Constantin V. Boundas and Vana Tentokali - Architectural and Urban Reflections After Deleuze and Guattari

Series Editor: Joseph J. Tanke, Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Hawaii

The Global Aesthetic Research series publishes cutting-edge research in the field of aesthetics. It contains books that explore the principles at work in our encounters with art and nature, that interrogate the foundations of artistic, literary and cultural criticism, and that articulate the theory of the disciplines central concepts.

Early Modern Aesthetics, J. Colin McQuillan

Foucault on the Arts and Letters: Perspectives for the 21st Century, Edited by Catherine M. Soussloff

Architectural and Urban Reflections after Deleuze and Guattari, Edited by Constantin V. Boundas and Vana Tentokali

Living the Landscape: or The Unthought of Reason, Francois Jullien, Translated by Pedro Rodriguez (forthcoming)

Published by Rowman & Littlefield International Ltd
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Selection and editorial matter 2018 by Constantin V. Boundas and Vana Tentokali.

Copyright in individual chapters is held by the respective chapter authors.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: HB 978-1-78660-598-6

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Boundas, Constantin V., editor. | Tentokali, Vana, editor.

Title: Architectural and urban reflections after Deleuze and Guattari / edited by Constantin V. Boundas and Vana Tentokali.

Description: Lanham : Rowman & Littlefield International, 2017. | Series: Global aesthetic research | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017043410 (print) | LCCN 2017046368 (ebook) | ISBN 9781786605993 (Electronic) | ISBN 9781786605986 (cloth : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: ArchitecturePhilosophy. | Cities and townsPhilosophy. | Deleuze, Gilles, 1925-1995. | Guattari, Flix, 1930-1992.

Classification: LCC NA2500 (ebook) | LCC NA2500 .A71125 2017 (print) | DDC 720.1dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017043410

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.481992.

Printed in the United States of America

NEKYIA
For his indelible trace in digital regionalism
We dedicate this volume
to Professor Dimitris Papalexopoulos
Ph.D Paris I (Sorbonne), D.P.L.G., Architect, National Technical
University of Athens

Constantin V. Boundas and Vana Tentokali

Most of the chapters of this book had an earlier life as contributions to the International Conference, Gilles Deleuze and Flix Guattari: Refrains of Freedom, held in Athens, Greece, between the 24th and the 26th of April 2015. They have been revised and are now surrounded by chapters written for the sake of the present publication. The editors of this volume (an architect and a philosopher) chose to include chapters with three thoughts in mind: (1) to highlight reflections of architects, landscape architects, urban architects and planners that have been, in the past twenty years, working and writing under the influence of Deleuze and Guattari; (2) to make the collection useful to those who are curious to find out what a philosopher/creator of concepts (Deleuze) and a schizoanalyst/political activist (Guattari) have to do with designers (of architecture, landscape architecture and urbanism); and (3) to offer it as a road sign at the intersection of philosophy, architecture and ethics that would be an introduction to the discourse and practice of experts in the fields, without being boring or trite.

The inscription of philosophical thought in the theory of architecture is not something new. There has been a long tradition of interconnection between the two, since architecture, as it builds up its own theoretical discourse, never fails to seek awareness with the preoccupations of the philosopher, the questions he or she raises and the tentative answers that he or she gives. Unlike those humanities which, according to Michel Foucault, try to be self-founded, architecture has resisted the temptation to proclaim its autonomy. Its resistance may have been helped by the fact that it comes with two hypostases, floating as it is between science as a toolkit, and art, as a fertile source of affects and qualities. Naturally, the kind of interconnection between architecture, science and art, being always open to new questions, evaluation and revisions, depends on parameters determined by the varying historical conjunctures and contexts (Sykes 2010, 18). Ever since the 1960s, for example, architecture seems to have shifted closer to science (particularly to the new sciences) importing and adapting concepts and techniques from the theories of chaos, complexity and the non-linear or topological geometries, as much as exploring and making use of them as methodological tools in its own everyday practices. But, on the other hand, in being the art of building form, architecture, during the same time period, did not fail to be mindful of the theoretical frames wrought by philosophers with problems and solutions of their own, whose image of thought could prove congenial to its own experimentation and work.

Ever since the 1960s, two philosophical trends the deconstructive philosophy of Jacques Derrida and the difference and repetition philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Flix Guattari have been promising to provide the philosophical support that was needed. These two bodies of discourse replaced the idea of static structure with the search for modulation, transformation and difference and undertook to explain the emergence of structure and form from the formless and the chaotic. The emphasis shifted from an architecture and urbanism of objects to an architecture and urbanism of process. Our volume focuses on the dialogue that has been established between architecture, urbanism and the Deleuzoguattarian image of thought a dialogue that, for the moment, at least, has brought close together the philosophers creation of concepts, the production of affects of the artist and the delineation of functions of the new scientist. We do not believe that this dialogue is based on causal connections between the concepts invented, the affects experienced and the functions combined. It is rather a task fulfilled by the practitioners in each field (philosophy, art and science) who,in the pursuit of problems proper to their discipline, have become aware of the fact that practitioners in neighbouring disciplines confront questions and problems of a similar kind.

Dismantling and reconnecting otherwise have been l aire du temps. Philosophers were ready to put an end to the soliloquy of the Cartesian subject and to chip away at the foundations of the ghostly transcendental ego the same time that architects and urbanists were looking for ways to shake up the foundations of