{"title":"From the infraordinary to the extraordinary: Georges Perec and domesticity","authors":"Graham Livesey","doi":"10.1017/s1359135522000471","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1359135522000471","url":null,"abstract":"The design of domestic environments is fraught with decision-making, a process often dictated by fashion. The resulting inhabitation of domestic spaces blends the routine and the banal, with occasional forays into the extraordinary. The spaces of the domesticity range from single rooms to elaborate palaces. These can be functionally prescribed or open-ended, they support furniture, décor, behaviours, and narratives. The writer Georges Perec (1936–82) provides a way of looking at the domestic realm and ordinary life through his many inter-related writings on the subject. In his quest for an ‘anthropology of everyday life’, he explored notions of the ‘ordinary’ and ‘infraordinary’. In this text two important works by Perec are examined to explore how he framed and questioned notions of domesticity; can this reading be construed as a theory of domesticity? Perec’s text Species of Spaces describes a spatial continuity between city and dwelling that is characterised by spatial types, thresholds/boundaries, objects, and everyday practices often of an autobiographical nature. He begins with the page, ascends through the apartment building and the city, and ends with the world in a sequence of embedded spatial conditions. A close read of Species of Spaces uncovers a kind of sociological work, a critique or manifesto, and an evolution from Perec’s previous writings. In the text he asks the most fundamental questions, such as ‘What does it mean, to live in a room?’ In his monumental text Life A User’s Manual, Perec examines the lives of residents in a typical Parisian apartment building, it remains one of the most significant imaginings of how a building, or work of architecture, can be occupied. Through the vast scope of Perec’s project the book captures the intertwining lives of the occupants of the building at 11 Rue Simon-Crubellier, in Paris’s 17th arrondissement, at precisely 8:00 pm on 23 June 1975. To accomplish this Perec devised forty-two ‘preprogrammed’ factors to structure each of the ninety-nine chapters to ensure that he covered plot, actors, and setting in a systematic way. The apartment building ultimately provides an armature for the study of the very small to the very large. Life A User’s Manual describes a domestic world, how we organise our residences into compartments of space, how we furnish the rooms, how our stories create our realities, and how the lives of people in an ordinary apartment building intertwine in so many ways. Although frozen in a moment, the novel captures the vagaries and complexities of the everyday. It describes the routines of living, unexpected happenings, the connections between people living together at close quarters, the role of interiors in defining a particular period, the histories that can support and damage a life, the common aspirations and tragedies of urban dwellers, and so on. Perec's work does not constitute an actual theory of domesticity, although it precisely describes a domestic order that pro","PeriodicalId":43799,"journal":{"name":"arq-Architectural Research Quarterly","volume":"22 2 1","pages":"247 - 253"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82919346","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"English architecture in 1963: a newly rediscovered view from Germany","authors":"Anthony Ossa-Richardson","doi":"10.1017/s1359135522000252","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1359135522000252","url":null,"abstract":"This article provides an English translation of an unpublished German typescript found in the archive of the architect Julius Posener in the Akademie der Kunst, Berlin. Posener, a professor of architectural history at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste (HBK), travelled with a colleague and fifteen students to England for a fortnight in March 1963. They met several prominent architects, saw a wide selection of their current and recently completed works, and attended events at the Architectural Association school. The typescript is an account of the trip that he wrote up from notes in his diary on 29 March, two days after their return. Posener, who had previously spent almost a decade teaching architecture in London, proves to have been a sympathetic observer of the scene, eager to compare and contrast what he saw in England with contemporary work in Germany; his account evokes subtle disagreements between himself and his colleague on conceptual and historical points, and gives us an insight into the day-to-day workings of Denys Lasdun’s office, the Architectural Association, the London County Council, and the Building Research Station in Garston.","PeriodicalId":43799,"journal":{"name":"arq-Architectural Research Quarterly","volume":"51 1","pages":"222 - 235"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90808054","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Representations of power in architecture","authors":"","doi":"10.1017/s1359135522000422","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1359135522000422","url":null,"abstract":"opening article, Mohamed Gamal Abdelmonem examines recent architecture and urban design in Belfast city centre, produced out of that city’s distinctive political troubles, divisions and power relations (pp. 130–152). ‘Inscribed by memories of conflict and violence’, he shows, ‘ground floor façades are mainly solid, disengaging and do not encourage fluid movement.’ The design of new buildings and public spaces in central Belfast ‘characterise attributes of a reciprocal reproduction of memories of fear’ – both resulting from the political situation and reproducing its effects. Meanwhile, writing about the Chinese Pavilion at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition, built shortly after China’s Boxer Rebellion, Yinrui Xie shows how the choice of certain royal and vernacular motifs, and by extension the omission of others, ‘reflected the Chinese government’s early self-vision of its global image in an age of political turmoil’ (pp. 153–168). Presenting a particular ‘architectural “Chinese-ness” in the early twentieth century’, the design illustrates the characterisation of political power in articulating and producing architectural form. In contrast, Michael Asgaard Andersen and Mette Boisen Lyhne study the empowerment of inhabitants in design processes, examining how bofællesskaber – or cohousing – in Denmark results from power relations at work in procurement processes (pp. 197–208). Since the 1970s, they show, the commissioning of such developments has become increasingly top-down. The authors argue for a return to ‘co-creation in cohousing’ to ‘contribute to a more diverse and affordable development of mainstream housing and neighbourhoods’. Testing the analytical potential of creative architectural representation, Esen Gökçe Özdamar reviews the use of a zoetrope to read İstiklal Street in İstanbul – a thoroughfare associated with state power, political action, and its suppression – in forming the identity and collective memory of the city (pp. 169–183). The mechanical device ‘was used not to direct the viewer’s gaze, but rather as an inhabitable space that [participants] could enter’. Frank Lyons, however, is concerned with how designers exert power, through architecture and urban design, over the everyday lives of inhabitants (pp. 185–196). ‘In constructing urban environments’, he argues, ‘we seem to have forgotten that form has power; that poor form makes us feel poor; ill-conceived form makes us feel ill.’ Indeed, Lyons suggests, the ‘misuse of the “silent” power of form is perhaps one of the greatest threats to our cities and to city life’. This is an issue so subtle, he suggests, that it ‘goes unnoticed by most’.","PeriodicalId":43799,"journal":{"name":"arq-Architectural Research Quarterly","volume":"1 1","pages":"123 - 123"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89703550","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Re-reading İstiklal Street using an optical toy: zoetrope montage","authors":"Esen Gökçe Özdamar","doi":"10.1017/S1359135522000239","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S1359135522000239","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines multi-modal perceptions of İstiklal Street, a public space in İstanbul, using a zoetrope, an optical, scientific, and educational instrument invented in the mid-nineteenth century that was a predecessor to film in early cinema. It discusses how this tool increases the awareness of architectural students to environmental perception through observation. Constructing a black curtained zoetrope with a radius of five metres allowed them to metaphorically inhabit the optical device as it was large enough for their bodies to enter. After experiencing İstiklal Street as flâneur/flâneuse, students aimed to understand its heterogenous and fragmented narrative using the zoetrope. Re-reading the street through a zoetrope enabled a paradoxical interplay between the device and its scale. By interacting with a zoetrope to create different fragmented movements and scales, movement in the urban space was understood as more than a visual perception or transient state of curiosity. Instead, the students comprehended architectural production through filmmaking as ‘a mode of reflection’ rather than as mere representation. The zoetrope became a medium through which the students’ visual, haptic, and kinaesthetic senses were fused together.","PeriodicalId":43799,"journal":{"name":"arq-Architectural Research Quarterly","volume":"35 1","pages":"169 - 183"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89737461","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"ARQ volume 26 issue 2 Cover and Back matter","authors":"","doi":"10.1017/s1359135522000434","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1359135522000434","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43799,"journal":{"name":"arq-Architectural Research Quarterly","volume":"1 1","pages":"b1 - b2"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77217504","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Fear in disguise: defensive architecture and façade permeability in shaping the urban experience of Belfast’s public spaces","authors":"M. Abdelmonem","doi":"10.1017/S1359135522000392","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S1359135522000392","url":null,"abstract":"This article investigates architectural responses to everyday sociospatial practices in public spaces in the postconflict urban landscape of Belfast, where public buildings and façades impact pedestrian flows and movement patterns in the public space. While the city has an extended history of vibrant public spaces and active urban life throughout the first half of the twentieth century, devastating memories of the so-called Troubles leave imprints of division across the city’s public spaces. Inscribed by memories of conflict and violence, ground floor façades are mainly solid, disengaging, and do not encourage fluid movement across their thresholds. This article argues that the architectural design of public buildings and spaces characterise attributes of a reciprocal reproduction of memories of fear. A comparative analysis of the architecture of four different public spaces in Belfast city centre highlights factors that inform the relationship between the building façades, ease of accessibility, and use of the public space.","PeriodicalId":43799,"journal":{"name":"arq-Architectural Research Quarterly","volume":"7 1","pages":"130 - 152"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88750963","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Co-creating Danish cohousing","authors":"Michael Asgaard Andersen, Mette Boisen Lyhne","doi":"10.1017/S1359135522000355","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S1359135522000355","url":null,"abstract":"In this article, we explore how different kinds and varying degrees of co-creation have shaped cohousing in Denmark over the past half century. The first part of the article is concerned with how this is related to types of ownership and ways of establishing new communities; the second part to the role of the architect, arguing for more experimental and open processes; and the third part to resident mix and community life, which raises questions of diversity and the unfinished. The article concludes with a discussion of how the accumulated experiences may contribute to strengthening a sense of belonging and community in future cohousing during the processes of both construction and habitation.","PeriodicalId":43799,"journal":{"name":"arq-Architectural Research Quarterly","volume":"3 1","pages":"197 - 208"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83589739","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"ARQ volume 26 issue 2 Cover and Front matter","authors":"","doi":"10.1017/s1359135522000446","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1359135522000446","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43799,"journal":{"name":"arq-Architectural Research Quarterly","volume":"66 1","pages":"f1 - f4"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90397455","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Doodles: an exhibition of the drawings of Stirling, Wilford & Associates, 1984–2000","authors":"Alan Berman","doi":"10.1017/s1359135522000264","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1359135522000264","url":null,"abstract":"Ticks, crosses and amendments: revealing the design methods of Stirling's office.","PeriodicalId":43799,"journal":{"name":"arq-Architectural Research Quarterly","volume":"23 1","pages":"124 - 129"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74733223","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"China on display: the architecture of the Chinese pavilion at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition","authors":"Yinrui Xie","doi":"10.1017/s1359135522000240","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1359135522000240","url":null,"abstract":"After the Boxer Rebellion ended with China’s crushing defeat and the signing of the Boxer Protocol, China participated in the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition as its official debut at world’s fairs. The Chinese pavilion was supposed to represent the country’s national pride and cultural identity, yet ironically, the pavilion materialised the Chinese government’s weak position in its quasi-colonial relationship with the US – both politically and culturally – in terms of the appointment of architects, the design process, and the arrangement of construction. Such power interaction shaped an ambiguous ‘Chinese architecture’ presented at the fair, imitating the Beijing residence of a Chinese Prince while incorporating vernacular architectural elements from south China. It reflected the Chinese government’s early self-vision of its global image in an age of political turmoil and cultural uncertainty, and pioneered the exploration of an architectural ‘Chinese-ness’ in the early twentieth century.","PeriodicalId":43799,"journal":{"name":"arq-Architectural Research Quarterly","volume":"1 1","pages":"153 - 168"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74859864","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}