Research Projects

Thinkers for Architects

Adam Sharr

Architects have often looked to philosophers and theorists from beyond the discipline for design inspiration or in search of a critical framework for practice. This new original series of books offers quick, clear introductions to key thinkers who have written about architecture and whose work can yield insights for designers. Each book reflects upon what a thinker has to offer for architects, locates their architectural thinking in the context of their work, introduces significant texts, helps decode terms and provides quick reference for further reading. If you find theoretical writing on architecture difficult, or simply don't know where to begin, this series will be indispensable.

The first three books in the series were published in October 2007.

01 Deleuze & Guattari for Architects Andrew Ballantyne

Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's work inspires architects and architectural theorists, and is regularly cited by avant-gardist architects and students. It promotes ways of thinking that architects find challenging and stimulating, but which do not attach to any preconceived architectural forms, and the ideas have influenced architects as different from one another as Greg Lynn, Toyo Ito and David Chipperfield.

This is the first concise text to explore the collaboration between Deleuze and Guattari with architects' concerns in mind. Their ideas promote creativity and innovation, and their work is wide-ranging, complex and endlessly fresh. From politics to psychoanalysis, from physics to art and literature, their approach continues to challenge common-sense preconceptions and transgresses classification.

This is the ideal introduction for students of architecture in design studio at all levels; students of architecture pursuing undergraduate and postgraduate courses in architectural theory; academics; and interested architectural practitioners. Deleuze & Guattari for Architects is the first book in the new Thinkers for Architects series.

02 Heidegger for Architects Adam Sharr

The work of Martin Heidegger has fascinated architects and architectural theorists. It has informed the designs of architects as diverse as Peter Zumthor, Steven Holl, Hans Scharoun and Colin St. John Wilson.

Heidegger's influence on architectural culture has been immense. His criticisms of technology, the authority he found in emotional and bodily experience, and his notions of 'dwelling' and 'place' have shaped practice and criticism. He remains, however, perhaps the most controversial thinker of the last, troubled century.

His involvement with the Nazi regime in Germany has brought his thinking into question. Despite this, in architecture, the legacies of his thinking are pervasive.

This concise introduction is ideal for architects, students of architecture in design studio and students pursuing courses in architectural history and theory.

03 Irigaray for Architects Peg Rawes

This book, the third in the Thinkers for Architects series, examines the relevance of Luce Irigaray's work for architecture. Eight thematic chapters explore the bodily, spatio-temporal, political and cultural value of her ideas for making, discussing and experiencing architecture. In particular, each chapter makes accessible Irigaray's ideas about feminine and masculine spaces with reference to her key texts.

Irigaray's theory of 'sexed subjects' is explained in order to show how sexuality informs the different ways in which men and women construct and inhabit architecture. In addition, her ideas about architectural forms of organisation between people, exterior and interior spaces, touch and vision, philosophy and psychoanalysis are explored. The book also suggests ways in which these strategies can enable architectural designers and theorists to create ethical architectures for the user and his or her physical and psychological needs.

Concisely written, this book introduces Irigaray's work to practitioners, academics, undergraduate and postgraduate students in architectural design and architectural history and theory, helping them to understand the value of cross- and inter-disciplinary modes of architectural practice.

It is hoped that the next three volumes will be published early in 2009, to include volumes on Homi Bhabha and Maurice Merlau-Ponty.