Variations of a Building: An Ontological Politics of Architecture

Variations of a Building tells the story of the making of a building. Based on a multi-sited ethnography of the building project for Aviva Studios (formerly, Factory) in Manchester, U.K., a theatre/cultural space designed by the architectural firm OMA, it explores the challenges of sharing in the act of creation by following the everyday practices of designers. Beyond the world of the architects, this book foregrounds a variety of other practices and realities at stake in the building, and offers a rare account of a building project from the point of view of the broader design and project team. More than the making of a building, it argues that it is also an experiment with, and reshaping of, a common world, showing what design practices and building projects can teach us about sharing in acts of creation and knowing. This book will be of interest to researchers and students of architecture, design, urban studies, Actor-Network Theory and Science and Technology Studies. Acknowledgements Contents About the Author List of Figures 1: A Building “in the Making” 1.1 Ground-Breaking 1.2 “The Guggenheim of the North” 1.3 A Possible Method for Following a Building “in the Making” 1.4 Projects 1.5 Practices 1.6 Ontologies 1.7 Is That Politics? 1.8 Variations References 2: Coordinations 2.1 Varieties of Building What ifs? Triangles How to Time a Building A Thermal Vision of a Building A Building is a Knot of (Dilatation) Lines 2.2 Implication 1: Assembling a Truss 2.3 Implication 2: Assembling a Common Referent 2.4 Explication: A Design Team Meeting 2.5 A Building Hangs Together References 3: Approximations 3.1 Unknown Unknowns 3.2 A Mock-Up in a Lab 3.3 Guesswork and a Noise Simulation 3.4 Epistemic Noise: Sound Effects and “Grey Things” 3.5 Listening to a Building, grosso modo References 4: Formations 4.1 A Missing Public 4.2 A Fictional Public 4.3 Scrutiny Publics 4.4 Presentational Publics 4.5 Experimental Publics 4.6 One or Several Publics? References 5: Variations 5.1 “It Could Iterate Forever...” 5.2 Three Types of Variation Ontological Variations Continuous Variations Anaphoric Variation 5.3 Making Politics Explicit 5.4 Fugitive Knowledge, Unfinished Things References Index