Stiegler for Architects

In the late 1970s Bernard Stiegler was arrested for armed robbery and imprisoned. Whilst on hunger strike he was given his own cell where, in solitude, he began to study philosophy until his release in 1983. By 1993, under the supervision of Jacques Derrida, he completed his PhD, which was published a year later as Volume 1 of the Technics and Time series. Stiegler went on to become one of the most influential philosophers of the twenty-first century.

Stiegler for Architects is the first introduction to the key concepts and ideas of Bernard Stiegler that are relevant to architects. The book asks to what extent it might be possible to have a right to the city in our age of contemporary algorithmic technology. The book begins with a hypothesis: The philosophy of Bernard Stiegler provides an adequate methodology by which we might understand the effects of contemporary digital technology. Second, the fundamental basis of Stiegler’s philosophy is introduced―human evolution is not possible apart from technology. Third, the book introduces how his work might be used to think about the city in our contemporary technological age.

The book concludes that the question of the extent to which the right to the city is possible in our contemporary technological age is a question of the extent to which it is possible to prescribe a therapeutics that is capable of being a cure―one that acts across the multiple scales upon which algorithmic technologies operate. This book is essential reading for any architect or designer who is interested in how contemporary digital technology affects everyday life in the city, or anyone wrestling with Stiegler’s ideas.

David Capener is an architect, artist, and writer. In collaboration with the multi-disciplinary design group ANNEX he co-curated and designed Entanglement, the Irish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2021. His practice critically examines the spaces produced by our contemporary technological condition. He is co-editor of the book States of Entanglement (2021).