In-Between Others

Abstract

This research explores the entanglement of relations of bodies and cities, in the heterogeneous contemporary city. Wherein, the othering of bodies has become an increasingly (problematic) complexity, due to its relations with obsolete embodiments of (historic) notions of power. The research question that is investigated, questions how we can create an architecture of affect, within the in-between relations of bodies and cities, that could establish renewed ideologies amongst bodies which may go beyond the practices of othering.
The research reacts and continues the work of earlier philosophers that have expressed on this entanglement, and probes how to go beyond theory to find applicability of these theories to spatial research and design.
Theories by Michel Foucault are put in relation to theories by Elisabeth Grosz and Donna Haraway. Herewith, the heterogeneity of cities and the in-between relations of power, bodies, architectures, and cities were researched in its potentials and applicability. Subsequently, following a positioning towards othering practices, with the use of the Greater City of London as case study.

The relations of bodies and cities are considered from the in-between of their relations, specifically determined by the model of relations which specify their conditions. What results, is a continuously changing accumulation of reciprocate processes that shape cities' heterogeneity. Conducted through relations of power, as institutionalism, hierarchical bodies-cities relations provide a systemics of othering within different layers and scales.

Following the potential of heterogeneity, the essay proposes an intensification of the cities' heterogeneous conditions as diffusion of in-between relations. Consequently, the conditioning, strategization, and operationalization of the in-between was investigated, to determine how a reconstruction of the in-between through architectural intervention could be affective.
As a result, the essay proposes architectures of fragmentation that reuses the divergence of (existing) in-between relations, to complexify the concatenation of processes. With additionally, the materialization of constrasting experiences and sensations, to have the potential to establish affective (architectural) relations with bodies.

Within my graduation project "In-Between Others", the architecture re-establishes relations between dichotomies of different typological bodies (human, urban, architectural, power), exploring the potential of (spatial) in-betweens. While simultaneously, it reflects on the relations of bodies of others (urban, machine, natural, animal, architectural). With this, the conditioning of bodies' confrontations, in order to control their conceptions and performances. Ultimately, to establish the beyond of othering, both through, as within, (spatial) disciplines.