577 research outputs found
A geography of big things
This paper sketches some conceptual tools by which cultural geographers might advance geographies of architecture. It does so by thinking specifically about one architectural form: the modernist residential highrise, which is the âbig thingâ of this paper. The paper draws on recent developments in material semiotics in order to interrogate features often uniquely associated with the highrise, such as its global reach, uniformity, and scale. The paper first rethinks how cultural geography has traditionally explained the movement of built forms, explicitly turning from diffusionist accounts to the notion of translation. It then offers a reconsideration of the way geographers might think about scale in relation to a âbigâ and âglobalâ thing like the modernist highrise, arguing that scale is produced relationally and in specific contexts. Finally, it offers a template for cultural geographical scholarship which takes seriously the technical work entailed in things, like a highrise, materialising or de-materializing. It does so by way of two illustrative stories: one about the productive social science of highrise suicides in Singapore; the other about the destructive role of the inquiry into collapse of Ronan point in the UK
Sophisticated geographies
This paper offers a reflection on the relevance of Nietzsche to recent geographical
scholarship. It starts by questioning the more general relationship between geography
and philosophy/theory and interrogates what we might mean by theoretically
sophisticated geographies. Drawing on a specific context - the postcolonial apology
in contemporary Australia â the paper turns to the relevance of Nietzscheâs thinking
about morality, in charting everyday moral geographies and imagining more ethical
futures
Hybrid Highrises
This paper is drawn from some new research I am getting underway on the fortunes
of the highrise. I should say that this paper is largely speculative and has benefited
greatly from discussions with my co-researcher on this project, Stephen Cairns who is
in architecture at The University of Edinburgh. I invite you today to speculate with
me about the fortunes of the highrise in the contemporary city
Too many houses for a home: Narrating the house in the Chinese diaspora
The scale and extent of human mobility in contemporary times has added a new
inflection to a question that has long pre-occupied scholars: this being the matter of
âwhat is home?â or, more precisely and following Agnes Heller (1995), âwhere are we
at home?â. These questions are both minor and major. They implicate something as
ordinary as âthe houseâ and as extraordinary as our sense of belonging. Martin
Heideggerâs well known essay from 1951, âBuilding Dwelling Thinkingâ, provides
one starting point for thinking about how a building like a house is attached to an
experience like dwelling (Heidegger 1975). He investigates how dwelling requires
building (as a process and as a thing) and how, in turn, building helps constitute our
sense of dwelling. Heidegger draws at one point on the example of a farmhouse in
the Black Forest, which he uses to illustrate how building both cultivates and
expresses dwelling. His conception of âproper dwellingâ relies, then, on the example
of a house that is embedded in its place of origin -- where building and dwelling and
location are co-constitutive. Through an architectural diagnostic, a dwelling such as
Heideggerâs farmhouse might occupy the category of âthe vernacularâ. Through a
sociological diagnostic, we might think of it as a type of âancestral homeâ. Such
models of âproperâ dwelling are being radically transformed in contemporary times.
Not least, current levels of mobility act as a force of compromise. Mobility compels
our lives to be full of radical open-ness, proliferating differences and multiplying
loyalties. It produces flows of information, people and things that do away with, or
render residual, what might be thought of as monogamous modes of dwelling. Within
this restructured world, both vernacular architectures and ancestral homes come to
assume new positions and are sutured into our modes of dwelling in quite different
ways
A geography of big things
The journal Cultural Geographies, and its predecessor Ecumene, has provided flagship
scholarship in cultural geography for over a decade. Cultural Geographies has played this
part in a period that has witnessed both unprecedented enthusiasm for the (now not so
new) cultural turn, and an emergent scepticism around what cultural geography has
come to stand for, and specifically its apparent over- emphasis on representation. As
Catherine Nash and I have observed elsewhere, this new scepticism is evident in a
range of cultural geographical writings. For example, the recent Handbook of Cultural
Geography, itself an exemplary account of the vital contribution of cultural geography
to the discipline, opens with a picture of a tomb with the epitaph âHere Lies Cultural
Geography, Born 1925, Died 2002. In Loving Memoryâ. There could be no clearer
expression of the peculiar combination of commitment to and disenchantment with
the concept of culture in contemporary geography. It is not the only death wish that
cultural geography has had to endure recently. Don Mitchell concludes his review of
Mike Crangâs Cultural Geography with the following epitaph: âDespite a brief and
brilliant beginning, in the end, it never amounted to muchâ. A mere decade ago
cultural geography was seen as an analytic frame that could promise not only a
productive, but also a necessary, reshaping of geographical scholarship. Now it seems
we canât decide if we want this sub-field to be dead or alive! This paper is not a
defence of cultural geography per se, nor even an attempt to police the ways in which
we might use the term âcultureâ in our geographies, although that has been one
evident response to the confusion over the value of cultural geographical approaches.
It does, however, have something to say about things being alive or dead â and it does
presume that the approach taken, in significant and worthy ways, is indebted at least
in part to the vital novelty bequeathed by a sub-disciplinary field known as âcultural
geographyâ. Not least, the paperâs focus on building technology and building practises
self-consciously resuscitates and extends a theme common to cultural geographical
scholarship, old and new
The Postcolonial Ghost Story
This paper draws on Durkheim and Freud in discussing the Australian ghost story, referencing Rosa Praed's 'The Bunyip' and Percy Mumbulla's 'The Bunyip'
âA tall storeyâŠbut, a fact just the sameâ: The Red Road highrise as a black box
The advent of state-sponsored mass highrise housing in the post-war period brought
into view a range of issues about the role of technology in everyday life. This paper
draws on approaches in the study of science and technology in order to deepen our
understanding of the socio-technical aspects of such highrise housing, past and
present. We elaborate this thinking empirically by examining a 1960s highrise
development, Red Road, Glasgow. The paper examines the inaugural phase of
development, and the most recent phase of âredevelopmentâ, the first stage of which is
demolition. The paper extends existing accounts of residential highrises generally,
and Red Road specifically, as well as elaborating an alternate analytical framework
for understanding highrise and supertall dwellings
Common Extra House Lab: Recipes for Citizenship in Transition or the Domestic-collective Usage of the Common Good
Este artĂculo describe acciones que simulan mejoras en el modo de habitar de redes de ciudadanos. El marco formativo es el Ășltimo curso de arquitectura llamado Common Extra House Lab. En este no se fomenta la distinciĂłn entre aula, laboratorio y ciudad. Lo domĂ©stico y su espacio pĂșblico inmediato (el extra-house) constituyen el punto de partida para nuevos experimentos sociotĂ©cnicos. La metodologĂa resultĂł ser experimental para lo habitual del marco acadĂ©mico y produjo una colecciĂłn de acciones y formatos de foros hĂbridos que gestionaban personas, tecnologĂas, escenarios y recursos, que acabaron formulĂĄndose como recetas para una ciudadanĂa en transiciĂłn y se convirtieron en el legado para el siguiente curso.This article describes actions that have led to progress in ways of living in citizen networks. The training framework is the last architecture course called Common Extra House Lab, in which it was encouraged to consider that there is no distinction between classroom, laboratory, and city. The domestic and its immediate public space (the extra-house) are the starting point for new socio-technical experiments which could be considered experimental comparing them with academic standards, producing hybrid forums managed by people, technologies and resources. They ended up becoming recipes for citizens in transition and turned into the legacy for the next course
- âŠ