Theory

Week One

Readings:How to Encounter a Puddle by Anny Li and Index of Agency by Sophie Chien

1. What is Li’s overall idea about puddles? How does she connect the practical (photos, experiences) with the theoretical (ideas in the text)?

The author’s thinking through the puddles on the roadside and recorded it through photography. She analyzes the surrounding environment and pictures of the puddles and connects with low theory. The result is that the two are similar.

2.How might you sum of Chien’s ideas about agency? How does she connect the practical (diagrams of spaces, experiences) with the theoretical (ideas in the text)?

Designers can manipulate people’s behaviors by creating spaces. In fact, the sight that people see in a space can be specially designed.

3.Each writer poses questions within the text. What do you think the purpose of these questions are in Li’s piece? in Chien’s? How might we answer them?

I think the purpose of these two articles is to keep us exploring and thinking about everything in our life.

4.How are they engaging with the different/similar ideas of movement within cities and spaces?

Li: Li’s point of view is that these environments are created in buildings controlled by people.

Chinen: Chinen’s point of view is that manipulate human activities through design space and all the environments we are in are by design. This is different from li’s point of view.

5.What is the purpose of, or impression you get from the images within each text? How important are they in your understanding of their ideas?

The picture is an important basis for supporting the author’s point of view.Reader’s can better understand the author’s point of view through the photo. The picture accurately provides the readers with a sense of presence, realism.

6.There are some key theoretical texts or ideas mentioned in each piece of writing. Research them (briefly) and come up with a one or two sentence definition.

low theory: Breaking the standard of success, which may change our perception of the world and create different ways of thinking.

Ekistics: Ekistics is the use of scientific models to study human settlements and combines research in various fields.

Agency + spatial agency: Spatial Agency proposes a much more expansive field of opportunities in which architects and non-architects can operate. It suggests other ways of doing architecture.

Personal as political:The personal is political, also termed The private is political, It underscored the connections between personal experience and larger social and political structures.

Decentralised network: A decentralized network is a “trustless environment,” where there is no single point of failure.

Week Two
Readings: Too Close to See: Notes on Friendship, A Conversation with Johan Frederik Hartle by Celine Condorelli and Support Structures: An Interview with Mark Cousins by Celine Condorelli

1.How would you define a ‘support structure’?

I think it is divided into two levels: materials level and social spiritual level. Material level: connection, support, bear, connect the internal support and external support of the object through a reasonable physical structure to ensure the stability of the object. Social spiritual level: support someone.

2.What are some examples of ‘support structures’? Physical, political, conceptual, etc

Physical：bridge, building, furniture, ladder.

political: elections, statements by supporters.

conceptual：family, friends, supporters.

3.What are some conditions or requirements for a structure to be considered a support?

The structure must be reasonable and have sufficient stability and strength.

4.What is the relationship between the supporter and the supported?

The relationships between the supporter and the supported is mutual trust, the supporter recognizes the supported and the supported needs the support of the supporter.

5.How might we connected the format of the texts (as conversations) to her notions of support?

This talk is mutually supportive and both sides are actively discussing and expressing opinions around this view and responding to each other’s ideas.

6.What is Condorelli’s creative practice?

Her work spans architecture and art, exploring relationships, mechanisms and structures which often go unnoticed.

7.Can you identify the threads of connection between her writing and her making? What are they?

Divided into two parts of making and thinking is a relationship of mutual support. She believes that the process of thinking is an essential part of making and making process is also a way to thinking.

8.She identifies ‘friendship’ as having a political dimension. What does she mean by this? How does she discuss this in the text?

She believes that friendship is a political relationship of loyalty and responsibility that just like supporter and supported who are mutual. They need to cooperate to create something new.

9.How would you define ‘friendship’? What about ‘solidarity’?

Friendship: friendship is a two-way emotional relationship that must be maintained together, with mutual trust and respect.

Solidarity: solidarity is produced by multiple emotions condensing together to achieve a combination of common ideals or common goals.

Week Four

John Dixon Hunt, “Reading and Writing the Site” (1992)

1.What is “second nature”, according to the Roman writer Cicero? What other term could be used as a synonym for “second nature”, according to John Dixon Hunt? Why is this kind of nature a “second” nature? What is “first”? (pp. 131-32)

Second nature: something that is so familiar that it is done without having to think about it. Such as a habit, characteristic, etc, not innate. Playing games, brushing your teeth, speaking your language… are all second nature. First nature: is primal, predatory, survival instinct.

2.What is “third nature”? Why do you think this is “third”? i.e. why is “third nature” said to “go beyond” or be an advance or development upon “second nature”?

“Third nature” is ideology and cultural artifacts. “Third” makes human behavior more advanced and promotes the development of human culture and technology. “Third nature” is development through the “second nature” , just like the development of the “first nature” to the “second nature”.

3.What does John Dixon Hunt say is the main point he is trying to make when he brings up the terms first, second, and third nature? What do these terms tell us about the human relation to nature? (132)

Humans have been changing their state by controlling nature. Nature can bring benefits to humans and humans have been trying to control nature.

4.What is the “picturesque”? (p. 132) What does this word mean in common parlance? What does it mean in relation to the history of landscape design? Look it up online and find out as much as you can about it.

Picturesque is an aesthetic ideal introduced into English cultural debate in 1782 by William Gilpin in Observations on the River Wye, and Several Parts of South Wales, etc. Temple misinterpreted wild irregularity, which he characterized as sharawadgi, to be happy circumstance instead of carefully manipulated garden design. The picturesque style in landscape gardening was a conscious manipulation of Nature to create foregrounds, middlegrounds, and backgrounds in a move to highlight a selection of provocative formal elements—in short the later appropriation of Humphrey Repton. 

5.What is the “sublime”? (p. 132) What does this word mean in common parlance? What does it mean in relation to the history of art and philosophy? Look it up online and find out as much as you can about it.

The theory of sublime art was put forward by Edmund Burke in A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful published in 1757. He defined the sublime as an artistic effect productive of the strongest emotion the mind is capable of feeling. He wrote ‘whatever is in any sort terrible or is conversant about terrible objects or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime’.

6.What is a garden? How does John Dixon Hunt define the garden, on p. 133? (Clue: What does the word “milieu” mean? What is its etymological/original meaning? Look this up.)

The garden is a place to rest and play mainly for plant viewing, with a beautiful and picturesque environment. Dixon believes that the garden is an art space and belongs to the “third nature”.

Rebecca Solnit, “The Orbits of Earthly Bodies” (2003)

1.What is the great irony about living or holidaying in the countryside that Solnit points out in the first few paragraphs of her article?

The irony is that although the author is in a rural environment, her life still depends on the car.

2.Solnit is trying to burst some of our illusions about the countryside. What are some of the common illusions that we have about living or holidaying in the countryside?

Of cause, in the countryside we will see some original ecological nature, compared to urban life, rural life is a little slower and calmer and will be very relaxing. This often makes people feel a return to nature.

3. What are ranchettes? What does Solnit mean when she says that “ranchettes seem to preserve the frontier individualism of every-nuclear-unit-for-itself; they’re generally antithetical to the ways in which community and density consolidate resources”? (334)

A small ranch or a large home lot, often on the outskirts of a major metropolitan area and just past the planned neighborhoods, consisting of 40 acres and a house and possibly a barn or other outbuildings.

4.What is the “new urbanism”? (334 bottom) Look this up online and find out as much as you can about this movement. Why is Solnit ambivalent about the new urbanism?

New Urbanism is a planning and development approach based on the principles of how cities and towns had been built for the last several centuries: walkable blocks and streets, housing and shopping in close proximity, and accessible public spaces. 

5.According to Solnit, how have we tended to define nature? What’s wrong with this way of defining nature? (p. 335)

“ we have tended to define nature as things to look at, and we think we’re natural when we’re looking at nature “, this way of defining nature does not treat us as part of it and separates it.

6.Why do you think Solnit compares city activities (shopping, people-watching) to hunting and gathering in the wilderness? (p. 335 middle) Why do you think she says that New York City might be the most natural space in all of America? (p. 335 top) What is she trying to do to the way we think of cities?

For people living in the city, these are our daily natural activities. Perhaps our life environment is nature itself.

7.What’s the problem with the term “pedestrian-scale”? (335 middle)

“humans are pedestrians when not fitted with vehicular prosthetics.”  

8.Why do you think Solnit included a found quote from a Pottery Barn catalogue as her epigraph? What does the epigraph tell us about the point she is trying to make in the essay?

Solnit may have included this quote to express her love for the countryside, I think regardless of the evaluation of rural life or urban life, we already have own ideas.

Week Five

Reading:Politics of Installation by Boris Groys

1.How does Groys describe the relationship between the ‘field of art’ and the ‘art market’?

Groys proposes that art is frequently equated with the art market, and the artwork is primarily identified as a commodity.

2.What is the main two concepts that he seeks to differentiate through an ‘analysis of difference’ at the bottom of page one?

Groys analyzed two characteristics of standard exhibitions and art installations.

3.How is an art exhibition and an art installation different in Groys’ view? How does he describe the viewer/audience in relationship to each?

 “A conventional exhibition is conceived as an accumulation of art objects placed next to one another in an exhibition space to be viewed in succession.” Groy proposes that the viewer itself is not within the scope of art, the audience is just looking at the artwork in front of him. “The artistic installation is a way to expand the domain of the sovereign rights of the artist from the individual art object to that of the exhibition space itself.” Obviously the art installation is a space and the viewer itself is also a part of this art space.

4.How would you describe an ‘exhibition’? How does Groys describe the ‘exhibition space’?
Exhibitions are a special way of communication. Artists display artworks to viewers through exhibition. “The only function of such a space is to make the art objects that are placed within it easily accessible to the gaze of the visitors.” Groys believes that the exhibition is the accumulation of artworks and the only function of exhibition is to bring visitors closer to the artworks.

5.What is the role of a ‘curator’, both in the past and in the present time?

The role of the curator is to bring artwork into public space for visitors to watch and vist. The opposite way breaks the freedom of art.

6.What do you think a “defunctionalized design fragment” is?

It is a part of design.

7.When, in Groys’ view, did artists begin to seek autonomy/freedom/sovereignty for their work?
During the Modern era

8.How does Groys describe the ‘installation’ as a space?
“The installation operates by means of a symbolic private of the public space of an exhibition.” The art installation is private and the artist is free in this space. Artist can choose any form of installation to design.

9.What does an installation do to a space, that an exhibition does not?

Installation art is a whole art work. Everything in the space is part of design, but the exhibition is just the accumulation of individual works. “transforms the empty, neutral, public space into an individual artwork” 

10.In relationship to last week’s lecture (Landscape Part II), do you see any relationship between ‘installation’ and colonisation or land ownership?

Artists create in their own area is private and free.

11.What different kinds of ‘freedom’ does Groys write that artists and curators embody? Is it always the same or has it changed over time/ in different situations?

These two different kinds of freedom. artist:the sovereign, unconditional, publicly irresponsible freedom of art-making. curator embody:the institutional, conditional, publicly responsible freedom of curatorship.

12.What does Groys write is the relationship between democracy or democratic access to installation art?

The installation gives the artist maximun freedom. When the closed space is open to democracy, the space has been transformed into a platform for public discussion, democratic practice, communication.

13.How does Groys see installation art as reflecting contemporary society? Can we see spatial design and architecture in a similar light? Why/Why not?

The installation space is where we are immediately confronted with the ambiguous character of the contemporary notion of freedom that functions in our democracies as a tension between sovereign and institutional freedom.

Week Six

Reading: Radical Interiority: Playboy Architecture 1953-1979 by Beatriz Colomina

1. How does Colomina say Playboy Magazine affected reader’s tastes or desires for interior space?

Readers were encouraged to think they could have a piece of the idealized interior in their own lives. this continuously expanded world of design is itself a sexual fantasy, a space the reader is skillfully seduced into. The more detailed the description, the more intensely the reader desires to get in. 

2.Who were some prominent Modernist designers? What do their designs have in common?

Georges Nelson, Harry Bertoia, Charles Eames, Eero Saarinen, Roberto Matta, Archizoom, Jo Colombo, Frank Gehry, etc.

3.What is the social context of the beginnings of Playboy Magazine in 1953? What else was happening
(or had happened) in the world at the time?

4.How did that change between 1953-1979?

The role of design for Playboy becomes even clearer.

5.Why do you think Playboy Magazine is described by Colomina as making “it acceptable for men to
be interested in modern architecture and design”? Why do you think that it might have been seen
prior to this as “unacceptable” in the public consciousness?

Readers were encouraged to think they could have a piece of the idealized interior in their own lives. A cycle of desire was built up as Playboy kept feeding the fantasy with more and more detail about the objects.  consciousness

6.How does the desireable contemporary interior differ from the “Playboy Interior”, or from the
Modernist interior?

The architect stands at the edge of the future, visualizing the possible trajectory of design. The playboy never goes outside but dreams of flying towards the future in his sealed domestic capsule. 

7.What does Colomina say makes the Playboyb Interior feel ‘futuristic’, or ‘seductive’?

The more detailed the description, the more intensely the reader desires to get in. To subscribe to Playboy is to get a set of keys to a dreamlike world, a magical interior.

8.What interior design trends from the era feel ‘current’ and what trends feel ‘dated’?

9.What magazine/publication/platform would you describe as having a big influence on interior design
and taste now?

ARCHITECTURAL DIGEST, DWELL MAGAZINE, ELLE DECOR

10.How do you think social/cultural/political shifts have altered how we want to live in or design our
interior spaces now?

I think that our environment is closely connected with society, politics, and culture. Designers usually use cultural and historical backgrounds as reference designs into the space.

Week Eight

Reading: Wiggle Room by Sara Ahmed

1.Who is Sara Ahmed?

Sara Ahmed (30 August 1969)^[1] is a British-Australian scholar whose area of study includes the intersection of feminist theory, lesbian feminism, queer theory, critical race theory and postcolonialism.

2.How does Ahmed begin the text? If you noted down the ‘sections’ of this piece of writing, what
would those sections cover or talk through?

Start with a simple definition and describe some stories for readers to understand and gradually deepen

3.How would you define ‘wiggle room’?

Informal scope for freedom of action or thought

4.She connects ‘wiggling’ with the will, or willfulness. How does she say that connection came about
for her?

She used her own experience to describe,” I think of less roomy shoes, and I think of my toes with sadness and sympathy: they would be cramped, less able to wiggle. Less wiggle room: less freedom to be; less being to free.”

5.Ahmed uses specific definitions of words and their historic uses as a way ‘in’ to an idea. Can you find
an example of this?

6.What does she say is the difference between wiggling and wriggling?

“And a body might wiggle and wriggle. These two words “wiggle” and “wriggle” both imply sudden movements, but they have a different affective quality; at least for me. Wiggle is often defined as quick irregular sideways movements. Wriggle can mean to turn and twist in quick writhing movements. Wriggle also has a more sinister sense: when you wriggle out of something, you get out of something by devious means. In “deviation” there is an implication of deviance. Bodies that wriggle might be crip bodies, as well as a queer bodies; bodies that do not straighten themselves out.”

7.How would you describe Ahmed’s writing? Formal, personal, casual, etc?

I don’t think it’s formal writing, it’s more like recording your own views on this matter
8.What effect does this have on the reader (on you!)?

Using stories or experiences may make readers empathize and understand your point of view
9.A too-small room is a key metaphor that Ahmed uses to talk about ‘wiggling’ – why might it be
interesting to think of as spatial designers?

10.What else could be considered as a ‘space’ to wiggle within or what else could be considered
something to wiggle ‘against’?

11.Ahmed references a number of other people’s texts – who is Judith Butler? Who is Jane Bennett?
Who is Eve Sedgwick?

Judith Pamela Butler^[2] (born February 24, 1956) is an American philosopher and gender theorist whose work has influenced political philosophy, ethics, and the fields of third-wave feminist, queer,^[3] and literary theory.

Jane Bennett (born July 31, 1957)^[2] is an American political theorist and philosopher. She is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities at the Department of Political Science, Johns Hopkins University School of Arts and Sciences.^[3] She was also the editor of the academic journal Political Theory between 2012-2017

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (/ˈsɛdʒwɪk/; May 2, 1950 – April 12, 2009) was an American academic scholar in the fields of gender studies, queer theory (queer studies), and critical theory. 

12.What are some words/phrases that Ahmed uses that you don’t understand? Note them down to
bring up in the tutorial.

Week Ten

Doreen Massey, “A Global Sense of Place” Discussion Questions

1) Can you think of any recent geopolitical events that are examples of, or the result
of, what Massey calls a “longing” for a time when “places were (supposedly)
inhabited by coherent and homogeneous communities”? (146-47) Can you think
of any examples from the more distant past?

2) Why are “place and the spatially local… rejected by many progressive people as
almost necessarily reactionary”? What’s wrong with attempting to reclaim a
(supposedly) long-lost coherence between place and community? (151, 146- 147)

3) In what way is “the currently popular characterization of time-space
compression… very much a western, colonizer’s, view”? (147)

4) What does Massey mean when she says that “time-space compression needs
differentiating socially”? (148)

5) Massey instructs us to think of people who are do engage in global travel and yet
are in fact deeply disempowered. What kind of people or phenomenon is she
thinking of? What’s her point in bringing this up? (149)

6) In what way can “[d]ifferential mobility…weaken the leverage of the already weak”?
What does Massey mean by this?

7) Massey poses her million-dollar question at the top of p. 152. See if you can locate
it.

8) Why is Massey allergic to the typical geographer’s obsession with drawing
boundaries? (152, 155)

9) Why is it misguided to imagine that “places have single, essential, identities”?
Why is it misguided to identify place with community? (152, 153, 154)

10) In what way does Massey ultimately exhort us to conceive of the specificity of
place? How should we picture the specificity of place, if we are to picture it in a
progressive way? (154-55)

11) Should we, in the end, get rid of the notion of place specificity? (155-56)