Driven by the Foucauldian attitude of subsuming architectural history into a genealogy of techne, Architectures of Life and Death advances a transdisciplinary approach rethinking subjectivity and exploring the political ramifications of these processes for the discipline of architecture and beyond. In contrast to mainstream approaches, architecture will not be seen as representative of culture, but as the mechanism of culture, the 'collective equipment' that rests on the reciprocal determination of social habits and technological habitats. In this sense, the idea that we shape our environments, therefore they shape us, is not to be taken as a metaphor. The animate has always been utterly dependent on the inanimate. A livable habitat is one which the inhabitant actively co-evolves with and which does not constitute a ready-made condition to which the inhabitant would simply have to passively adapt.
Andrej Radman is assistant professor of architecture and has been teaching theory courses and design studios at TU Delft Faculty of Architecture and The Built Environment since 2004. Radman is a production editor and member of the editorial board of the peer-reviewed architecture theory journal Footprint. He is also a licensed architect with a portfolio of built and competition-winning projects. His latest publication, coedited with Heidi Sohn, is Critical and Clinical Cartographies: Architecture, Robotics, Medicine, Philosophy. Stavros Kousoulas studied architecture at the National Technical University of Athens and at TU Delft. Since 2012, as a researcher and lecturer, he has been part of the Theory Section of the Faculty of Architecture of TU Delft. He received his doctoral title cum laude from IUAV Venice participating in the Villard d' Honnecourt International Research Doctorate. He is a member of the editorial board of Footprint journal of architecture theory since 2014.
Introduction, Andrej Radman and Stavros Kousoulas Part One: Metamodelling Chapter 1, Andrew Ballantyne 'Ecologies of Fear and Desire' Chapter 2, Goekhan Kodalak 'Are Architectural Modalities Alive?' Chapter 3, Dulmini Perera 'Fun Machines: Rethinking Mess and Method in Architecture' Intermezzo I: Priming Yota Passia and Panagiotis Roupas 'An Index of Affective Mechanisms: Deciphering the Pre-Subjective Power of Spatial Assemblages' Part Two: Asignifying Semiotics Chapter 4, Renske van Dam 'Reversed Encounters: Constructing Life with Arakawa and Gins' Chapter 5, Robert A. Gorny 'A Diagrammatic Cartography of Discourses: On Architectures Of Life And/or Death' Chapter 6, Antonio Paoletti 'Lilacs Out of the Dead Land' Intermezzo II: Primacy of Action Renske van Dam, Cocky Eek, et al 'Moment Matters' Part Three: Pedagogy of Senses Chapter 7, Stavros Mouzakitis 'The First Crematory of Greece' Chapter 8, Ayesha Sarfraz and Arsalan Rafique 'Necrotic Urbanism: A Critique of Violence And Resistance' Chapter 9, Karin Reisinger 'Radically Alive: A Disappearing Mining Town at Europe's Margins' Glossary Index
