Mapping Controversies in Architecture

by Albena Yaneva

This book tackles a number of challenging questions: How can we conceptualize architectural objects and practices without falling into the divides architecture/society, nature/culture, materiality/meaning? How can we prevent these abstractions from continuing to blind architectural theory? What is the alternative to critical architecture? It places architecture at the intersection of the human and the nonhuman, the particular and the general. It allows its networks to be re-established and to run between local and global, social and technical. Mapping controversies can be extrapolated to a wide range of complex phenomena of hybrid nature

Genres: Architecture

144 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2012

About the author

Albena Yaneva is an anthropologist of architecture with a PhD from Ecole Nationale Supérieure des mines de Paris (2001). Her work spans the disciplinary boundaries of architectural theory, science and technology studies, cognitive anthropology and political philosophy. It has been translated in German, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese.

Reviews

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is a bit tricky to review. The prologue contains a very conversational tone; “If you find yourself strolling…” and “If you follow your curiosity…” and “now you know, just as I do…” all interspersed with a lot of ellipses. It switches to a more academic tone for the introduction, but then Chapter One swings back to ‘you take great delight, just as I do’ in wondering around a building in Cardiff Bay. It sits a bit uncomfortably - I have not been to Cardiff Bay, so I haven’t taken great delight in exploring the space, just as she did, and her two photos don’t give me enough feedback to suggest how I should feel. The author uses the phrase ‘just as I do’ fourteen times throughout the book, and whilst sometimes it seems appropriate, other times it seems naïve or condescending. From Chapter 2 onwards she sets the tour-guide voice aside and writes with a scholarly tone again.

The most interesting chapter from my point of view was her attempt to answer the question ‘who made the Sydney Opera House possible?’ and suggests that it is neither architect, engineer, governments, nor society, but a ‘mesh’ of collaborations; a collective effort.

Lots of interesting questions are raised about the manner through which building designs make it to fruition and their ability to generate symbolic connotations – not all of them are answered, which in some ways, is as it should be.