interviews & reviews
interviews & reviews
Embedded Files
BOOK REVIEW
Nello Barile (2020)
"Baudrillard, Pandemics & Other
Doppiozero, 02 May
ISSN: 2239-6004
image credit: Luke Jerram, COVID-19 CORONAVIRUS (2020)
INTERVIEW
Proto F Schiro E (2017)
'The Symbolic Challenge of Architecture'
Lo Sguardo : Rivista di Filosofia n° 23, pp.165-74
ISSN: 2036-6558
In this interview Francesco Proto, retraces the deep and underestimate relationship between Baudrillard’s theory of simulacra and simulation and the architectural field, also giving an account of his theoretical outlook about using Baudrillard to produce a theory of the contemporary.
Moving from a general reconsideration of geometrical perspective as simulacrum, he shows the several crossing between the encoding process of space, simulation and the modern ideology of humanism, also debating the differences between arts and architecture within Baudrillard’s theory, also regarding their respective symbolic and seductive dimension.
books
books
2024
2024
Lacan + Architecture
Lacan + Architecture
New York: Palgrave
Co-edited with John Hendrix and developed with the iPSA research group—of which it marks the second major outcome—this book seeks to reinvigorate architectural theory through psychoanalysis, thus emphasising Lacan’s central role in shaping a comprehensive theory of architecture. It also suggests that architecture can, in turn, enrich psychoanalytic discourse. In response to current crises in architecture, society, and mental health, the book explores the relationship between the built environment and the human condition, therefore offering fresh perspectives for architects, educators, psychoanalytic scholars, and others interested in the interplay of space and subjectivity.
2020
2020
London: Routledge
By presenting an introductory but in-depth formalization of Baudrillard's interest in architecture and related fields, this book makes intelligible his philosophical premises thus showing, through the prism of architecture, their relevance and persuasiveness today.
Key concepts such as the object system, the code, simulation, hyperreality and precession, to name a few, are addressed in the light of the specially reconceptualized key construct of ambience, thus emphasizing how the mutual concerns of architecture, urban studies and cultural studies provide a fertile ground for debate.
2003
2003
Mass Identity Architecture: Architecture Writings of
Mass Identity Architecture: Architecture Writings of
J Baudrillard
J Baudrillard
Chichester: Wiley
This new edition further explores the connection between the cultural analysis provided by the contemporary philosopher Jean Baudrillard and the new 'star' of global culture - architecture.
In a world in which images have become a substitute for reality - i.e. simulacra capable of both stimulating and satisfying collective needs - the question arises as to whether architecture could be seen as a 'super-fetish', capable of both mirroring and shaping western society's culture and identity.
The aim of this book is thus to provide new methodologies and to suggest new meanings for the comprehension and development of contemporary architecture. In Baudrillard′s terms, architecture could be seen as the supreme medium of contemporary visual culture, especially in its potential to influence the individual′s perception of reality as a component of the mass–media system.
book chapters
book chapters
2016
2016
in J Hendrix, L Holms (eds). Architecture & the Unconscious. London: Ashgate
By building on the homology that Jacques Lacan draws between the mirror-stage (a fundamental aspect of subjective construction) and the optical model (a device with both a concave and plain mirror), this chapter argues that the Western city mainly unfolds as a projection of the prevalent subjective construction over different epochs and that, as such, it ‘mirrors’ back one of the Lacanian clinical structures of the subject (neurotic, pervert and psychotic) in the Lacanian theoretical model of the unconscious.
The resource to the post-structuralist historical technique of genealogy, through which such a condition is enucleated, is thus justified not just by the need to account for the predominant ideologies established since the inception of the so-called ‘classic’ age of modernity, but also by the very need to emphasize how the latter directly impacted the subjective construction of the self.
The latter is thus universalized and assumed as prevailing on the basis of an emerging, homogenizing and all-encompassing visual culture: the image, into which most architecture comes to be translated becomes the axiom that makes for certain principles to be postulated and disseminated
2011
2011
in New Electronic Arts (Sabanci University / MIT press)
This research is framed to uncover how people draw meanings from the built environment and how, in an act of reciprocity, the latter underpins their identity.
The goal is to develop an original analysis of the role of contemporary cities in shaping and supporting western democracies as achieved by means of an innovative interdisciplinary approach: the interpolation between cinema and architecture. A series of short films will be the final research output, shot in significant metropolitan areas around the world in order to grasp and bring to the fore the overlapping between fantasy and reality in the beholder’s mind.
in R Smith (ed). The Baudrillard Dictionary. Edinburgh: Edinburgh / Yale University Press
This is the first dictionary dedicated to the work of Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007). It explains and contextualises more than a hundred key concepts, terms, influences and topics within his thought.
An essential reference for students and scholars of Baudrillard, it also serves as an authoritative overview of how his ideas have shaped a broad range of disciplines, from art, architecture, film and photography to sociology, philosophy, human geography, media studies and cultural studies.
The entries are written by 35 leading Baudrillard specialists from around the world, including Rex Butler, Mike Gane, Gary Genosko, Victoria Grace, Diane Rubenstein and Andrew Wernick
articles
articles
Proto F (2021/22) "James Stirling's Post-Avant-Garde Collage:
The Flatbed Picture Plane & The Pursuit of Virtuality"
in ARQ Architectural Research Quarterly, Vol.25, Issue 3, pp. 231-244.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1359135521000348
By opposing the customary view that stresses Stirling's legacy within the theory and practice of modernist architecture and the historical avant-garde, the point is made that Stirling’s work parallels, if not anticipates, the coeval achievements of American neo-avant-garde artists (notably Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol), as well as the writings of a leading art theorist of the time - Leo Steinberg.
The Leicester Engineering Building, Oxford’s Florey Building and the Olivetti Training School are discussed in the light of the pop art collage, and acquires here an unexpected dimension: that deriving from the updated realm of the commodity form in architecture.
click on title for open access
Proto F (2020) “Abject Objects: Perversion & The Modernist Grid”
in Architecture & Culture, Volume 8, pp. 564-82
In the pervert, the narcissistic wounds inflicted by science, technology, and an increasingly hostile lifestyle dictated by the Industrial Revolution, become key factors that delineate a form of subjectivity in urgent need of overcoming internal splits.
The modernist grid is here discussed in terms of a subject whose imaginary worldview is determined by the vantage point offered by vision-machines as applied to the production of a sanitized and over-controlled urban environment.
Proto F (2019) Doubling Baudrillard: an Appreciation of Gerry Coulter’s Writings on Architecture'
International Journal of Baudrillard Studies 15 (1) (2018)
ISSN: 1705-6411
Gerry Coulter, like Baudrillard, was endowed with the ability to transcend architectural discourse and understand its many dimensions. In a book review of Barbara Isenberg’s Conversations with Frank Gehry, an analysis of Louis Kahn’s monumentalism and a critique of One World Trade Centre – the skyscraper winner of the competition for Ground Zero – Coulter’s works on architecture exceed a sociological analysis of the discipline and attest to his ability to resonate with Baudrillard’s own sensibility towards architecture.
Proto F (2017) ‘The Name-of-the-Father in Contemporary Pop Music’
in Sergio Secondigliano Sacchi (ed). Multifilter: Mito e Memoria del Padre nella Canzone. Rome: Squi(libri)
Proto F (2013) ‘The Invention of History’
The International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, vol 10, n° 1
ISSN: 1705-6411
Baudrillard is more famous for his theory of simulation than for the process through which such a theory originated. It is the precise aim of this paper to bring to the fore some of the mechanisms that underpinned such a process, and especially the two particular models that it is believed substantiated it: Lacan’s double-mirror device and architectural perspective.
The International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, vol 10, n° 2
ISSN: 1705-6411
When asserting that “it is the world that thinks us”, Baudrillard shows a good deal of knowledge (and understanding) of psychoanalysis, and especially of the work of his French peer Jacques Lacan, whose original equivalent is expressed in terms of the chiasm occurring between the gaze and the eye.
Proto F (2012) ‘Berlusconi & Other Hostages’
in The International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, vol 9, n° 3
ISSN: 1705-6411
To apply Baudrillard’s politics and political slant is a difficult task because no definitive assessment exists. In this essay the process of his thought has therefore been privileged. This calls for a theoretical framework. For it matters little that Baudrillard is part of that legacy meant to oppose the hegemony of the eye: his work originates from this – reality as representation – and the strategy formulated to describe it
Proto F (2009) ‘Four Perspectives on Architecture Theory'
in L Prestinenza Puglisi (ed)
Special Issue: Theoretical Meltdown, AD / Architectural Design, Vol 79, n° 1
1. A Short History of Architecture
2. That Old Thing Called Flexibility
3. Architecture Treatises
4. A Not So Well Reasoned Biblio’
Proto F (2007) ‘Italy Between Pragmatism & Theory’
Special Issue: Italy: A New Architectural Landscape AD/Architectural Design (Wiley) Vol 77, Issue 3
For the last three decades, Italian architecture has been characterised by an extreme polarisation. Current potentials for steering a middle course that will afford a greater eclecticism, enabling a natural balance between pragmatism and theory, are addressed.
Proto F (2007) ‘Architecture & Desire’
in Transparency + Architecture (University of Thessaloniki Press)
Proto F (2007) ‘The Indifference of Space’
in The Journal of Baudrillard Studies, vol 4, n° 1 (Dpt of Anthropology, Bishop’s University)
Proto F (2005) ‘The Pompidou Centre, or The Hidden Kernel of De-materialisation’
in The Journal of Architecture, vol 10, n° 5 (Cambridge University Press)
As one of the best-known contemporary icons, the Pompidou Centre was responsible for turning the modernistic interest in functionality into the de-materialised aspects of urban fetishism. The hyper-objectification of its form and the consequent transparency of its content thus led to a new type of architectural fruition: that in which the ideological perception of the building exceeded the real possibilities suggested by its hyper-flexibility.
Proto F (2003) ‘Millennium (Bore)Dome’
in Architecture: Chronicles & History, February
Proto F (2002) ‘Architecture & the Eye’
in Il Progetto n 14, August
Proto F (1997) 'Mario Merz & Architecture'
in Giuseppe, Journal of the School of Architecture (Rome Sapienza)
conferences
conferences
(October 2021) “Jean Baudrillard: Ambience, Simulation and the Semioticization of the Build Environment.” Live on-line presentation, Architecture & Philosophy: Jean Baudrillard, Digital Futures and FIU DDes Doctoral Consortium
(October 2020) “Lacan and Architecture: Contemporary Perspectives.” Thematic session organiser, Association for the Psychoanalysis of Culture and Society (APCS) on-line conference, “Truth & Dare: Complexities in Psycho-Social Space”
(6 October 2020) “Renovations and Re-opening of Centre Pompidou, Paris.” Invited interview for TRT World English Television broadcast, Culture and Arts,
(March 2019) “Aesthetics of Politics/Politics of Aesthetics.” Presentation at Brera Academia di Bella Arti, Milan
(March 2019) “From Trump to Trump.” Presentation at the University of Communications and Language (IULM), Milan
(March 2019) “Simulation and Mass Manipulation: Four Architectural Paradigms.” Presentation at the University of Communications and Language (IULM), Milan
(November 2019) “Narcissism and the City.” Conference Paper, AHRA 16th International Conference, ‘Architecture and Collective Life’, University of Dundee
(September 2018) Applied Baudrillard: 2nd International conference on Baudrillard Studies Conference organizer, Oxford Brookes University
(September 2018) “Baudrillard’s Ambience: From the Deconstruction of the Sign to the Collapse of Both Urban and Architectural Space.” Conference paper, Applied Baudrillard: 2nd International conference on Baudrillard Studies, Oxford Brookes University
(November 2018) International Symposium on Jean Baudrillard: Space and Image, Symposium organizer, MACRO, Museum of Contemporary Art, Rome
(November 2018) “The Architectural Ambience.” Symposium paper, International Symposium on Jean Baudrillard: Space and Image, MACRO, Museum of Contemporary Art, Rome.
(March 2017) “Cultural Transvestism: The Pompidou Centre.” Keynote speech at Milan Design Triennale
(March 2018) “Baudrillard and Media Theory: Architecture and Representation.” Keynote speech, Baudrillard and the Media Symposium, University of Communications and Language (IULM), Milan
(May 2017) “From Trans-Aesthetics to Trans-Politics: Perspectivalism and Anti-Ocularcentrism in Baudrillard’s Political Discourse.” Keynote speech at Venice Art Biennale 2017, Italian Pavilion
(December 2016).Roundtable Discussion Participant for Architecture and the Unconscious Book Launch. Bartlett School of Architecture/UCL, London
(October 2014) Colloquium Participant, Jean Baudrillard, University of Nanterre, Paris
(August 2014) Seminar Participant, European Graduate School, Saas-Fee, Switzerland
(April 2014) “Crisis of the City/Crisis of the Unconscious.” Conference paper, Society of Architectural Historians 67th Conference, thematic session: “Architecture and the Unconscious”, University of Southern California
(November 2013) “The Subject and The City.” Conference Paper, AHRA 10th International Conference, thematic session: “Architecture and Psychoanalysis”, University of the West of England, Bristol
(September 2011) “(In)Visible Cities.” Conference Paper, International Symposium on Electronic Arts, Sabanci University, Istanbul, Turkey
(October 2010) “The Scale of Utopia.” Conference Paper, Scale conference, University of Kent
(June 2010). “On the future of Architecture.” Conference Paper, The Cultural Role of Architecture, University of Lincoln
(March 2007) “The Ubiquitous and the Double: Architecture and the Ellipse of Subjectivity.” Conference Paper, Edifici Concettuali e Architetture: i Modelli di Rappresentazione della Città Immaginaria e della Città Reale (Conceptual Buildings and the Built Environment: Models of Representation for Real and Imaginary Cities), Sapienza University, School of Architecture, Rome
(October 2006) “The Chemistry of Architecture.” Conference Paper, International Conference on Baudrillard Studies, Swansea University
(May 2006) “The Obscenity of Architecture.” Conference Paper, 2nd International Congress on Transparency in Architecture, University of Thessaloniki, Greece
(May 2004) “The Pompidou Centre or The Hidden Kernel of Dematerialization.” Conference Paper, 1st AHRA Research Symposium, University of Westminster
(October 2004) “The Eroticism of Architecture.” Conference Paper, 2nd University Tor Vergata, Dept. of Aesthetics and Philosophy, Rome
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