Architecture, Multitude and the Analogical City as a Critical Project

This article develops a theory of the multitude for architecture. It is a close-reading of political theorist Paolo Virno’s concept of the multitude and its associated categories of language, repetition and what Virno calls “real abstraction.” The article transposes those categories to the thought of Aldo Rossi on typology, the city as a text and the analogical city. The aim is to explore the conditions of possibility for a renewed critical project for architecture and to articulate architecture’s capacity for framing a collective political subject. The key questions addressed are therefore how does Virno’s grammar of the multitude translate into an architectural grammar for the city; and how can architecture frame a collective political subject

Schools and skills of critical thinking for urban design

© 2017, © 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This paper explores possible ways in which urban design can engage with critical thinking and critical theory. After a brief explanation of the terms, with particular attention to the Frankfurt School of thought, it provides various answers to the question as to whether urban design is critical or not. One categorization applied to planning critical theory is then used to explain the potential for employing critical theories in urban design. Critical thinking skills are then argued to be helpful for enriching the literature of urban design in order to achieve better practice. The conclusion is that urban design can benefit from critical creativity, which is an embodiment of critical thinking within the limits imposed onto creativity. In this paper, the ways in which urban design can engage with both critical theory and with critical thinking are explored in order to achieve better critical creativity in the field

Plumbing : sounding modern architecture

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