Crossbenching: Toward Participation As Critical Spatial Practice (Sternberg Press) - Softcover

Miessen, Markus

Softcover

ISBN 10: 3956792203 ISBN 13: 9783956792205

Publisher: Sternber Pr, 2016

Synopsis

Following the publication of architect/theorist Markus Miessen s hugely successful The Nightmare of Participation, on the politics of participatory practices in architecture, spatial practices and art, and the initiation of the popular pocket series Critical Spatial Practice, comes his timely new book engaging the ethics and politics of practice, Crossbenching. Following over a decade of theoretical research, the small softcover publication focuses on Miessen s own architecture 'platform,' Studio Miessen, in which he reapproaches the question of authorship in the context of a studio practice. Proposing a more discursive approach, he acknowledges the need for 'an independent actor with a conscience' to navigate the conflicts, negotiation and maneuvers among the multiplicity of agents, both human (architects, clients, financiers and builders) and nonhuman (silicon, plastic, concrete and so on), that is architecture. Instead of using project-teams or working within the typical structure of an architecture office, however, Miessen assembled working groups incorporating 'outsiders' on the theory that architecture and space-making is a collective set of interrelations crystalizing a form of civitas. Using the analogy of the crossbencher the independent politician in the uber-conservative British House of Lords he proposes a reframing of architecture practice as one which operates on the basis of alternative and self-governing political parameters, hoping to open up a fresh debate on ways of acting politically. Preface by Austrian philosopher and political theorist Armen Avanessian, introduction by Swiss journalist and author Hannes Grassegger and Miessen, and postscript by Canadian artist, writer and designer Patricia Reed. Miessen is currently Distinguished Professor in Practice at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles.

About this title

About the Author

Markus Miessen is a Berlin-based architect, writer, and Professor at the Academy of Design, University of Gothenburg, Sweden.

Markus Miessen is a Berlin-based architect, writer, and Professor at the Academy of Design, University of Gothenburg, Sweden.

Review

Miessen's new book depicts in a challenging and projective manner the problem of politics in times of conceptual indeterminacy, where 'participation' of the civil society seems to become the salvation for the political mess we are in, especially in Europe. Well, it is not! 'Participation' will not eradicate the Front National, and more transparency will not deprive Orbán of his power. Civil society will not gain power by criticizing or demonstrating loudly against the European system or chatting on the Internet. The populists have understood that if you want power, you need parties. What we risk to lose in that participatory game is representative democracy in its current shape and for no good: the majority of the street is no democracy. The post-structuralist hype for participation fuels into the mills of those who want to play la volonté de tous against la volonté generale, to go back to Rousseau: yet, the plebs killed Socrates in Athens.

―Ulrike Guérot, political scientist, founder and director, European Democracy Lab, Berlin

Edition details

• Publisher: Sternber Pr
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 3956792203
• ISBN 13: 9783956792205
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 107