The Architect's Dream (Book)

Form and Philosophy in Architectural Imagination

The Architect's Dream draws on a broad range of subject areas, from philosophy to film to mathematics and economics, to show that the path to meaningful architecture practice is always based in a deep commitment to the idea that architecture is first and foremost an expression of the creative mind. 63 b/w illus.

Edition

Sean Pickersgill demonstrates that the goal of creating meaningful architecture can take a variety of critical and philosophical paths. The importance of architecture as an expression of broad, complex social drivers is complemented by the equally popular idea that architecture, as an intellectual pursuit, retains its own autonomy as a self-referential culture. This book uniquely places the emphasis for innovation in architecture within the domain of critical thinking generally, and a specific understanding of the semantics of built form.

The book draws on a broad range of subject areas, from film to philosophy to anthropology to mathematics and economics, to show that the path to meaningful creative practice is always based in an understanding of the principal drivers for change and meaning in society.

It is not a simple recipe book or workshop manual for others to reproduce. It requires the engaged reader to employ their own creative abilities to find what potential lies in each of the propositions, and it will encourage the scholastic architect to continue to mine the rich veins of intellectual culture to demonstrate the latent purposiveness inherent in all meaningful architecture.

Dr Sean Pickersgill is a senior architectural academic within UniSA Creative at the University of South Australia. He has published widely on the intersection of architecture, digital culture and philosophy.

           

Introduction: Architects Must Dream       

1: The Mutability of Objects     

Proposition 1: The Large Glass     

Proposition 2: Inside the Box       

Proposition 3: Life’s Harvest        

Proposition 4: Site Cycle  

2: Memory       

Proposition 5: Calvino’s City of Memory   

Proposition 6: The Machine of History     

Proposition 7:  Redemptive Objects         

Proposition 8:  Borges’s Library   

3: Reflective/Reflexive  

Proposition 9:  Glass and Glas     

Proposition 10:  No City  

Proposition 11:  No Interior         

Proposition 12: No Form 

4: War 

Proposition 13: Conflict   

Proposition 14: Healing   

Proposition 15: Hygiene  

5: Language     

Proposition 16: Language

Proposition 17: Ecological Symbiosis        

Proposition 18: Flat Out  

6: Destruction  

Proposition 19: Fire        

Proposition 20: Plato’s Cave        

Proposition 21: Earth      

Proposition 22: Clouds    

Proposition 23: Perversions         

7: Measure      

Proposition 24: Money   

Proposition 25: Wittgenstein       

Proposition 26: Contractual Obligation    

Proposition 27: Life         

8: Site  

Proposition 28: Site Affectivity/Transgressions     

Proposition 29: Highway 

Proposition 30: High Way

Proposition 31: Manufactured     

Proposition 32: Other Ecologies  

9: Fidelity        

Proposition 33: Synaesthetic       

Proposition 34: Fidelity   

Proposition 35: Non-Euclidean    

10: Melancholy

Proposition 36: Soap       

Proposition 37: Shopping

Proposition 38: Working Models 

Proposition 39: Odysseus

11: Metamorphosis      

Proposition 40: Metamorphosis  

Proposition 41: Bestiary  

Proposition 42: Kennels  

Proposition 43: Mechanization Takes Command  

12: Fiction       

Proposition 44: Future Archaeology         

Proposition 45: Dreams  

Proposition 46: Doppelgänger     

Proposition 47: Cinema   

Proposition 48: The Puzzle          

13: Crime         

Proposition 49: Forgeries

Proposition 50: Detectives          

Proposition 51: TV Eye    

Proposition 52: Punishment        

Proposition 53: Cannibalism        

14: Surface      

Proposition 54: Knots      

Proposition 55: Collage   

Proposition 56: Discotheque       

Proposition 57: Sfumato 

15: Hope         

Proposition 58: Hope      

Proposition 59: Tractatus

Proposition 60: Trust      

Afterword        

Constant Gardening        

Bibliography    

Index   

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