Space and the otherness. An anthology

• Autores: Leandro Medrano, Luiz Recamán Barros, Mariana Wilderom, Raphael Grazziano
• Localización: Critic-all III International Conference on Architectural Design & Criticism: digital Proceedings / Silvia Colmenares Vilata (dir.), Luis Rojo (dir.), 2018, págs. 98-107
• Idioma: inglés
• Enlaces
  • Texto Completo Libro (pdf)
• Resumen

  • Alexander Cuthbert published a daring anthology on architecture and urban design, completed in 2011. The project began in 2001 resulting in three volumes: Designing Cities (2003), The Form of the Cities (2006) and Understanding Cities (2011). Unlike other anthologies on architecture, this author organized it as follows: critical selection of authors' texts from various disciplinary areas (vol. I), the approach systematization according to the defined categories (vol. II) and the discussion of the "meta-theories" that would underpin a renewed critical disciplinary perspective (vol. III). The categories of analysis include the disciplinary tradition and emerging themes: theory, history, philosophy, politics, culture, gender, environment, aesthetics, typology and pragmatics.

    In this sense, Henri Lefebvre (1901-1991) had already indicated the ideological limits of both modern urbanism and the new spatial strategies of globalization, and proposed a new science of space and city, free from the direct injunctions of the defining economic determinations of 'urban society'. This would be a task of thinking about social praxis.

    The aim of this research is to answer: Does this theoretical-empirical approach respond to the Lefebvrian requirement of a critical-theoretical reflection that would be the basis of a new space discipline? Does Alexander Cuthbert overcome the dichotomy between urbanism and architecture towards a disciplinary methodology of spatial intervention? Therefore, this study discusses the categories of Alexander Cuthbert according to Lefebvre's critical propositions and his "unitary urbanism". In this sense, we believe that instead of proposing operational categories, Cuthbert proposes heterologies – or preconditions – that could configure a new critical thinking. Its objective would be a theoretical unit that surpassed the urbanism like "fragmentary sciences", restricted to the functional and economic dimensions of the production of the space.

    Cuthbert's anthology showed the most appropriate approach to the new themes and challenges, considering the multiplicity of theoretical interfaces that converge in the architectural practice.