Satisfied: Feminism and the Affective Turn in Architecture

My name is Andrea Gibson—it’s my married name. I am an Assistant Professor at a large University in the Midwest where I teach Sustainable Architecture and am a design studio instructor. My presentation today, is entitled: ‘About architecture and affect, and experiencing feminism in architecture now’. Or perhaps it could be called, ‘Satisfied?’ And you may quickly see that I am not. To outline this talk, and due warning, I will be discussing feminism, philosophies of affect and architecture

Post Occupancy Evaluation of Sustainable Schools and Children\u27s ways of Knowing: New Directions in Teaching and Research

Architecture is now more than ever dominated by scientific method. This paper examines what is really at stake when designing sustainable architecture. It is a methodological study and focused on science as understood in Post Occupancy Evaluation (POE) of sustainable buildings, specifically school buildings. Questions raised in this paper include the very real problem of designing for children’s comfort and education in school architecture, but also much wider issues than simply those of the design of children’s environments

Livability and CoExistence Between the Sexes: An Architectural Question

If we feel our lived environment, if we feel the reality of our existence in relation to our environment, can we also feel nature’s destruction? Understanding of our own nature in relation to nature, has been described as an aesthetic discourse, or eco-aesthetics (ökologische Naturästhetik) by Gernot Böhme, a philosopher more currently popular among architects for his theory of architectural atmosphere. According to Böhme, nature must be recognized as our partner and we should gradually adapt to such a partner relationship. Nature is not something we have left behind in our becoming civilized; nature is us and is not to be overcome. He states that «it it is only now that we realize that what has been carried out as the domination of nature is, in fact, a totally impossible project» (Wang, 2014)

Outsider ethics and marginalized aesthetics: The value of contemporary environmental philosophies for designing sustainable architecture

In this paper, I will explore the work of two contemporary environmental philosophers: Gernot Böhme, celebrated for his philosophy of architectural atmosphere although less known for his work on ecological aesthetics, and Luce Irigaray, a French philosopher renowned for her work inspiring a generation of feminist scholars but less well discussed for her work on environmental ethics. For Böhme, our designed environments are experienced through atmosphere; we feel our own presence in a built environment and feel the environment in which we are present. His approach to design depends on feeling experienced through being in space rather than seeing space or imagining it. Irigaray, on the other hand, now in her eighties, distinguishes experience as different between the sexes, not as already cultural, but rather to be cultivated. Her philosophy is provocative and challenged by many; while on the margins of Parisian intellectual society, she still works, teaches, and writes prolifically about environmental ethics. This paper examines how these two marginalized ecological philosophers can benefit the field of environmental design

Space: Notes on the Thought of Luce Irigaray

In March 2015, a conference was held in New York entitled Feminism in Architecture 2015, and subtitled, ‘We need to change our expectations. We need new models of success. We need to change what and how we teach’. I made an application, and I suggested adding to the subtitle ‘And we need an evolution in love’ (it was not accepted). And yet, the concept of affect, but not apparently affection, is a current conversation in architecture. The question of atmosphere and affect, of space and mood, has been pondered in a number of conferences recently including: Atmospheres (University of Manchester, July 2015), with the British place-poet Simon Armitage as keynote speaker, and Sites of Production (UCL, London, July 2015), with Gernot BÖhme in attendance. And, for Gernot Böhme, an important philosopher in this field, the “whatness” of our immediate surroundings is understood through affect. Importantly, he argues (and this is his interest to the architectural profession) this vague and poetic experience of atmosphere and affect is described as the authentic dialogue of architecture; a discourse specific to architecture and borrowed neither from engineers nor art historians

Plant ethics or an environment for the birth of a new human? An exploration in radical ethics for sustainable architecture.

This paper critically examines literature concerned with an ethics in the multiplicity of different approaches to the design of sustainable architecture. Sustainable design theorists commonly argue for the need to perceive the world differently, to find new ways to live, to create new values to replace old: questions of ethics are implicit in such explorations

Sharing the World: an approach for sustainable architectural design

What else could be more appropriate for a conversation about sustainable architecture, than the proposition in Luce Irigaray’s Sharing the World that it is the task of the human being, to learn not to appropriate resources but to share life, with each other and with plants? The question of sustainable architecture is, however, dominated by a discourse comparing the energy performances of buildings and on abstract certification or “rating tools”, each easily manipulated to serve the purposes of either commercial or political gain. Despite a rich history of architects challenging relationships with nature and re-envisioning community, and social scientists addressing how societies use or conserve energy, this current trend presents the problems of sustainable architecture as distinct from that of the human being, his and her desires

A Future Invested in Sustainability: Sustainable Architecture and Education in the Midwest through the Ethical Philosophy of Luce Irigaray

Theories of sustainable architecture that address sexual difference are rare in an architectural context, whether in the United States or Europe, and this paper proposes a critical perspective on architectural design using sustainable schools as an example and adopting the question of sexual difference. Informed by the words of young people, the philosophy of Luce Irigaray, and research carried out as part of a research project, “Iowa’s New Schools: A Future Invested in Sustainability,” this paper examines contemporary approaches to sustainable school architecture. It addresses questions of lifestyle and behavior and architects’ aims to produce energy-efficient and sustainable architecture and build sustainable lives. Key to the problem of sustainable schools and education for sustainable development is the language of sustainability. Language connects a concern for methods with the perspectives of children and young people. In this paper, I argue that a philosophical reconsideration of relationality is the primary objective in the development of a sustainable built environment. I argue that building cannot start with master planning or conceptual design, and it is not simply about constructing ourselves in our communities, adopting predefined and encouraged “sustainable behaviors.” Rather, sustainable building ‒ sustainable architecture ‒ must start with social questions of difference. For Irigaray, this means cultivation of the relationship with the other who is sexuately different. This suggests radically new approaches to the question of sustainable architecture, to pedagogy, and to the building of new schools

The energy between us: Two affective and intertwined space-times evoked by architecture as prelude to a proper sharing?

“I enter a building, see a room, and…” Peter Zumthor writes, “in a fraction of a second I have this feeling about it” (Zumthor 2006: 13). As an immediately grasped judgment of environmental character, atmosphere has been described as a collaboration of an infinite number of multisensory factors: a non-material experience, contrasting centuries of tradition understanding architecture as material artefact experienced through the limitation of vision (Pallasmaa 2014: 20)

A semi-analytical light curve model and its application to type IIP supernovae

The aim of this work is to present a semi-analytical light curve modeling code which can be used for estimating physical properties of core collapse supernovae (SNe) in a quick and efficient way. To verify our code we fit light curves of Type II SNe and compare our best parameter estimates to those from hydrodynamical calculations. For this analysis we use the quasi-bolometric light curves of five different Type IIP supernovae. In each case we get appropriate results for the initial pre-supernova parameters. We conclude that this semi-analytical light curve model is useful to get approximate physical properties of Type II SNe without using time-consuming numerical hydrodynamic simulations.Comment: accepted for publication in Astronomy \& Astrophysics; corrected Fig.2, 3,