Speculative loopholing

opening limitations in Ijburg block 44a's architectural power processes

Master thesis (2017)

Authors

R.T. Broos Architecture and the Built Environment

Contributors

R.J. Nottrot Public Building and Housing Design (supervisor 1)
Stavros Kousoulas Theory, Territories & Transitions - Architecture and the Built Environment (supervisor 1)
J.A. van de Voort Architectural Engineering - Architecture and the Built Environment (supervisor 1)
D.A. Groetelaers Support Architecture (supervisor 1)
Faculty
Architecture and the Built Environment
Copyright: © 2017 Thomas Broos
Architecture Power Deleuze Fixation Speculative design Delimitation
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Published Date

13-07-2017

Language

English

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Faculty

Architecture and the Built Environment

Abstract

The problem adressed in this text is the fixation of capacities to interact by laws, which limits the realization of valuable transformative potential in the built environment. The purpose of this text is twofold: First to uncover the processes behind such fixation-through-laws for the built environment and; Second, to propose a different (Deleuzean) attitude towards power which argues for a release of this fixation and urges the limitations of such laws to be opened up. To this end, Chapter 1 elaborates how a prioritisation of interests contructs a dominant collective mode that excludes alternative tendencies. Chapter 2 elaborates on the fallacies incorporated in the process of abstraction to come to such a priority of interests for a collective. Chapter 3 suggests an alternative, Deleuzean, attitude towards power which promotes differences over their abstraction. Chapter 4 then applies this Deleuzean understanding of power to a housing block in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The advice is to start with opening up the most blatant fixation of use and form in the municpality’s place-specific ‘Bestemmingsplan’ law. Afterwards, chapter 5 concludes that by steering away from fixated hierarchies constructed through abstraction, we arrive at a post-humanist, flat ontology. Using it, we can apply a strategy of promoting new understandings constructed by experimentally opening up, or ‘speculative loopholing’, and thereby delimit transformative potential in our built environment.