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Urban Innovation Networks pp 23–42Cite as

Urban Intensities: Architecture, Design, Affect

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Abstract

Having outlined my actor-network-oriented understanding of urban space, I now want to discuss this with reference to significant spatially constructive categories or disciplines. The first one is, not quite surprisingly, architecture. The question is to what extent can architecture as a discipline even maintain its productive capacities, given that spatial development is no longer driven by powerful intentional planners or by omnipotent creative geniuses (architects), but by the complex interactions between different human and non-human actors and the networks they procedurally create. Specifically, given the importance of a super-individual understanding of knowledge within the new city spaces, it is necessary to rethink architectural knowledge with reference to this understanding. The question is whether there can be an architecture that has a productive role within a setting that wants to understand the twenty-first century (post-global) city as resource with reference to the notion of knowledge. To what extent can architecture contribute to the (in the first instance clearly capitalist) idea of a “knowledge city” (Edvinsson 2006) be seen as reality?

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Interestingly, in this particular context, actor-network theory has been seen as an alternative way of thinking even before. Bajde (2013) shows how the vocabulary and tactics developed by actor–network theory can shed light on several ontological and epistemological challenges faced by contemporary thinking on consumer culture. Rather than providing ready-made theories or methods, Bajde argues that actor-network theory puts forward a series of questions and propositions that, captured through the metaphor of ‘flattening’, invite a rethinking of how ontologies of consumption – its subjects, objects and devices, content and contexts, materiality and socio-cultural specifics – are enacted through precarious networks of heterogeneous relations.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Corporate Communications, Quadriga University of Applied Sciences, Berlin, Germany

    Alexander Gutzmer

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  1. Alexander Gutzmer
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Gutzmer, A. (2016). Urban Intensities: Architecture, Design, Affect. In: Urban Innovation Networks. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24624-6_4

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