Architectural Exaptation

Architectural Exaptation: When Function Follows Form focuses on the significance and the originality of the study of exaptation. It presents exaptation as an opportunity to extend architectural design towards more sustainable approaches aimed at enforcing urban resilience. The use of exaptation’s definition in architecture supports the heuristic value of cross-disciplinary studies on biology and architecture, which seem even more relevant in times of global environmental crises. This book aims to make a critique of the pre-existing and extensive paternalistic literature. Exaptation will be described as a functional shift of a structure that already had a prior, but different, function. In architecture, a functional shift of a structure that already had a function may apply to forms of decorative elements embedded in architectural components, and to both change of function of tectonic elements and the change of use of an architectural space. The book is illustrated with examples from around the globe, including China, Italy, Mexico, New Zealand, the USA and the UK, and looks at different civilizations and diverse historical periods, ranging from the urban to the architectural scale. Such examples highlight the potential and latent human creative capacity to change the use and functions, something that cities and buildings could consider when facing disturbances. Exaptation is shown as an alternative narrative to the simplifications of evolutionary puritanism. It also offers an innovative perspective and presents an opportunity to re-think the manner in which we design and redesign our cities. This book will be of interest to architecture, planning, urban design and biology researchers and students.

This book examines architecture, image, and media relationships as productive for architecture and architectural discourses. By arguing that the relationships between architecture and media cannot be dismissed via linear criticism of architecture and media or image, these relations are instead seen as a part of a sphere (a mediasphere) of complex relationships. In lieu of anything like a consensus on the contemporary condition of architecture (referring to the late twentieth and the twenty-first centuries), the starting point of this book is that the relationships between architecture, media, and images continue to multiply, owing to continuous technological advancements. Contemporary architecture considered in this book is related to the selected circumstances of high visibility, where architectural images are propelled into visibility and conflated with non-architectural images. This takes architecture outside of architectural-only discourse and into the public realm. By granting higher visibility to both the architectural images and architecture in the public realm, architecture can also be influenced by the various perceptions of the general public and can enter public consciousness via non-architectural media. With increased visibility, architecture’s far-reaching presence calls for more structured analysis of its nature and potential. As the analysed architecture in this book is associated with the discourses outside of architecture (some of which relate to terrorism, natural disaster, and branding and consumption), the limits of contemporary architectural discipline are questioned and extended. This book is written for academics and students in architectural history, theory, and criticism, particularly those interested in visual and media studies.

This book is a rigorous account of architecture’s theoretical and technological concerns over the last decade. The anthology presents projects and essays produced at the end of the first digital turn and the start of the second digital turn. This anthology engages and deploys a variety of discourses, topics, criteria, pedagogies, and technologies, including some of today’s most influential architects, practitioners, academics, and critics. It is an unflinchingly rigorous and unapologetic account of architecture’s disciplinary concerns in the last decade. This is a story that has not been told; in recent years everything has been refracted through the prism of the post-digital generation. Design Technology and Digital Production illustrates the shift to an architectural world where we can learn with and from each other, develop a community of new technologies and embrace a design ecology that is inclusive, open, and visionary. This collection fosters a sense of shared experience and common purpose, along with a collective responsibility for the well-being of the discipline of architecture as a whole.

This book explores urban resilience through significant, original and rigorous academic research, utilising the experiences of town planners, architects and decision makers to create a charter on resilient communities. The second part of the book presents mini-essays discussing the strategic points of the paper, and enabling more casual readers with the ability to access information on urban resilience. The book then explores urban resilience through the work and understanding of the institutions responsible for regulating the professions of urban planner, educators, professionals, and those involved in communication. Providing numerous illustrations and examples, Resilient Communities and the Peccioli Charter will be of interest to researchers, postgraduates, architects, urban designers and planners alike.

Informality through Sustainability explores the phenomenon of informality within urban settlements and aims to unravel the subtle links between informal settlements and sustainability. Penetrating its global profile and considering urban informality through an understanding of local implications, the authors collectively reveal specific correlations between sites and their local inhabitants. The book opposes simplistic calls to legalise informal settlements or to view them as ‘problems’ to be solved. It comes at a time when common notions of ‘informality’ are being increasingly challenged. In 25 chapters, the book presents contributions from well-known scholars and practitioners whose theoretical or practical work addresses informality and sustainability at various levels, from city planning and urban design to public space and architectural education. Whilst previous studies on informal settlements have mainly focused on cases in developing countries, approaching the topic through social, cultural and material dimensions, the book explores the concept across a range of contexts, including former Communist countries and those in the so-called Global North. Contributions also explore understandings of informality at various scalar levels – region, precinct, neighbourhood and individual building. Thus, this work helps reposition informality as a relational concept at various scales of urbanisation. This book will be of great benefit to planners, architects, researchers and policymakers interested in the interplay between informality and sustainability.

As an evolving and contested field, urban design has been made, unmade, and remade at the intersections of multiple disciplines and professions. It is now a decisive moment for urban design to reflect on its rigour and relevance. This handbook is an attempt to seize this moment for urban design to further develop its theoretical and methodological knowledge base and engage with the question of "what urban design can be" with a primary focus on its research. This handbook includes contributions from both established and emerging scholars across the global North and global South to provide a more field-specific entry point by introducing a range of topics and lines of inquiry and discussing how they can be explored with a focus on the related research designs and methods. The specific aim, scope, and structure of this handbook are appealing to a range of audiences interested and/or involved in shaping places and public spaces. What makes this book quite distinctive from conventional handbooks on research methods is the way it has been structured in relation to some key research topics and questions in the field of urban design regarding the issues of agency, affordance, place, informality, and performance. In addition to the introduction chapter, this handbook includes 80 contributors and 52 chapters organised into five parts. The commissioned chapters showcase a wide range of topics, research designs, and methods with references to relevant scholarly works on the related topics and methods.

Artistic Migration: Reframing Post-War Italian Art, Architecture, and Design in Brazil investigates a selection of works by Italian artists and architects, and an art critic and dealer, who immigrated to Brazil after World War II, and were involved in the first activities and opportunities created by the São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP). Although foreigners, these experts, namely Bramante Buffoni, Roberto Sambonet, Lina Bo Bardi, Giancarlo Palanti, and Pietro Maria Bardi, were engaged in the construction of paths for Brazilian art, architecture, and design, in production marked by the intertwining of artistic disciplines. By examining the works produced between 1946 and 1991, and focusing on the relationship between art and architecture, with previously unexplored cases, the text investigates how these actors engaged in the dilemmas of Brazilian culture and became part of its invention. The intention is to understand the nature and meaning of this recognizable experience, the continuities of and ruptures from modern architectural, art and design ideals, pre-war experience, and immigration, illuminating a complex framework of relationships with local ideas. The approach and the extensive archival research in Italy and Brazil adopted for the book sheds new light on critically rethinking and reframing Italian and Brazilian cultural events, and will be of interest to architects, researchers, teachers, and students interested in the history of architecture, museums, design, and art.

This book investigates the art and architecture of Papua New Guinean spirit structures with a multi-perspectival approach that combines cultural and social sciences with building, architectural, and spatial research. It offers the first comprehensive study of the spirit houses of New Guinea that exists to date. The book’s aim is twofold: First, it aims to investigate the spirit structures and their associated cultural cosmos in detail. For this purpose, a representative selection of traditional buildings and artworks from different regions of Papua New Guinea is documented and analyzed, and theories for their understanding are formulated. In this course, the author develops a spatial theory of anthropological concepts – such as myths, signs, persons, and rituals. Secondly, this analysis is then situated in the broader context of the Anthropocene/Kaiaimunucene. Transforming the historical spirit structures into models for future-oriented cultural imagination, the consequences for contemporary productions of space and ways of worldmaking in light of existential challenges are traced. The book thus offers more-than-human and more-than-secular concepts for building, art, and worldmaking that are of critical importance in the ongoing Anthropocene/Kaiaimunucene. It will be of interest to researchers and students of architecture, anthropology, cultural studies, environmental humanities, and adjacent disciplines. Part I of the book was translated from German by Melanie Janet Sindelar.

This contributed volume book aims at discussing transdisciplinary approaches to address common problems. By working transdisciplinarily, researchers coming from different disciplines can work jointly using a shared conceptual framework bringing together disciplinary-specific theories and concepts. There are numerous barriers that can obstruct effective communication between different cultures, communities, religions and geographies. This book shows that through bringing together different disciplines, researchers not only can surpass these barriers but can effectively produce new venues of thought that can positively affect the development and evolution of research and education. The book discusses new and emerging applications of knowledge produced by transdisciplinary efforts and covers the interplay of many disciplines, including agriculture, economics, mathematics, engineering, industry, information technology, marketing, nanoscience, neuroscience, space exploration, human-animal relationships, among others. Consequently, it also covers the relationship between art and science, as one of the most remarkable transdisciplinary approaches that paves the way for new methods in engineering, design, architecture and many other fields.

Gated Luxury Condominiums in India: A Socio-Spatial Arena for New Cosmopolitans critically examines gated luxury condominiums in contemporary India, exploring their role in shaping elite power and identity within the framework of neoliberalism. It delves into the spatial structure, perception and post-occupancy experience of these enclaves, offering valuable insights into India's urban development. This book convincingly elucidates the complex socio-spatial transformations underway in India, inviting readers to understand the depth and breadth of these changes, particularly within the rapidly expanding middle and upper-middle classes. It adopts a robust multi-disciplinary approach, combining methodologies such as spatial ethnography, threshold mapping, qualitative interviews and discourse analysis. Focused on the architectural typology of luxury condominiums, the study serves as a lens for broader social transformations grounded in case studies from Mumbai and Pune. Through a meticulous dissection of the lived experiences of various categories of users – owners, visitors and service staff – the book unveils the complex socio-spatial hierarchies perpetuated within these enclaves. Drawing on theories of cosmopolitanism and postcolonial critiques, the monograph makes a significant scholarly contribution to the disciplines of architecture and the built environment. It fills a gap in the existing literature on modern domesticity in India, offering original research that highlights how architecture is instrumental in socially divisive practices of elite formation. It will appeal to scholars, researchers and students across disciplines like architecture, landscape design, spatial sociology, urban studies and area studies, focusing on India and South Asia. It is particularly compelling for those interested in the sociocultural dynamics of the middle class, encompassing themes such as domesticity, material culture and spatial politics within the context of Indian condominiums.