"Chōra before Plato: Architecture, Drama and Receptivity", Ch. 15 in Chora 7: Intervals in the Philosophy of Architecture, 2016

China Media Research, 2017

Jacques Derrida and Michel Serres challenge the binary logic of Western philosophy very differently, Derrida through a philosophy of discourse, Serres through a philosophy of things. Serres has begun to draw more international readers thanks to a recent shift in critical emphasis from words to things. The difference between deconstruction's word-orientated acosmism and the newer versions of thing-oriented cosmism can be fruitfully explored by comparing Derrida to Serres on the basis of their readings of Plato's cosmogony, focused on the figure of chora in Timaeus. [Janell Watson. The Urban Chora, from Pre-Ancient Athens to Postmodern Paris. China Media Research 2017; 13(4): 28-37]. 4

The historical archive of Architecture and Feminism displays two strikingly divergent interpretations of the feminine "space" that Plato designated under the name, amongst others, of chôra. Elizabeth Grosz's 1994 paper "Women, Chora, Dwelling" judges chôra to be "a founding concept" of the "disembodied femininity" that, associated within our tradition with determinations of space as homogeneous and undifferentiated, has served as the ground for the production of our ever-increasingly inequitable and unsustainable, "man-made" world. Grosz concludes that chôra offers no resources for rethinking space, time, and dwelling, and specifically queries the value of Jacques Derrida's reconceptualization of chôra, space and spatiality. Ann Bergren's "Architecture Gender Philosophy" (1992) equally contests Derrida's interpretation of chôra, maintaining—as does Grosz—that Derrida is complicitous with Plato's attributing a fundamental passivity to chôra. Bergren distinguishes this "passified chôra" from what she aptly calls the "pre-architectural chôra": namely, the chôra as it exists primordially, in an ever-changing state of moving, differential multiplicity, before its subjection to the processes of geometrization, commensuration and domestication overseen by the Demiurge-Architect of Plato's Timeaus. For Bergren, however, chôra yield this "pre-cosmic", active and femininely-connoted chôra could, in its feminist implications, open up a radically new approach to architecture. I would like to revisit these texts dealing with chôra, architecture, and "the feminine"—Bergren's and Grosz's, along with Plato's, Derrida's, Eisenman's and Irigaray's—in order to reexhume, or refashion, a concept of space that might make room for another conceptual and social universe.

When someone looks into the representational depth of the mosaic compositions that have settled in the Chora’s onastery (Cariye Camii) in Istanbul what fully emerges is a rich representation of the chora in Plato’s Timaeus (48e-52c), documented and evidenced in the enclosures of this architectural space. This monument is the result of a major renovation that took place between 1315 and 1321 under the supervision of Theodore Metochites (appx. 1270 and 1332), a scholar and Prime Minister to Emperor Andronikos II Palaeologos. The subject matter, the religious mosaic representations and their spatial arrangement echo a pictorial discourse: while the narrative is based on an iconographic polysemy, the mosaic decoration depicts the attempt to restore the ecumenical order. The mosaic’s decorative fusion may be interpreted as an alliance between the identical and the distinct which are revealed as degrees of complexity in the execution of the iconographic display. An incision into the architectural space exposes various forms of otherness that allow the real and the imaginary to coexist, as well as the perceivable with the conceivable. So an unconscious power and disorderly nature coincide with a conscious awareness and the shaping of the visual and composed space that make up the “creation.” Thus, the mosaic art places the subject matter in its architectural space and the Chora’s receptacle establishes the site’s history.

2016

"This study gathers and interprets the earliest extant references to architects in ancient Greek philosophy, as found in select works of Plato and Aristotle. Throughout this review, Plato and Aristotle [are] shown to consistently present architectonic agents as exemplary civic and intellectual leaders, acting in awareness of their own (and others’) limits, with knowledge of the most appropriate archē, and with a view to the most comprehensive aims—the common good. This discloses an alternative and more accurate etymology of architects: not as master-builders but as leaders and makers of beginnings (archai). The aim of this essay has been not only to rediscover the discursive beginnings for a renewed philosophy of architecture, but to suggest how these philosophical 'archai' might help present-day architects reimagine the full relevance of their still contested role."

International Journal of Architecture, Engineering and Construction, 2016

The consequential philosophical yearning and classical architecture had acquired an exceptional significance during the culmination of ancient Greek world despite all their conflicts and crisis; which creations are still contextual. In this interdisciplinary study, an estimated ‗theory' and ‗hypothesizing' took the major motivating tributary to descend a relation between the modalities of classical philosophy and theory of aesthetics associated with ancient Greek architecture. Thus discourses from philosophy, humanities and art theories regarding Greek architectural features are brought within reach. For that, Visual, material, construction and stylistic analysis of Greek architecture have constructed the ‗What and How' of the discourse while the iconographic discussions will lead us to the answers of ‗Why'. Some supportive analyses of socio-political history, text and biographies are also deliberated to correlate and prove the evidences. Who knows, Architecture might be the memento of Greek metaphysical manifestation: where the then Greek religion, patronization form power, economy, cultural exchange, humane thought and overall, their philosophy translated into hoary stones-something which is still a mystery. Such hypotheses will distillate that how influential were these deep-sighted thoughts and made them able to constituent all these white carving-stone poetry. The philosophical responsiveness might have sprouted from the immanent interrogations in architecture through form, function and space; as a speculation of external and transcendental questions to search the ‗Ideal'. The possible coherence of architecture with philosophy without any distinct horizon in-between, which is less focused earlier, designates the originality of this dissertation.

2022

The Athenian Agora in the Roman period has received sustained attention from archaeologists and historians of the Greek past alike. However, within this substantial body of research a number of problematic ideas and assumptions remain about the changes observable in the space during this period. Often, the Roman developments are linked with a ‘monumentalising’ of the Agora, whereby increasing architectural grandeur symbolises a decline in the space’s civic vitality (Shear 1981, 362; Walker 1997, 72). However, in recent years and with the growth of research paradigms such as acculturation, scholars have begun to recognise the broader significance of public spaces in creating understandings of social relations as the Greek cities become incorporated into the Roman Empire (Evangelidis, 2014; Dickenson, 2016). This work takes a longitudinal approach to studying the Agora to understand how social actors and groups shape it in response to new circumstances, and how in-turn they may act to challenge or reproduce these structures. This is accomplished through the implementation of the space syntax approach, a theoretical approach and methodology which provides analytical means to understanding the relevance of spatial configurations to social relations. The work will also serve as a test case for this approach, in order to generate new ways of accessing the responses of public space and provincial communities to incorporation into Empire.

Quart. Kwartalnik Instytutu Historii Sztuki Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, 2019

The Shadow of God in the Garden of the Philosopher. The Parc de La Villette in Paris in the context of philosophy of chôra In the period from the Antiquity to the Renaissance, the dialogue Timaeus was the most frequently commented work of Plato. At present, the most frequently discussed is the issue of the chôra included in it, which aroused fascination among philosophers, researchers of rhetoric, religion, feminism, and moreover, architecture. The work on the chôra also influenced the development of the interpretation of the Parc de La Villette, among which the topics related to the beginning and the change were highlighted. In early uses of the word “chôra” in Greek, as in Homer’s XVIII book of Iliad, it meant both dancing and a place to dance. On this occasion, it can be seen that it is not possible to determine which phenomenon took precedence in the creation of the name. It cannot be denied, however, that the word concerned a specific movement, as if circular and returning to an indefinable beginning. Despite the gaining more and more general meanings, the word chôra has retained its connection with the dance of people on the threshing floor, the dance of bees (choros melton) or the dance of stars (choros astron). In Timaeus, the chôra is a space filled with movement with an effect similar to shaking the sieve to husk the grain: it separates similar elements from the dissimilar ones. The juxtaposition of the Parc de La Villette and the chôra already at this stage leads to the suggestion that the park was treated by the architect as a place of dynamic changes leading to the establishment of new social solutions. In his statements, the architect confirmed that the park was to be a space of new politics and ethics. The book by Julia Kristeva La Révolution du langage poétique contributed to the spread of the belief that works of art can play a role as factors of political revolution. In this work, the author put forward the thesis that the chôra is a kind of space, the character of which has a destructive influence on attempts to conclude language games. The chôra gives beginning to words, but at the same time, by leaving a trace of this beginning it forces us to renew their meanings. The chôra understood in this way, turns out to be an irremovable beginning, to which one has to return all the time. Kristeva found manifestations of the chôra’s activity in avant-garde French poetry, to which she attributed the role of a mediator between criticism of metaphysics and aspirations for social change. The chôra, violating the language, introduces some voids into it, as if traces of the abyss, which direct the consciousness towards understanding the necessity of political changes. The Parc de La Villette was to pursue similar objectives in the city space. In his essays, Bernard Tschumi considered the problems of creating spaces that would give rise to a radical democracy. The proposed rebellious spaces should have the characteristics of a void, in which contradictory forces would occur as forms of pure activity. The means of achieving this goal was to concentrate contradictions and make them visible. The Parc de La Villette was supposed to collect differences as indelible and at the same time by showing them it was supposed to raise awareness of the social world as a conglomerate of differences. Saturation of the space of the park with subversive values results from the character of this space suppressed in the consciousness, as well as from the social diversity which has not been taken into account so far. The main contradictions contained in space relate to the division that exists between its presentation as a mental problem and a sensual one. The park was the deliberate creation of a place that transcends such a division and creates a separate space for negotiation between architectural theories and its practical applications. The purpose of the park was to become a place of future events, which would not hide their conflicting character coming from diversity of both space and society. The method of composition usually aimed at achieving a harmonious whole has been replaced by Tschumi with a system of juxtapositions of non-coherent elements or those resulting from variations and transformations. Tschumi did not seek direct influence on politics in the Parc de La Villette, but made room for thinking about the possibilities of the future. He introduced problems rather than showed solutions to them. The task of the park was to put the principles of architecture into a kind of vibration that would inspire users to participate in the new community.

KOINE: Mediterranean Studies in Honor of R. Ross Holloway, eds. D. B. Counts and A. S. Tuck, 4-17. Oxford: Oxbow Books

Actual Problems of Theory and History of Art No13, 2023

Exploration of space ontology and epistemology, which first emerged in Homer and Hesiod, continued through Pre-Socratic philosophy and the lyric poets. Indicatively, Sappho's poetry reflects a multitude of philosophical and spatial ideas of her time 1. Besides the poetic and philosophical level, this investigation continued to preoccupy ancient Greeks intensively on a mythological and geographical level as well. Specifically, this study examines the geographical and cosmological dimensions of space as ecumene, as cosmos [24], and as a product of the four primary elements' materiality. The research also considered relevant theories such as the theory of content in Plato's Timaeus, Aristotle's theory of topos (Physics II) 2 , as well as Stoic and Epicurean concepts of space and emptiness [1]. The paper intends to explore some spatial archetypes in Athenian tragedy, referring to architectural space, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, to mountainous space as a carrier and receiver of aspects of the divine, as well as the interaction between the divine and the human in two emblematic mountains, Cithaeron and Caucasus, theaters of action or epiphany of Dionysus and Prometheus in Euripides' Bacchae and Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound, respectively. Both of these tragedies unfold in the earthly sphere, even if in Prometheus Bound the troupe is divine [7, p. 96]. The analysis here includes the following: A brief account of the intertwining of myth, without which drama is inconceivable, and space; universal and particular dimensions of mountains as a reflection of the contrasting characteristics of Prometheus and Dionysus; a commentary on Cithaeron and Caucasus as seats of tragic divinity; an interpretation of the role of Thebes, a rival of Athens in the vicinity of Cithaeron, as the theater of most Athenian tragedies, and, finally, the aesthetic categories of the sublime, the uncanny and the beautiful in the two tragedies of reference.

The aim of this paper is to study Plato's use of urban landscape to convey the historicalpolitical meaning of the Atlantis story. As the crux of the argument, I will argue two interlinked hypotheses: first, that the descriptions of Atlantis and primaeval Athens provide the key to identifying these cities, respectively, as mirror images of fifth-century Athens and of an idealised Sparta, suggesting that the story conceals an evocation of the Peloponnesian War. Secondly, I will propose that Plato expresses the cause of this conflict also through the urban landscape and, specifically, through the symbolism of the corruption of the circular layout that initially defines Atlantis.