The Making of a Building: A Pragmatist Approach to Architecture - Softcover

Yaneva, Albena

Softcover

ISBN 10: 3039119524 ISBN 13: 9783039119523

Publisher: Peter Lang AG, Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften, 2009

Synopsis

How do architects learn about a building-to-be? How does a building emerge and gain reality in the model shop, in scaling, in option making, in architects’ – and engineers’ – discussions, in public presentations? What does it mean to design? What does it mean to add a building to the city? Drawing on rare ethnographical material of architects at work at the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) of Rem Koolhaas in Rotterdam in the period 2001-4, this book offers a novel account of the social and cognitive complexity of architecture in the making.
The author dismisses both stylistic periodization and socio-political constructivist methods as being inadequate to the task of understanding the dynamic process of how architects generate design through space and materiality, instead showcasing the potentials of the pragmatist approach as a research tool in the field of architecture. Offering a new way of understanding architecture as practice that takes place within the interactive networks of human and non-human actors, the book also tells the intriguing story of the extensions of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

About this title

About the Author

Albena Yaneva is a Senior Lecturer in Architectural Studies at the University of Manchester, United Kingdom. In her research she draws extensively on the Actor-Network Theory to explore fieldworks in architecture, industrial design, contemporary art, and museum studies.
Albena Yaneva is the Winner of the RIBA President’s Award for Outstanding University-located Research (2010).

Edition details

• Publisher: Peter Lang AG, Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 3039119524
• ISBN 13: 9783039119523
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 227