Theory and Histories

For some time, many scholars in naming their projects on history – articles and books, lectures and course syllabuses – feel the necessity to use the plural ‘histories’. Or, more ostentatiously, they would employ terms relating to archaeology, subjectivity, posterity, synchronicity, anachronicity, prophecy, contextuality, contingency and multiplicity, … in conjunction with their projects on history.

Playing on the title of Manfredo Tafuri’s book Theories and History of Architecture, which over fifty years ago set the grounds for the making of a new historical “project” in architecture, the third annual This Thing Called Theory symposium at the Architectural Association acknowledges that what is at play today is a proliferation of architectural history narratives, and of different ways of constructing, curating and communicating them.

This seems to be the year of the return of history in architecture. After modernism’s instrumental rejection of history, postmodernism’s playful and hollow appropriation of history, and the proclamation of its death by coding and parametricism, architectural history is returning to attention.

The Architectural Association this year is hosting a series of talks and debates on New Canonical Histories that explore different ways of making history. The intention to question issues of both authorship and audience of history in architectural discourse is echoed across the US and UK by the investigative, clue-based forensic approach used by Aggregate in the US to investigate material pasts near and remote, and by Forensic Architecture in the UK to expose the dramatically present.

In London, Drawing Matter recently presented Alternative Histories, an exhibition that invited current architectural practices to reinterpret well known historical projects in an exercise of architectural (self)reinvention. On the one hand, the reinterpretation of architecture by architecture bypasses the work of the historian, and presents a Beckettian impasse: nothing is really new, everything is new. On the other hand, the field of making architectural history has been opened up to the collector, the archivist, the curator, the editor.

By looking at and working with history from an ambiguous “outside”, This Thing Called Theory stakes the claim for theory to perform the critical (destructive) role of questioning and challenging today’s many ‘new canonical’ histories. As they fill the past, again and anew, with the ‘the presence of the now’ (Walter Benjamin’s “Jetztzeit”), new histories are already affecting and performing new projects of architecture.

This symposium invites speakers who are educators, architects, theorists, design and media scholars to offer their alternative perspectives on new ‘histories’ of architecture in the making, and on the critical role that ‘theory’ would play in hinging the relevancy of history to architectural practice.

Programme: 

14:00 – 14:20   Welcome and Introductions
Welcome
Costandis Kizis, AHRA AA representative
Research and the AHRA
Lorens Holm, AHRA Steering Group
This Thing Called Theory
Doreen Bernath (AA)
Theory and Histories
Teresa Stoppani (AA, AHRA)

14:20 – 16.20   Speakers Presentations
Mark Cousins (AA)
Architectural Categories and Architectural Periods
Joel McKim (Birkbeck)
A Near History of Digital Architecture: Responses at Ground Zero
Lorens Holm (Dundee) 
We Are All Statesmen – We All Love the Smell of Napalm in the Morning
Mark Morris (AA)
What’s So Funny About Architectural History

16:20 – 16:30  Break

16:30 – 17:30  Questions and Conversations 

‘This Thing Called Theory’

Stemming from the Architectural Humanities Research Association (AHRA) 2015 conference, the  ‘This Thing Called Theory’ series continues to explore the status of theory in architecture, proposing theory as a form of architectural practice that opposes the instrumentalization of its use.

TTCT1 Making Theories
The first event , Making Theories (AA 2017) looked at different ways of practicing theory in architecture, through its histories (Marco De Michelis) and philosophies (Mark Cousins), as well as in curatorial (Pippo Ciorra) and editorial (Diana Periton) practices.  Issues of interpretation and betrayal in representation and communication emerged, showing the ability of theory to digress and transgress certain bounds of architecture, and to instigate disturbances that may lead to deaths and births of particular forms of practice. 

TTCT2 Double Crossing
The second event, Double Crossing (AA 2018) further examined the question of fidelity in architectural theory, in particular in its relation with architectural practice. Theory in its most provocative form is not so much a faithful ally of practice, but that which has the ability to love and to betray practice, for Architecture’s sake. Every act of insight, imagination and innovation possible in architecture is a trace of such double-crossing, intentional deceit and treacherous exposure between theory and practice. This is where what is said and not said (Mark Cousins), the visible and the hidden (Ivonne Santoyo-Orozco), the mark and its erasure (Teresa Stoppani), and a rethinking of things (Douglas Spencer) and big data (Sergio Figuereido) constitute the relation of complicity behind movements of conservation and revolution that shaped what we now know as architectural history. 

TTCT3 Theory and Histories
The third event, Theory and Histories (AA 2019) proposes a discussion on the current proliferation of architectural history narratives, and of the different ways of constructing, curating and communicating them. By looking at architectural history from within the established discipline (Mark Cousins) and current practices (Joel McKim), as well as from an ambiguous “outside” of critical readings (Lorens Holm) and ironical takes (Mark Morris), ‘This Thing Called Theory’ stakes the claim for theory to perform the critical (destructive) role of questioning and challenging today’s many ‘new canonical’ histories. As they fill the past, again and anew, with the ‘the presence of the now’ (Walter Benjamin’s “Jetztzeit”), new histories are already affecting and performing new projects of architecture.

Organised by Doreen Bernath and Teresa Stoppani,  ThisThingCalledTheory