Immateriality In Architecture

Journal of Architectural Education (forthcoming November 2008, 62:2 issue)

Theme Editors: Thomas Barrie, North Carolina State University (tom_barrie@ncsu.edu)
.....................Julio Bermudez, University of Utah (bermudez@arch.utah.edu)

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New materials, building systems, construction techniques, global practices, in addition to digitally generated designs, representations, and fabrication technologies, have gained privileged positions of late in architectural theory, pedagogy, and practice. The focus has shifted towards the quantitative and measurable, away from more intangible albeit fundamental aspects of architectural production. The resulting bifurcation of the material and the immaterial calls for a reconsideration of the qualitative, ineffable, numinous, and immeasurable in architectural production. This theme issue provides opportunities for educators, researchers, and practitioners to broaden the scope of contemporary discourse, confront current academic and professional presumptions, and contribute to alternative histories, theories, critiques, and practices of our nuanced discipline.

What constitutes a qualitative experience of place? Can today’s representational media emulate the ineffable? How can we distinguish between the numinous and the merely luminous? Will new developments in the sciences, psychology, and philosophy bring new insights to the question of the immaterial in our increasingly material culture?

Architectural immateriality may be engaged from distinct discursive directions. Historical and theoretical studies have long considered the ineffable nature of architecture. Design-based inquiries, pedagogic strategies, and representational methods have their own histories of examining the relation of the material and ethereal nature of constructing place. Phenomenological, semiotic, hermeneutical, post-structural, and post-critical methodologies have offered experimental, comparative, and analytical tools to interpret the sensual, existential, symbolic, and spiritual dimensions of this complex condition. This issue of the JAE offers an opportunity to reflect on these varied practices and to project new trajectories. The ultimate goal is to pause and consider critical responses to the difficult task of working materially with artifacts and places that are also tangibly immaterial.