Architecture, Theory and criticism: Summary chapter 7-12
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Course
Architecture, Theory and Criticism
Institution
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KU Leuven)
This is a brief but concise overview/summary of the second part of this course, chapter 7-12. I have been through the complete texts, summarized this and added classnotes. This summary contains more than the parts he covered in class, it is a summary for the complete texts.
Architecture, Theory & Criticism 2023 Classes by Gideon Boie
Ecolgoy: Three Ecologies – Felix Guattari
Who?
Félix Guattari (1930-1992) was a French psychoanalyst, philosopher, and political activist
known for his innovative and interdisciplinary work, particularly in collaboration with Gilles
Deleuze. He is best known for his contributions to philosophy, psychoanalysis, and political
theory, where he challenged conventional thinking and proposed new ways of understanding
human experience and social structures.
• La Borde Clinic (Anti-psychiatry): A significant part of Guattari's career was spent at the
La Borde Clinic, a psychiatric institution known for its experimental and therapeutic
approaches. At La Borde, Guattari explored radical forms of therapy that emphasized the
social and political dimensions of mental illness.
o He took youngster with a disorder to rural areas (Provence, South of France) => to
be free in the place where they are => they had workshops together ‣ Felix
discussed with the youngster what was in their mind, he made films about this ‣
He was the head
• Organizing situations
• Doing something in the area and see what will happen
Situationist movement (1970s): ‘psychogeography’, make maps that reflect the psyche and
allow to navigate differently:
• Constant’s New Babylon: designing future society that disconnects from the earth, city,
structure that can be moved. = inspirational for Rem Koolhaas’ thesis Exodus
Bas Smets
Design of Tour & Taxis, Brussels. Big water design in the middle of the park so it will never be
used for building a tower, , no steady groud. He continued the park all the way to
Bokstael/Laken. In between the two bridges: Parckfarm (2014)
• Idea: creating a community garden to invite architects, people to work with the
neighborhood to engage in different activities
• They organized a farm house (central location) = cheap
➡ = organizing a vegetable farm, pizza oven
• => A lot of conflicts: Who’s oven is it? Who can manage the oven?
• Park farm was a laboratorium of antagonism’
Text
- “Earth is undergoing period of intense, techno-scientific transformation: ecological
disequilibrium will threaten continuation of life”
Also society breaking down together with climate change, societies are
infantilized
Dealing with climate change in technocratic way, no solution
Ecosophy (ecology + philosophy) between three ecological registers: environment,
social relations and human subjectivity can save is <-> technocratic way
- Ecosophy is a call for a profound shift in how we understand and address ecological
issues. By integrating the environmental, social, and mental dimensions, Guattari’s
ecosophy offers a comprehensive framework for confronting the global crises of our
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,Architecture, Theory & Criticism 2023 Classes by Gideon Boie
time. It challenges us to rethink our relationships with nature, society, and ourselves,
and to cultivate new ways of being that are more sustainable, just, and enriching.
- “Collectivism --> archaism (= revival of ancient/classical ideas)+ rise of religious
fundamentalism”
Response to ecological crisis = political, social & cultural revolution
global revolution + molecular revolution: revolutionize way of dealing with other people
~desire
Finalization of social labours dramatic dead-ends
eg: pauperization Third World, also threatening of nuclear power stations in France
Same dominant models valorizing human activity:
- imperium: global market
- social and international relations under control of police & military machine
- Simulation of Integrated World Capitalism: Capitalism becoming predominant political
way (international aid in south contributes to this)
- Paradox: continuous development of new techno-scientific means vs. inability of
organized social forces and formations to take hold of resources to make them work
- Demands of singularity are rising up everywhere
antagonism between East-West relations; men-women
- Young people distancing themselves from normalized subjectivity through
singularization (transnational character of rock-music)
- New ecological problems appear through multiplication of antagonisms and processes
of singularization
- New ecosophical example indicates reconstruction of human life, looking in each
instance, reinvention of everyday life
o Does not exclude definition of unifying objectives such as world hunger, blind
proliferation of nuclear industries
o Against power, as a system that defines the order
- “ecosophical aim runs through questions of racism/phallocentrism/modern town
planning/education system”
- Social ecosophy: developing practices to modify & reinvent ways in which we live
- Mental ecosophy: reinvent relation of subject to the body, ‘mysteries’ of life & death
- Implications of ecosophical perspective on conception of subjectivity: components of
subjectification
- Reconstruction of social and individual practices in ethico-aesthetic aegis of
ecosophy: social, mental and environmental ecology
- Nature cannot be separated from culture, learn to think transversally to understand
interactions between ecosystems, mechanosphere and social/individual
o Social ecology: men like Donald trump permitted to proliferate freely, taking over
entire districts of NY
- Integrated world capitalism again: increasingly decenter its sites of power, moving away
from structures producing goods and services towards structures producing signs,
syntax and subjectivity.
o Four regimes on which IWC is founded:
Economic semiotics
Juridical semiotics
Techno-scientific semiotics
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, Architecture, Theory & Criticism 2023 Classes by Gideon Boie
Semiotics of subjectification
o IWC = productive-economic-subjective
- Social ecology will have to work towards rebuilding human relations at every level of the
socius
- Environmental ecology: questions the whole of subjectivity and capitalistic power
formations
- Mental ecology demands that we face up to the logic of desiring ambivalence wherever it
emerges in order to reevaluate the purpose of work and of human activities according to
different criteria than those of profit and yield.
- ‘Transversalization’ of violence (territories are drifting away
- Media fatalism equates to
o Sudden mass consciousness-raising
o Collapse of Stalinism
o Technological evolution of media
o Reconstruction of labour processes
- International division of labour has been exported to the third world by
reterritorializing the family on large scale, an attempt will be made to achieve maximum
middle-classification of working class subjectivity ~familialization
- Different styles of three ecologies are heterogenesis/ processes of continuous
resingularization (<-> generic architecture).
- “by means of these transversal tools, subjectivity is able to install itself simultaneously
o In the realms of the environment
o In the major social and institutional assemblages (produced by situationists) and
landscapes/fantasies
o Most intimate spheres of the individual
- Reconquest of creative autonomy in one domain encourages conquests in other
domains
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