Architecture and Affect is motivated by two questions: Why does dismissed affective evidence trouble us? What would it mean for architecture to assemble such discrepant evidence into its discourse? Arguing that the persistent refrains of lived affect dwell in architecture, this book traces such refrains to a concept of architecture wedged in the middle ground—jammed amidst life, things and events. Rather than being aloof from its surrounds, architecture-in-the-midst challenges an autonomous epistemology. Beyond accounting for the vivid but excluded, this book develops a frame and a disposition for thinking critically about, speculatively through, and being grounded by, encounter. Examining affect through a constellation of spaces in contemporary Singapore, it details architecture’s uneasy but inextricable relationship with key subjects relegated to the incommensurate, the peripheral, the scenic and the decorative. The outcome is a politicized architectural discourse simultaneously grounded and speculative; bridging depth and intuition, thinking and feeling.

Affect, Architecture, and Practice builds on and contributes to work in theories of affect that have risen within diverse disciplines, including geography, cultural studies, and media studies, challenging the nature of textual and representational-based research. Although numerous studies have examined how affect emerges in architectural spaces, little attention has been paid to the creative process of architectural design and the role that affect plays in the many contingencies and uncertainties that arise in the process. The book traces the critical, philosophic, and architectural theories to examine how affect, architecture, and practice are interlinked. Through a series of conversations and reflections, it examines three key contemporary architects, their practices and projects, all within a single coherent theme. Reiser + Umemoto (RUR Architecture DPC), USA, Kerstin Thompson Architects, Australia, and Shigeru Ban Architects, Japan, are critically studied through the lens of different aspects of practice, namely image-making, the design process, and the making of an everyday object/material. Through this investigation, author Akari Nakai Kidd demonstrates how affect theory allows a critical interrogation of the in-betweens of practice, its liminality and limits. It questions the stability of objects, the smooth temporality of practice, and its often under-conceptualised non-human dimensions. More significantly, the book demonstrates architectural practice’s contribution to the reconceptualisation of theories of affect.

How did people living in the Middle Ages respond to spectacular buildings, such as the Gothic cathedrals? While contemporary scholarship places a large emphasis on the emotional content of Western medieval figurative art, the emotion of architecture has largely gone undiscussed. In a radical new approach, Architecture and Affect in the Middle Ages explores the relationship between medieval buildings and the complexity of experience they engendered. Paul Binski examines long-standing misconceptions about the way viewers responded to medieval architecture across Western Europe and in Byzantine and Arabic culture between late antiquity and the end of the medieval period. He emphasizes the importance of the experience itself within these built environments, essentially places of action, space, and structure but also, crucially, of sound and emotion.

Elements of Architecture explores new ways of engaging architecture in archaeology. It conceives of architecture both as the physical evidence of past societies and as existing beyond the physical environment, considering how people in the past have not just dwelled in buildings but have existed within them. The book engages with the meeting point between these two perspectives. For although archaeologists must deal with the presence and absence of physicality as a discipline, which studies humans through things, to understand humans they must also address the performances, as well as temporal and affective impacts, of these material remains. The contributions in this volume investigate the way time, performance and movement, both physically and emotionally, are central aspects of understanding architectural assemblages. It is a book about the constellations of people, places and things that emerge and dissolve as affective, mobile, performative and temporal engagements. This volume juxtaposes archaeological research with perspectives from anthropology, architecture, cultural geography and philosophy in order to explore the kaleidoscopic intersections of elements coming together in architecture. Documenting the ephemeral, relational, and emotional meeting points with a category of material objects that have defined much research into what it means to be human, Elements of Architecture elucidates and expands upon a crucial body of evidence which allows us to explore the lives and interactions of past societies.

Architectural Affects after Deleuze and Guattari is the first sustained survey into ways of theorising affect in architecture. It reflects on the legacy and influence of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in the uptake of affect in architectural discourse and practice, and stresses the importance of the political in discussions of affect. It is a timely antidote to an enduring fixation on architectural phenomenology in the field. The contributors offer a variety of approaches to the challenges presented in discussing the relation between affect and architecture, and how this is contextualised in the broader field of affect studies. Ranging from evaluations of architectural and urban productions and practices, to inquiries into architectural experience, to modes of affective inquiry in education, to experimental affective writing, each contribution to this seminal volume suggests ways of developing a more sustained approach to a crucial thematic domain. The volume will be of use to students at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels; researchers, theorists and historians of architecture and related urban and spatial disciplines; the fields of social science and cultural theory; and to philosophy, in particular the studies of Deleuze and Guattari, and Baruch Spinoza.

This pocket-sized publication of the Mondrian Lecture given by Charles Jencks reprints his talk in full, along with various images. Jencks discusses the possibility that architecture and well-being can have a direct correlation, exploring how architecture can influence society, business productivity, profits and hospitals. He elaborates with examples of architectural determinism from both ancient and modern history, with a special focus on his experience with the Maggie’s Centres - cancer care centres set up throughout Britain by Jencks and designed by famous architects - whose purpose is to experiment with these ideas.?.

This is a practical guide for software developers, and different than other software architecture books. Here's why: It teaches risk-driven architecting. There is no need for meticulous designs when risks are small, nor any excuse for sloppy designs when risks threaten your success. This book describes a way to do just enough architecture. It avoids the one-size-fits-all process tar pit with advice on how to tune your design effort based on the risks you face. It democratizes architecture. This book seeks to make architecture relevant to all software developers. Developers need to understand how to use constraints as guiderails that ensure desired outcomes, and how seemingly small changes can affect a system's properties. It cultivates declarative knowledge. There is a difference between being able to hit a ball and knowing why you are able to hit it, what psychologists refer to as procedural knowledge versus declarative knowledge. This book will make you more aware of what you have been doing and provide names for the concepts. It emphasizes the engineering. This book focuses on the technical parts of software development and what developers do to ensure the system works not job titles or processes. It shows you how to build models and analyze architectures so that you can make principled design tradeoffs. It describes the techniques software designers use to reason about medium to large sized problems and points out where you can learn specialized techniques in more detail. It provides practical advice. Software design decisions influence the architecture and vice versa. The approach in this book embraces drill-down/pop-up behavior by describing models that have various levels of abstraction, from architecture to data structure design.

How do places manipulate our emotions? How are spaces affectious in their articulation and design? This book provides theoretical frameworks for exploring affective dimensions of architectural sites based on the notion that heritage, as an embodied experience, is embedded in places and spaces. Drawing together an interdisciplinary collection of essays spanning geographically diverse architectural sites — including Ford’s Theater, the site of President Lincoln’s assassination; the Estadio Nacional of Santiago, Chile, where 12,000 detainees were held following the ouster of President Salvador Allende; and Unit 731, the site of a biological and chemical warfare research unit of the Imperial Japanese army in Harbin, China, amongst others — this edited collection assembles critical dialogue amongst scholars and practitioners engaging in affective and other more-than-representational approaches to cultural memory, heritage, and identity-making. Broken into three main sections: Affective Politics; Embedded Geographies; and Affective Methodologies, this book draws together multidisciplinary perspectives from the arts, social sciences and humanities to understand the role of architecture in generating embodied experiences at places of memory. This book offers interdisciplinary perspectives on fundamental questions of memory, identity and space. It will be of interest to students and scholars in the fields of geography, architecture, cultural studies, and museum and heritage studies.

Compelling Form: Architecture as Visual Persuasion is an assessment of the visual persuasiveness of buildings. It demonstrates that architecture is as capable of social influence as speeches or advertisements are and that an awareness of this influence provides an insight into buildings’ cultural roles. The book considers a diverse array of structures ranging from museums, to performance halls, to universities, to cathedrals, to governmental buildings, to palaces, and to skyscrapers. Compelling Form is an important extension of theories of persuasion and visual communication to architecture and engineering. The book bases its assessments on the elements of visual literacy and then on the elements of architectural design to demonstrate that buildings, monuments, and even such means of commerce as bridges affect the viewer in such a way as to have social impact.

Conversant in contemporary theory and architectural history, Stan Allen argues that concepts in architecture are not imported from other disciplines, but emerge through the materials and procedures of architectural practice itself. Drawing on his own experience as a working architect, he examines the ways in which the tools available to the architect affect the design and production of buildings. This second edition includes revised essays together with previously unpublished work. Allen’s seminal piece on Field Conditions is included in this reworked, revised and redesigned volume. A compelling read for student and practitioner alike.