The discipline of architetcure, architecture and society

"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."

This article investigates the cedar tree as represented in image and text in early Mesopotamian culture – looking in particular at the Gilgamesh story. Though certainly an object of devotion, these trees, I argue, have less to do with ‘religion’ than with geopolitical imaginaries as constructed by the newly emerging urban-based powers of the region. Acquisition of these trees involved a six hundred mile military expedition from the cities in the marshes to the highlands of Lebanon. The trees, as valuable objects of conquest, thus represented not just the wealth of the periphery that was in now the hands of the city elites, but also the subjugation of the people of that periphery, the people who, in fact, once controlled the trees and lorded over their sanctity. When brought back to the cities and placed in urban temples, many built in the form of man-made, terraced cedar mountains, what we see is the translation of the story of risk and subjugation into a celebratory architectural form. The Mesopotamian cedar tree is the first example in history where the subjugation-of-the-periphery is formatted into a symbolic operation.

Lisa Landrum's paper "Modus Operandi of an Architectus Doli: Architectural Cunning in the Comic Plays of Plautus"  appears as Chapter 15.  Also in the book are essays by Karsten Harries, Marco Frascari, David Leatherbarrow, Kenneth Frampton, Juhani Pallasmaa, Steven Holl, and other colleages and former students of Alberto Perez-Gomez including: Ricardo L. Castro, Tracey Eve Winton, Robert Kirkbride, Paul Emmons, Indra Kagis McEwen, Santiago de Orduña, Caroline Dionne, Lily Chi, Louise Pelletier, Lawrence Bird, Lian Chikako Chang, Natalija Subotincic, Stephen Parcell, Graham Livesey, Juan Manuel Heredia, Anne Bordeleau, Peter Olshavsky, and David Theodore.

Paper summary/excerpts: "At least five of Plautus’ twenty extant comedies involve what classicists call an architectus doli, an “architect of trickery.” … Plautus’ elaboration of the cunning slave character has long been considered one of his most original contributions to Latin drama; but the “architect” terms associated with these slaves (and with Jupiter) were likely transposed from the now largely lost Greek comedies that Plautus adapted and translated into Latin. These five imported “architects” were generally ignored in early studies of Plautine inventiveness. They eventually gained attention, however, in an important 1952 study on The Nature of Roman Comedy. Since then, Plautus’ architectus figure has been interpreted in a variety of ways within classical scholarship: as a euphemism for the play’s lowly agent of intrigue; as a proxy for the scheming playwright; and as a media-reflexive figure associated with other craft imagery used throughout Plautus’ plays to qualify and vivify not only acts of scheming and plot construction, but also moral edification. Yet, there are further interpretations to be made and important questions to be asked…This essay cannot answer these questions in full, but it will initiate an interpretation of Plautus’ architectus doli with such questions in mind. By lifting this Roman dramatist up out of the footnotes of architectural scholarship (where he is sometimes merely credited with providing the earliest extant use of the Latin term architectus), the following study prepares the grounds for discovering how the cunning agents and agencies of Plautus’ comedies meaningfully illuminate the modus operandi of architects..."

An interview with Polish architects for the exhibition catalog "Profession: Architect", within the festival Warsaw Under Construction 5, 2013. Museum of Modern Art. Warsaw.
The fifth edition of the festival, was devoted to the architects and their discipline, eg roles played by architects in society and their impact on the appearance and functionality of the modern city. Since the onset of the festival, architects have been an important audience as well as co-creators of WUC, however, this time, the subject under discussion is their very own work. The festival organizers also want to take a closer look at the question of ethical dilemmas inherent to the profession of architect exercised in the open market conditions. [part of the catalogue – only in Polish]

Architecture is frequently considered to be a craft, an art or a technique. This article also holds it to be a science, which allows us to look at places from a specific point of view, one not akin to those of other disciplines. In examining modalities  of knowledge, I suggest there has been a change of paradigm in the field in recent decades, one that recovers reflexive-theoretical knowledge. Asserting architecture to be a scientific discipline means not denying, but rather strengthening interdisciplinarity in dealing with questions related to places produced or appropriated by people. In what follows, therefore, I emphasise contributions by authors from other disciplinary fields, who look at places from a morphological point of view. I explore architecture as an independent variable: once ready, it affects people in various ways, the sociological way included. The latter may be encapsulated in the following questions: does formal-spatial configuration (voids, solids, their relations) imply desirable ways for individuals and groups (social classes, genders, generations) to locate themselves in places or to move through them, and consequently desirable conditions for personal encounters and avoidances and for the visibility of one another? Does the type, quantity and relative location of activities imply desirable patterns for the utilization of places, in space and time?