The Architecture of Transgression

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• Publisher: Academy Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781118759073
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture General

Transgression suggests operating beyond accepted norms and radically reinterpreting practice by pushing at the boundaries of both what architecture is, and what it could or even should be. The current economic crisis and accompanying political/social unrest has exacerbated the difficulty into which architecture has long been sliding: challenged by other professions and a culture of conservatism, architecture is in danger of losing its prized status as one of the pre-eminent visual arts. Transgression opens up new possibilities for practice. It highlights the positive impact that working on the architectural periphery can make on the mainstream, as transgressive practices have the potential to reinvent and reposition the architectural profession: whether they are subverting notions of progress; questioning roles and mechanisms of production; aligning with political activism; pioneering urban interventions; advocating informal or incomplete development; actively destabilising environments or breaking barriers of taste. In this new dispersed and expanded field of operation, the balance of architectural endeavour is shifted from object to process, from service to speculation, and from formal to informal in a way that provides both critical and political impetus to proactively affect change.

Contributors: Can Altay, Edward Denison and Guangyu Ren, Kim Dovey, Chris Jenks, David Littlefield, Silvia Loeffler, Alistair Parvin, Louis Rice, Patrik Schumacher and Robin Wilson

Featured architects: atelier d'architecture autogérée, Lina Bo Bardi, Construire/La Machine, EXYZT, Didier Faustino/Bureau des Mésarchitectures, Lacaton & Vassal, N55, Catie Newell/*Alibi Studio, Wang Shu, Superflex and Bernard Tschumi

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• EDITORIAL
• ABOUT THE GUEST-EDITORS
• SPOTLIGHT: Visual highlights of the issue
• INTRODUCTION: The Architecture of Transgression: Towards a Destabilising Architecture
• Transgression: The Concept
• Extenuating Circumstances: Salvaged Landscape
• Architecture and Transgression: An Interview with Bernard Tschumi
• Transgression and Progress in China: Wang Shu and the Literati Mindset
• Not Doing/Overdoing: ‘Omission’ and ‘Excess’ – Lacaton & Vassal’s Place Léon Aucoc, Bordeaux, and Construire’s Le Channel, Scène Nationale de Calais, Calais
• Citadels of Freedom: Lina Bo Bardi’s SESC Pompéia Factory Leisure Centre and Teatro Oficina, São Paulo
• Tactics for a Transgressive Practice
• Low-Tech Transgression: The Interventional Work of EXYZT
• Occupied Space
• The Power of Logic Versus the Logic of Power: N55
• Informalising Architecture: The Challenge of Informal Settlements
• Architecture (and the other 99%): Open-Source Architecture and the Design Commons
• An Architecture of Exception: Transgressing the Everyday - Superflex’s Flooded McDonald’s
• Transgression in and of the City
• Urban Disturbance: Urban Intrusions of the office for subversive architecture (osa)
• City as Skin: Urban Imaginaries of Flesh and Fantasy
• In Praise of Transgression: The Work of Didier Faustino/Bureau de Mésarchitectures
• Ashes Thrown to the Wind: The Elusive Nature of Transgression
• COUNTERPOINT: Transgression, Innovation, Politics
• CONTRIBUTORS
• ABOUT ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN
• Back Cover