The Struggle for Representation: An Architect inside Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves

This book presents some of these manifold forms. It opens with a short journey into some of the most significant literary spaces and imaginary constructions by writer Alberto Manguel, followed by Arch. Colin Fournier's digression on architectural and urban fictions, its practices and experiences that shaped our contemporaneity. Next is the core of this book, a collection of articles sough to bring together a diversity of individuals, discourses and practices to examine the role of fiction and imagination in architecture and related disciplines, organized into eight thematic chapters, each introduced by a guest author. Ranging widely from history to literary analysis, cinema, graphic, urban, conceptual and literary experiments, the different contributions are, however, highly porous - as the reader will discover - and together they engender new ground for thought and exploration. Few publications and books deal specifically with architecture from an interdisciplinary perspective, especially from the 'fiction angle'. The editorial scope outlined in this book intends to be perceptive and distinctive. It aims at serving scholars, architects, designers, authors, students and a wider, non-professional audience. It is a contribution to the field and pushes forward research in architectural practice and thought in intriguing and exciting directions, precisely in this moment, in which one may question architecture's inclination to become a pseudo-technical service or mere signature shape-giving; in which one may question urban planning's propensity to produce social failure, one may as well ask if the imagination of fiction is not the ultimate gizmo with which to face a reality that has gone... stranger than fiction

The Anti-star System of Postmodernism; or, the Transatlantic Media Problem of Critical Regionalism

This paper discusses how the power of architectural criticism is conditioned by the media ecology that contextualises it. It focuses on the transatlantic history of critical regionalism, a discourse that attempted to provincialise the US/Italian nexus of postmodernism that was established after the first Venice Architecture Biennale of 1980. Originally published in an inaccessible annual review of architecture in Greece, it was only after Alexander Tzonis and Liane Lefaivre’s theorisation of critical regionalism was recapitulated and disseminated by Kenneth Frampton in New York that it had a worldwide impact. The fact that Frampton’s voice was heard louder than Tzonis and Lefaivre’s and other proponents’ of critical regionalism in the 1980s was owing to his specific positioning in a powerful node within this networked media structure. But this transatlantic structure was mainly functioning to promote the new wave of star architects after the Biennale. Since Frampton tapped into the same channels, the critical regionalist architects that he supported became another kind of, however ‘alternative’, stars within the same media ecology. Over the decades that followed, many of them found themselves in similar US/EU institutional positions of power, or were commissioned to build large-scale projects across the globe. As such, one of the main victims of this media problem of critical regionalism was the originally intended focus on cultural specificity. Because Frampton was involved in editorial projects from the outset, his view of critical regionalism also encompassed the way that it should be supported by architectural media. Frampton mainly intended to dissociate critical regionalism from the postmodernism of the Biennale. But architectural publishers of the period also sought to establish their standing in the market by investing in opposing aspects of the wider postmodern debates. This was their way to defend their former establishment position which was shaken by their main competitors. Hence, when Papadakis’s AD adopted the agenda of postmodern classicism, the AR responded by siding with critical regionalism. As diverging agendas of different publishing venues distorted the reception of Frampton’s work, his fundamental disagreement with Robert Stern was misconstrued as an inconsequential hair-splitting debate on regionalism. Despite having stepped down from the Biennale for this reason in 1980, Frampton did not practically escape being the ‘critic from within’ a transatlantic set of overlapping networks which were self-appointed to define architectural culture in Western Europe and North America. With his one foot in the establishment, he wanted to be able to unsettle it with the other. This ambiguous position proved successful because other media outlets that were left out of these novel favoured circles, such as The Architectural Review (AR), embraced the discourse on regionalism. As such, my paper shows how the self-perpetuating propaganda of the postmodernist architectural avant-gardes was reinforced by a vicious circle of risk-averse publishing practices. This would not break, unless a whole network of related practices was also modified. But this proved difficult even for Frampton, a scholar with an exceptionally influential position at the western ‘centre’ of architectural production. Despite its adversarial stance towards the star system of architectural media, Frampton’s critical regionalism is itself a media construct that reflects his own ambivalent position as ‘the critic from within’ the transatlantic network of postmodern culture production in the 1980s

Calling Rowe: After-lives of Formalism in the Digital Age

Emmanuel Petit recently invoked the work of Colin Rowe to render a discussion of architectural precedent relevant for the digital age. Questioning Petit’s approach, this article explores the implications latent in this invocation. In so doing, it highlights their misalignments with the current concerns of digital design practitioners. The article thus focuses on the question of a possible after-life of Rowe’s formalism for the digital age. It starts by charting its genealogical development from Rudolf Wittkower’s humanist grids to Peter Eisenman’s ‘post-functionalist’ pursuits of autonomous form and Greg Lynn’s ‘pliant’ geometries. This showcases the dual historical effect of Rowe’s analytical formalism. From the late 1940s to the present, his disciples employed it both as a historiographical model and as a generative mechanism for architectural design. The history of Rowe’s formalism is therefore intertwined with the contemporary concerns of digital design practitioners, including Petit’s question of theorising precedent. The digital design practitioners’ assertions of autonomy are historically rooted in Rowe’s analytical formalism. In the final instance, Rowe’s analysis was carried out from the perspective of modernist humanism, and this historically remained the case in its various versions from Wittkower to Eisenman. Updating Rowe, as Petit suggested, would therefore only perpetuate a modernist outlook in a postmodern age. A formalism for the present cannot ignore the enduring points of the postmodern critique that preceded it. In conclusion, a contemporary variant of formalism needs to address the debates around its possible synthesis with contextualist concerns. To do so, it also needs to engage with the poststructuralist critiques of the intervening decades. Some examples from recent literature exemplify such an approach. They could therefore serve as useful precedents towards an integrated formalism for the present

Data-driven practitioners: Architectural investigations of the digital condition in the Netherlands

The European Association for Architectural Education (EAAE-AEEA) Subnetwork on Architectural Theory, bringing together a wide group of architectural pedagogists working collaboratively on the role and nature of architecture theory in schools of architecture, gathered in Chania in the summer of 2010, in order to focus on the collateral relations between digital/material and depth/surface. In that seminal meeting, the group, invited by Ctrl_Space Lab founders Yannis Zavoleas and Nikolas Patsavos, the Center for Mediterranean Architecture (KAM-CMA) and the Department of Architecture of the Technical University of Crete, were practically asked to capitalise the findings of its previous work sessions in Hasselt, Trondheim, Lisbon and Fribourg by applying methods and concepts developed at those occasions as an interpretative critical tool within the context regarding the emergent digital architecture nature and its effects on education. The whole attempt was seen as an opportunity to revisit a field which, so far, had been often seen as something extraneous and contradictory, if not even hostile to the origins and the traditions of architecture; an attitude the group willed to also problematise and situate it within its relative context

Resisting Postmodern Architecture

Since its first appearance in 1981, critical regionalism has enjoyed a celebrated worldwide reception. The 1990s increased its pertinence as an architectural theory that defends the cultural identity of a place resisting the homogenising onslaught of globalisation. Today, its main principles (such as acknowledging the climate, history, materials, culture and topography of a specific place) are integrated in architects’ education across the globe. But at the same time, the richer cross-cultural history of critical regionalism has been reduced to schematic juxtapositions of ‘the global’ with ‘the local’. Retrieving both the globalising branches and the overlooked cross-cultural roots of critical regionalism, Resisting Postmodern Architecture resituates critical regionalism within the wider framework of debates around postmodern architecture, the diverse contexts from which it emerged, and the cultural media complex that conditioned its reception. In so doing, it explores the intersection of three areas of growing historical and theoretical interest: postmodernism, critical regionalism and globalisation. Based on more than 50 interviews and previously unpublished archival material from six countries, the book transgresses existing barriers to integrate sources in other languages into anglophone architectural scholarship. In so doing, it shows how the ‘periphery’ was not just a passive recipient, but also an active generator of architectural theory and practice. Stylianos Giamarelos challenges long-held ‘central’ notions of supposedly ‘international’ discourses of the recent past, and outlines critical regionalism as an unfinished project apposite for the 21st century on the fronts of architectural theory, history and historiography

Resisting Postmodern Architecture

Since its first appearance in 1981, critical regionalism has enjoyed a celebrated worldwide reception. The 1990s increased its pertinence as an architectural theory that defends the cultural identity of a place resisting the homogenising onslaught of globalisation. Today, its main principles (such as acknowledging the climate, history, materials, culture and topography of a specific place) are integrated in architects’ education across the globe. But at the same time, the richer cross-cultural history of critical regionalism has been reduced to schematic juxtapositions of ‘the global’ with ‘the local’. Retrieving both the globalising branches and the overlooked cross-cultural roots of critical regionalism, Resisting Postmodern Architecture resituates critical regionalism within the wider framework of debates around postmodern architecture, the diverse contexts from which it emerged, and the cultural media complex that conditioned its reception. In so doing, it explores the intersection of three areas of growing historical and theoretical interest: postmodernism, critical regionalism and globalisation. Based on more than 50 interviews and previously unpublished archival material from six countries, the book transgresses existing barriers to integrate sources in other languages into anglophone architectural scholarship. In so doing, it shows how the ‘periphery’ was not just a passive recipient, but also an active generator of architectural theory and practice. Stylianos Giamarelos challenges long-held ‘central’ notions of supposedly ‘international’ discourses of the recent past, and outlines critical regionalism as an unfinished project apposite for the 21st century on the fronts of architectural theory, history and historiography

TREM-1 expression on neutrophils and monocytes of septic patients: relation to the underlying infection and the implicated pathogen

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Current knowledge on the exact ligand causing expression of TREM-1 on neutrophils and monocytes is limited. The present study aimed at the role of underlying infection and of the causative pathogen in the expression of TREM-1 in sepsis.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Peripheral venous blood was sampled from 125 patients with sepsis and 88 with severe sepsis/septic shock. The causative pathogen was isolated in 91 patients. Patients were suffering from acute pyelonephritis, community-acquired pneumonia (CAP), intra-abdominal infections (IAIs), primary bacteremia and ventilator-associated pneumonia or hospital-acquired pneumonia (VAP/HAP). Blood monocytes and neutrophils were isolated. Flow cytometry was used to estimate the TREM-1 expression from septic patients.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Within patients bearing intrabdominal infections, expression of TREM-1 was significantly lower on neutrophils and on monocytes at severe sepsis/shock than at sepsis. That was also the case for severe sepsis/shock developed in the field of VAP/HAP. Among patients who suffered infections by Gram-negative community-acquired pathogens or among patients who suffered polymicrobial infections, expression of TREM-1 on monocytes was significantly lower at the stage of severe sepsis/shock than at the stage of sepsis.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Decrease of the expression of TREM-1 on the membrane of monocytes and neutrophils upon transition from sepsis to severe sepsis/septic shock depends on the underlying type of infection and the causative pathogen.</p

Intersecting Itineraries Beyond the Strada Novissima: The Converging Authorship of Critical Regionalism

While the 1980 Venice Biennale is usually understood as the exhibition that crystallised postmodernism as a style of historicist eclecticism, the event also acted as a catalyst for the eventual convergence of alternative architectural sensibilities and ideas. This article shows how critical regionalism emerged when the physical and intellectual trajectories of British historian Kenneth Frampton and the Greek architects Suzana Antonakaki and Dimitris Antonakakis intersected in the aftermath of the Biennale. Offering an alternative way out of the contemporaneous crisis of modernism, this open-ended and extrovert regionalism that opposed static cultural insularities is thus the discursive footprint of architectural sensibilities travelling through cultures