Modernism

RELATED TERMS: Avant-garde movements; Design History; Postmodernism; Utopia and Utopian thinking; Design practice and functionalism; Defamiliarisation, Ostranenie or making strange; Modernity; Dasein; Everyday Eagleton (2021) states that, “Modernism is among other things a crisis of narration, as the world ceases to be story-shaped. History is no longer informed by the plot once known as progress.Continue reading “Modernism”

Exosomatisation

RELATED TERMS: Endosomatisation; [Of] Grammatography; Hypomnesis, Hypermnesis and Anamnesis; Remembering: Mnemotechne, Mnemonics and Memory Exosomatisation is the process of technical exteriorisation of cognition and memory. Nevertheless, Agamben (Agamben and Pensotti, 2021) warns, in relation to the progressive digitisation and robotisation of life, “every exosomatic technical progress corresponds to a regression of the endosomatic functions. ButContinue reading “Exosomatisation”

Agonism and Design

RELATED TERMS: Agon; Khora or Chora Originally developed in relation to the work of artists and architects by Jane Rendell (2006), critical spatial practice has since expanded to include discourse among designers, geographers, planners, landscape architects, activists and philosophers.  According to Max Willis (2019), three core principles of agonism, in relation to design practices, canContinue reading “Agonism and Design”

Feminist Spatial Practices

RELATED TERMS: Spatial Practices As Schalk et al (2017) note, spatial practices is a broad term for architectural, artistic, design and other disciplinary and interdisciplinary practices engaged in studying and transforming space. Feminism, because feminist politics believes that things can be otherwise and that they can be changed, offers an optimistic outlook on the future.Continue reading “Feminist Spatial Practices”

Remembering: Mnemonics, Mnemotechne and Memory

RELATED TERMS: [Of] Grammatography; Hypomnesis, Hypermnesis and Anamnesis; Exosomatisation; Learning “Cities are made of sedimented strata of memory” (Adams, 2021) Frances Joseph (2010: 302) points out that mnemotechne is an archaic term for how memory and thought are fundamentally related to the inorganic through the world’s materiality. As such, she comments, it may well be theContinue reading “Remembering: Mnemonics, Mnemotechne and Memory”

Technology

RELATED TERMS: Remembering: Mnemonics, Mnemotechne and Memory [Katie] Hafner: I’ve heard Bran [Ferren] say before that he thinks technology should be invisible. [Danny] Hillis: Good technology ceases to become technology. You don’t think of a pencil as technology, because it just does what it’s supposed to do. You don’t think of a book as technology, becauseContinue reading “Technology”

Performance and Performativity

RELATED TERMS: Actant; Happenings; Metalepsis; Methodology and Method; Paradigm; Performance Art; “You are more than entitled to know what the word ‘performative’ means. It is a new word and an ugly word, and perhaps it does not mean anything very much. But at any rate there is one thing in its favour, it is notContinue reading “Performance and Performativity”

Phenomenology

RELATED TERMS: Affordances; Arendt; Feminism and Materialism; Heidegger; Lifeworld – Lebenswelt – Umwelt; Ontology; Philosophy; Place, Space, Placiality, Spatiality; Present-at-hand (Vorhanden) and Ready-to-hand (Zuhanden); If it is accepted that the human is one of the main constituents or domains of actantiality in the realisation of a design, then the relevance of phenomenology becomes apparent, asContinue reading “Phenomenology”

s-o-f-t.agency [Soft Agency]

RELATED TERMS: According to their website, Soft Agency is a group of female architects, artists, curators, scholars and writers from across the world who work with spatial practices. Their work is rooted in feminist methodological practices and formats, at the intersection of critical spatial practice, radical pedagogies, collectivities of becoming otherwise and alternative modes ofContinue reading “s-o-f-t.agency [Soft Agency]”