy of Hannah Arendt. Starting from a reflection upon the contemporary urban landscape and its seemingly loss of public space, he challenges the contemporary theoretical discourses on the fall of the public character of architecture. Architecture, this study argues, shapes the experience of public appearance rather than being able to guarantee public life. It enables the human being to appear in public and to be ‘at home in the world’. The essential task of architecture is to shape and make tangible the common in society, to ‘thicken our understanding of the world.’ Architecture therefore is to be understood as a public enterprise, not simply a matter of the architect and other stakeholders only. After its fall, the challenge thus is to recover architecture as public art. @en

Leftover spaces are neglected and obsolete spaces within the city. As they are temporarily unoccupied by defined urban functions, leftover spaces provide unique “interstitial conditions” that open for wild species as well as different informal social activities, offering crucial complements to the formal and defined urban spaces. In this context, the design of leftover spaces poses a paradox between the practice of design that projects a set of definitions onto the site, and the indeterminacy of leftover spaces that opens for appropriation and interpretation. By recognizing this paradox within the design of leftover spaces, this thesis strives to explore open-ended design approaches that engage leftover spaces without losing their essential qualities of indeterminacy. Three case studies—Valby Smedestræde 2 in Copenhagen, Le Jardin Du Tiers-Paysage [the Garden of the Third Landscape] in Saint-Nazaire, and the Dalston Eastern Curve Garden in London are scrutinized with a uniform framework consisting of four lenses: the morphological, social, ecological and material lens. The plan, the section, the perspective and axonometric drawings are used as tools to examine the cases and further, to represent the results of reading through each lens. The study delivers four general modi operandi—disclosing, selecting, founding, and sustaining—for engaging with the interstitial condition of leftover spaces. This thesis further invites for an exploration on the role of “gardeners”, nurtures and balances diverse social and ecological practices in the on-going transformation of the site.@en

Experiments of Analysis and Intervention MSc3/MSc4 Graduation Studio - Spring 2017.

Positions in Practice : Constructing the Commons in the Latin American Metropolis, Graduation Studio (Msc 3 | Msc 4), Valparaíso, Chile, Fall 2017 - Spring 2018. The MSc3/MSc4 Graduation Studio “Positions in Practice” of the Department of Architecture TU Delft (fall, 2017) focused on the urban and architectural context of Valparaíso, as a laboratory for the definition of disciplinary positions and the performance of these positions in practice.

This dissertation deals with ‘architectural space formation’, which is understood as the part of architectural and urban design that concerns the creation and structuring of physically defined spaces of inside and outside character separately as well as in relation to each other and to open space. Furthermore, it focuses on the fundamental significance of space formation in architectural design and aesthetics as well as the question of how Walter Gropius and Aldo van Eyck referred to space formation in their approaches towards architectural design and aesthetics separately, compared to each other, and in relation to the discussion of architectural space and space formation at the beginning of the twentieth century.@en

The British architect Cedric Price (1934-2003) is well known for his radical and visionary projects, many of which were never built, and most frequently with reference to his seminal work of the 1960s which continues to inspire contemporary practice. However, Price was also active and influential as an architectural journalist, writer, critic, lecturer, tutor, educationist, researcher, curator, polemicist, and intellectual. Although his writings and lectures have been recognised as an important part of his architectural oeuvre, they have never been the object of an independent study or any sustained analysis regarding architectural theory. The present dissertation questions this marginalisation of Price’s contributions to architectural theory by focusing on his experiments in writing, editing, publishing, lecturing, teaching, curating, as well as design, and argues that these wide ranging discursive activities may all be considered to contribute to an expanded and performative understanding of architectural theory. First, I examine the formative period of roughly the 1950s to the 1960s, in which Price explored a variety of media contexts, forms and practices, ranging from scrapbooks to television to popular magazines. More particularly, I reconstruct the multiple and varied publics that would increasingly play a key role in the development of his architectural discourse. I also retrace Price’s early reflections on architecture as they progressively connect with his first experiments in communication, but also a number of influential figures and institutions. I then turn my attention to the following decades of the 1970s to the 1990s in which Price redirected and recalibrated his discourse to address more specifically a professional community, arguing that this inflection in Price’s ongoing quest to reach a broader audience was not a form of disciplinary interiorization, but rather a much more experimental and radical phase in his discursive evolution which ultimately defined a complementary posture in which the figure of the architect was now positioned both ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ the traditional contours of the discipline. I therefore investigate Price’s fundamentally interdisciplinary approach to architecture and the creative entanglement of theory and practice that is at the heart of his work by resituating the meaning of his discursive practices within, on the one hand, the larger historical and theoretical contexts of architectural debate to which they contributed, and, on the other hand, the particular origins and development of Price’s highly unconventional, theoretical practice and production. In retracing Price’s discourse and intellectual biography with regards to post-war architectural theories and debates – yet, not exclusively – I argue that Price’s theories – as articulated, embodied and enacted in his discursive output and activities – were integral to his profoundly experimental approach to architecture. In doing so, I aim to clarify the theoretical legacy of one of the most celebrated ‘architect-thinkers’ of the twentieth century.@en