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ABSTRACT How do architects imagine, see and define a distant object that is meantto become a building? How does it become knowable, real? To answer thesequestions, I follow architects as they fabricate models and scale them up and down atdifferent rates of speed. Instead of being a logical, linear procedure for generating anew object that becomes progressively more knowable, ascending from the abstractto the concrete, scaling is a versatile rhythm, relying on surges, ‘jumps’ and returns.By focusing on the most frequently repeated moves such as ‘scaling up’, ‘jumping thescale’, ‘scaling down’, and describing their cognitive implications, I depict howarchitects involve themselves in a comprehensive dialogue with materials and shapes.Their material dialogue takes into account dispositions, resistance, stability and otherproperties that change proportionally with scale. In the scaling venture, twoalternative states of the building are simultaneously achieved and maintained: a stateof being ‘less-known’, abstract and comprehensive; and a state of being ‘more-known’, concrete and detailed. After multiple up and down transitions betweensmall- and large-scale models, the building emerges, becomes visible, material andreal. These scaling trials bring the building into existence.

Keywords architecture, building, design process, ethnography, models, reality,scaling

Scaling Up and Down:

Extraction Trials in Architectural Design

Albena Yaneva

November 2001, Rotterdam. In the middle of an architectural office, on ahuge table, various scale models of a building, parts and detailed variationsare installed: a mini-exhibition space lit by neon light; a solemn spectaclewaiting to be discovered by invited visitors. Reproduced in various materialsamples, colours and shapes, models are maintained in this particulararrangement during the whole process of architectural design (Figure 1).

‘This is the Whitney project’, Rem Koolhaas tells the visitors to hisoffice as they view a colourful assemblage on the table.1 These modelsillustrate different facets of the building; visualizing scenarios, issues andpossibilities that have been tested. No single starting point triggering alinear series of models or elements can be found, but this is not a chaoticassembly of scattered leftovers from the conception process. What we seeon the different parts of the table are diverse concentrations of models,intensities of detail, variations and images. Separated by different spatial

Social Studies of Science 35/6(December 2005) 867–894© SSS and SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks CA, New Delhi)ISSN 0306-3127 DOI: 10.1177/0306312705053053www.sagepublications.com

intervals, they all form a network of points and passages presentingdifferent vantage points on the same building. They all expose (in aparticular geometric configuration) a stabilized state of the Whitneyproject.

After my first visit to the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA)on this early November afternoon in 2001, I joined the Whitney team andfollowed the architects’ discussions as they worked on the project. Gainingethnographic access to this field required me to ‘live’ in the architecturaloffice for a while, confronting various visual enigmas. One of these enigmashad to do with the rhythm of scaling. I decided to follow the small materialoperations of scaling in order to make this enigma ethnographically de-scribable: in what follows, I will try to help the reader also to ‘see’ theseoperations in order to understand what the designers do when theyconceive a building. By following the particular rhythm of scaling indesign, we will have the chance to observe the appearance of a building asit emerges from the architects’ hands: a building that is made knowableand real as scales are shifted.

Scaling can be considered as an experimental situation in the sensethat it is subjected to constant and well-equipped observation of possibleconsequences of acting on scale models; it is an apparatus for conducting,recording and interpreting the results of manipulating selected features ofmodels. When conducting such experiments, architects scale up and downin order to see what might follow; they do so either as an exploratory moveby probing in trial-and-error fashion, or as a systematic test aiming for anintended outcome to be confirmed or disconfirmed. These tests aim atprobing parameters and realities connected to the building’s particular

FIGURE 1‘The Table of Models’; Office for Metropolitan Architecture, Rotterdam. (Photograph:Albena Yaneva)

868 Social Studies of Science 35/6

mission.2 In such experiments with scaling, the tenuous and minute moveswith various tools and models, the intelligibility of materials and theactions of the architects are all made observable. As I shall show, therhythm of scaling relies on procedures for partial seeing: scoping, rescaling,extending and reducing the material features of scale models. Architectsattempt to resolve problems by using tricks of the trade such as stepping upthe scale, disguising and revealing various aspects, and inspecting andoverseeing those aspects. Scaling requires special equipment, instrumentsand embodied routines for manipulating models, as well as meticulouswork with foam and paper for seeing and defining details. Through suchpractices, a building can be conceived in thought and brought into exist-ence. It is generated through numerous techniques of projection (Blau &Kaufman, 1989) and translation.3 The models are scaled and re-scaled, notaccording to the architect’s mind’s eye (Akin & Weinel, 1982), but accord-ing to numerous material formations, practices and relations among archi-tects, consultants, models, cameras and images in a complex visual field.

Over the past 20 years, science and technology studies (STS) haveclosely followed scientists, engineers and physicians in and out of theirworkplaces; but architects have not been followed as their practices movefrom the model shop to the panel presentation for the client, and even-tually to the construction site.4 Some recent STS research on designpractices has analysed visualization and emphasized its social and complexdynamics. However, such research focuses mainly on engineering design(Ferguson, 1992; Bucciarelli, 1994; Henderson, 1999; Vinck, 2003). A fewstudies have dealt with design in architectural firms, but explored theiractivities from a more traditional sociological perspective.5 In this paper,the architectural office will be studied in the same way that STS hasapproached the laboratory (Latour & Woolgar, 1979; Lynch, 1985; Knorr-Cetina, 1999). By following particular scaling moves as they run up anddown, I aim to expose the materialization of successive operations, and totrace the developing appearance of the building. I will compose a storyabout gradations (nuances of size and degrees of presence) in numerousarchitectural objects; gradations through which architectural practices playout on a battlefield full of unknown internal streams, orders and disorders,flows and synchronization moves, polemics among architects, visual puz-zles, and attempts to resolve disputed states of affairs through visualinstruments and convincing images.

My sources about scaling are conversations among architects engagedin building models for a new exhibition hall at the Whitney Museum ofAmerican Art in New York (at the time, the design of the museumextension was commissioned to Rem Koolhaas), interviews with architectsand a rather dilettante personal participation in model fabrications. Thepresent paper does not invite us to imagine an architectural office. Instead,by meticulously reconstructing participants’ discussions and actions, andby depicting concrete manipulations with materials and scaling instru-ments, it attempts to bring us into the office and to follow the work of theWhitney team as it conceives and designs a new exhibition hall.

Yaneva: Scaling Up and Down 869

A possible approach to use for following scaling in action would be amathematical analysis of all technical steps in a scaling algorithm thattranslates paper into foam. Instead of taking this approach, I will describesome frequently repeated moves, such as ‘scale up’, ‘jump’, ‘scale down’.Their successive repetition and redundancy compose a rhythmic conduitthrough which the building develops. That is how scaling is treated in thisstudy. A static notion of scale understood as a proportional relationshipbetween the world of models and the external real world (Boudon, 1971,1992), or a metric relationship (Licklider, 1966; Dupire et al., 1981;Boudon, 1999), is insufficient to grasp architectural scaling, nor is aphenomenological point of view relevant, if it is conceived as a way tounderstand scale as a fleeting subjective feeling of harmony, proportionand composition (Orr, 1985). The reason for defining the scaling ventureas a rhythm is the fact that it designates an ordered variation in a series ofmoves performed with different intensities and speeds. It is not a schematicrepetition, as compared with a process or flow, but develops as a movementthat can repeat itself in a regular beat: in, up and down; strong and weak;long and short sequences. A rhythmic sensation of motion comes out ofthese successive moves.6

Following science studies and cognitive anthropology, we can assumethat much of the internal organization and operation of architecturalcognition can be directly observed in the activities of scaling as they relateto the social and material environment of the architectural office.7 Sweptup in a rhythm, progressing in free flowing irregular up and down move-ments, architectural cognition involves interactions among architects, scalemodels and scoping instruments.At the start of this process, architectsneed to conceive of the distant and unfamiliar object (the building) in away that enables them to define it with precision and to enable itsrealization; they begin with fuzzy approximations (small scale models) ofthis object fabricated according to few known parameters, and then theyare supposed to obtain new information – even though they do not knowand cannot yet understand exactly what they need to know – in the courseof their practices. The tiny material operations of ‘scaling up’, ‘jumping thescale’, ‘rescaling’ and ‘going down in scale’ enable architects to think of thebuilding and to gain new knowledge about it. Knowing through scaling isan integral aspect of architectural practice.8 Regardless of the particulardata obtained through scaling, two different presentational states of abuilding are maintained simultaneously, so that it always exists as a little-known, abstract and fuzzy object, and at the same time a well-known,concrete and precise object, instead of progressing in a linear fashion froma state of zero information to a completely known and defined object.9 Theparticular material arrangement of models on the table (Figure 1) corre-sponds to a stabilized, frozen picture of many intermediary presentationalstates. Paradoxically, what results is that architects do not convert in-determinate, complex and incoherent information into determinate andcoherent objects.10 Designing a distant building requires knowing it moreand knowing it less at the same time; taking account of it with small and


large scale models, with both abstraction and precision. The final buildingis never present in any single state or model, but in what all of themtogether project. That is why the building is a multiple object: a composi-tion of many elements; a ‘multiverse’ instead of a ‘universe’.11

Some studies on engineering design treat the designed object to be theresult of a social process involving lengthy negotiations and contradictorydebates among participants, and argue that its final shape depends onvarious modes of consensus (Bucciarelli, 1994). Accordingly, what comesfirst in the process is a subjective agreement among participants about themeaning of the artefact designed, and its realization is triggered only after ashared vision is gained. Like Henderson (1999) and Law (2002), Iconsider models as objects over which negotiations and conflicts take placeand treat architects as being implicated in a dialogue with concretematerials, spatial figures, proportions, dispositions and shapes. That is, a‘reflexive conversation with the materials of the situation’ (Schon, 1985),rather than a question of inter-subjective agreement. In this conversationdesigners make numerous moves that have unintended effects, with unex-pected problems and potentials. In their design meetings, architects dis-cuss concerns about scoping and rescaling the models; they ‘lend’ theirbodies to many visual instruments, which enables them to see and experi-ence the internal space, ‘guided’ by the inner logic of the foam construc-tions, and ‘influenced’ by many previous choices. They are also ‘con-strained’12 by numerous requirements (client demand, city politics, sitespecificity, users’ expectations) and ‘led’ to solutions. Materials, scopinginstruments and new knowledge ‘talk back’ to the architects, and they areprepared to listen, thus triggering reinterpretations of interim results.These idioms (‘talk back’, and so forth) are commonplace in architects’stories about different projects at OMA.13 Following architects’ commu-nication with such objective materials allows us to gain access to forms ofcognition they deploy in the course of design work. Here, more than in anyother context, architects need to make clear to one another what it is theydo – what emerges from their hands – when they engage in design work.

How Does Scaling Begin?

Our attempt to follow the work of scaling is significant, not because thescale models represent the evolution of architectural ideas or retrace achronology of material steps making up a design. It is important foranother reason: architects are implicated in the making of composite things– the models. Anyone who has visited an architectural office would see thatmodels are important tools in architectural design.14

Models have a life of their own in the architectural office,15 togetherwith a number of more schematic presentations of the building such asdiagrams, sketches and technical drawings. All these visual representationsare not meant to transform a specimen into observable, standardized,mathematically analysable and reliable data, as numerous science studieshave shown for science (Latour & Woolgar, 1979; Lynch, 1985; Galison,


1995). That is, models cannot be treated as inscription devices thatvisualize invisible substances.16 Instead, their purpose is to gather a num-ber of things – human and non-human actors, and their concerns, require-ments and disputes – and to ‘accommodate’ them into objects that can besubjected to design experiments. By making models architects inventobjects, which have the properties of being composite and mutable.17

Instead of attributing a scrip-tion-like term18 to models, they will beconsidered here as peculiar compositions of things that are manipulated inthe scaling process, and whose transformations cumulatively lead to thebuilding. Generated as physical approximations of the building, along withaffording the calculation of various types of numerical data, they aim torealize the building through a joint venture.

Physical models are used in OMA as a major visualization tool forproject presentations. They facilitate communication, serve as ‘socialglue’19 among architects, experts, clients and publics, and organize thedesign process in the office and in networks of outside consultants andexperts.20 Moreover, as compared with many other architectural firms inwhich models are built only at the final stage of a project, OMA fabricatesmodels at every step of the design process, along with two-dimensionalrepresentations. These models are important tools for shared cognition:architects think of the building by modelling, by cutting foam and paperand using various scoping techniques. It is not a free intuitive creation of abuilding shape generated ‘out of the blue’. The first small models of theWhitney building are produced according to few important ‘con-straints’.These constraints are mainly negative – ‘not to exceed the zoningenvelope’, ‘not to demolish the brownstones’, ‘not to damage the adjacentbuildings’ – in the way they place limits on the process of experimentationthat we can witness in the office of Rem Koolhaas.

At the very beginning of the modelling process architects tend to enlistthe variety of things that have to be ‘accommodated’ by the Whitneymodels: site location, programme, volume, city fabric, district fragmenta-tion, circulation, mechanicals, zoning envelope, artists’ expectations, his-torical landmarks, museum philosophy, art display and community con-cerns. These constraints include requirements from the client thatarchitects take into account as ‘givens’, but also parameters established bythe architects themselves.

The shape of the first Whitney models is generated in response to all ofthese constraints. For example, a small concept model with barely visiblefigures takes into account the adjacent buildings, the tiny slot allocated forthe site, the eclectic features of New York city fabric, the dense network oflocal districts, the zoning fragmentation, the variety of building heights, themarks of history, the city politics and the neighbours’ relationships. In themodel, heterogeneous parameters are fitted together so that the buildingappears with a distinctive footprint, elevation and mechanical structure.Modelling welds together of all these elements, no matter how diverse, intoa new gathering. Models are not projections or anticipations of the


building; rather, they are new compositions shaped according to multipleconstraints.21

Once accommodated in a model, the site parameters are temporarilyforgotten. In what follows, we depict a peculiar versatile up-and-downscaling flight as momentarily detached from the parameters. As the archi-tects lead the client toward a better visualization of the emerging building,the reader will be guided through the puzzling visual procedures, with thehope of finally ‘seeing’ a building.

Scaling Up and Down

Scoping in the Small Model

Zooming in on the table of models, one can notice the smallest proto-building placed there. A walk through the architectural office will allow usto discover many similar small-scale models. Let us follow one of themfrom the table of models, through the working tables, into the architects’hands (Figure 2).

Since little is known about the new building, the small study model hasno ‘real details’. The ‘little’ knowledge includes the parameters accordingto which the model has been fabricated. Made by hand according to thesefew restrictions, the small model is easy to shape quickly; it is a less precise,

FIGURE 2Kunle and Sho are discussing the shape of some small scale ‘study models’. (Photo-graph: Albena Yaneva)


sketchy version of the building. Why do architects spend hours and hourslooking at this small piece of foam, turning it in their hands, meticulouslyexamining its corners and openings, positioning it in relation to differentobjects at hand, passing it to each other, and inspecting it during disagree-ments and disputes? What are they able to see with its barely visiblefeatures? What is this piece of foam telling them? How are they able to seeit? What is it that guides them to the building?

To answer such questions, I suggest that we follow the team as theyfabricate a large-scale model of an exhibition hall in the extension ofWhitney Museum of American Art; starting from that small model of thebuilding, modifying it, and subjecting it to numerous visual puzzles.Architects use two parallel working tables. Various small models andspecific details are scattered on the first one, while a huge model underconstruction is installed on the adjacent table. ‘Crowds’ of architects,paper cuts-outs, drawings, foam pieces and instruments are gatheredaround these scale models.

Architects use a particular instrument, called a modelscope,22 to lookinside the small model in order to see things that cannot be observeddirectly from outside. To understand scaling and its cognitive implications,it is important to consider how this instrument works, and what forms ofthinking are associated with it. When this miniature periscope is insertedinto the small model, it can function as design tool by providing visualaccess to selective and realistic eye-level images. By doing so, it cangenerate new information about the building and can enable architects toconceptualize it with more detail, clarity and precision.

In this instance, the design task is to determine the position of a hugeescalator in the interior space of the model. Kunle changes the place ofthe escalator in the large-scale model, then asks the other members of theteam, ‘Do you like it?’ Nobody answers. He takes the modelscope andthe others keep encouraging him, ‘scope it, scope it!’ Kunle moves to theadjacent table, and then switches on the light source and adjusts the levelof illumination, as required for a comfortable viewing position. Then, hecarefully inserts the modelscope to inspect the small-scale model, andchecks the function of the focusing control (from 5 mm to infinityaccording to a field of view of 60° for the small model 040) and adjusts theorbital scan to achieve the required view. Kunle now looks inside the smallmodel, and a deep silence follows (Figure 3).

As Kunle’s eye inspects the interior space of the model, the eyes of theothers are looking in the direction of the scattered things around themodel, without fixing their glances. They are waiting for their turn. Whileanticipating Kunle’s reactions, they encourage him, ‘ouyaou, ouyaou’, as ifthey were able to see inside the model along with him; as if they collectivelyshared the result of his inspection. Kunle adjusts the light guide connector,situated inside the instrument’s handle, in order to regulate the light. Thenhe sets the orbital scan again and starts rotating the viewing direction withregard to the handle, through a total arc of 360°. An orientation mark inthe image indicates the direction of view. He sees something. He says:


‘Here is the northern part of the hall. Ouyaou, I see it, where are you,stairs? . . . I see a staircase, the two pieces of Hopper around? Mmm, hereit is then (a space for the elevator).’ While Kunle communicates hisimpressions of what he sees with small gestures, the others also begin toexpress reactions. As time goes on, their silent impatience is reinstated.

While the architects from the Whitney team gather around Kunle, theytalk with tiny particles in the situation, and with the data obtained in thescoping venture. Rather than coming to agreement, often discussed instudies of design as preceding the artefact fabrication, the scaling teamengages in a dialogue with a dynamic assemblage of objective materials:dispositions, objects they see inside the model, spatial transitions, materialproperties of the foam, proportions and shapes. Scaling together meansscoping the models, entering into conversation with their barely visiblefigures, and discussing with the team what is seen. It turns out to be asimportant to design as the drawings and scale models themselves(Bucciarelli, 1994). The experience of scoping the small models is verymysterious. The scoping architect remains with a sense of confusion sincehe has to see something on his own, being unclear just what he is supposedto see. Only after numerous adjustments of the instrument are Kunle’s andthe modelscope’s eyes connected, able to see at that particular moment theshady interior of the small-scale model of the museum exhibition hall. Theothers can ‘see’ only partially by sharing collectively Kunle’s experience.23

They find themselves in a state of impatience, just as Kunle was a few

FIGURE 3Kunle is using a modelscope to inspect a small model. (Photograph: Albena Yaneva)


moments earlier, before taking the instrument. As I join the group ofanxious architects waiting to see the model inside, Kunle explains to mewhat happens:

The modelscope just gives you a view that is like the scale of that model.So, you get to express the space at that scale. It gives you the opportunityto move around spaces you ordinarily can’t get into and to see how theylook. It’s a very useful tool . . . We see at very small scales, and we aregetting to have tiny looks and private sets. We are able to see how space isinside. (K1102)

Now I know why Kunle is so slow in using the modelscope, how exactlythe others manage to see partially, and why they are so impatient to seewhat he has seen. Kunle not only is scoping the spaces, he is movingaround them, crossing the threshold of the exhibition hall after havingwalked on the stairs, looking to find a suitable place for the escalator. Themodelscope as technique allows him to bridge the scale barrier, to reducehis own human size and to think of the building by transporting his eyedirectly into a model space. Minimized to the scale of the tiny model, he isexploring these microscopic spaces like in Gulliver’s travels,24 he ‘enters’the spaces and experiences them. That is how he is able to gain newknowledge about the interior space of the building; knowledge expressednot in facts, codes and numbers, but in terms of dispositions, arrange-ments and spatial transitions. Only after a scoping venture are Kunle andthe members of the Whitney team able to ‘know where’ to put theescalator, instead of ‘knowing that’.

After having ‘walked’ through the inside of the small model, Kunleputs the modelscope aside. Thus, his ‘travel’ is finished; he is again in thearchitectural office, next to the small noisy group of impatient colleagueseager to have the same experience. He explains to them that the position ofthe red escalator has to be changed. Then, to my surprise, instead of takingthe modelscope, the group of impatient architects moves to the hugemodel and start examining the large-scale interior of the exhibition hall,the ‘same’ interior that Kunle had seen moments earlier inside the small-scale model. Numerous material changes are performed on the model.

How does a semi-‘blind’ and constrained25 movement allow Kunle to‘see’ inside the tiny model and to make it visible for the others? How is thathe knows after inspection with the modelscope that the position of the redescalator has to be changed? Where are the traces of this inspection keptand inscribed? How is his knowledge articulated and cognitively shared bythe team? Why do architects move from one table to another one, im-mediately after the endoscope inspection of the small model is completed?Why do they constantly go back to the tiny eye of the modelscope insteadof relying only upon their naked eyes? What is it that they take with themwhile moving from the monocular inspection of the tiny model to thebinocular examination of the huge scale model? What travels across thetables in the office? What passes among scaling actors? These questionsguide me in understanding the cognitive dimensions of the scaling venture.This parallel work in different scales needs to be explained.


Since there is no visible trace from the act of scoping in the smallmodel, architects rely only upon the visual experience of the one user ofthe instrument. His experience is not absolutely lonely, but actively sharedby the team. A scoping out26 movement follows: the knowledge about theescalator gained by Kunle, expressed in spatial dispositions, is immediatelytransposed onto the huge physical model and discussed by the team. Thatis how the use of the modelscope triggers numerous material alternations.The escalator is placed in the middle of the exhibition hall (not in thenorthern part of the building) in a way that enables museum-goers to enterthe gallery immediately; thus the space usually used for circulation is nowdesignated for art display. The decision to move the escalator is triggeredalso by the museum requirement to have ‘more space for the permanentcollection’, as well as by the users’ expectation of a larger building, thearchitect’s ambition to maintain historical continuity by providing similarprinciple of circulation with the one of the old Whitney building, and bythe museum decision to accommodate art in support spaces.

Gathered around the huge scale model, architects discuss the newescalator position and repeatedly rearrange its interior. Every new disposi-tion is checked out again with the modelscope. A member of the teamtakes it, sets the integral light guide, adjusts the working length anddirection and the field of view, and looks inside, inspecting the spaces.Then, a team member moves to the next table and suggests a new physicaladjustment in the large-scale model of the exhibition hall. After each newarrangement on the large scale, architects go back to see it in the small-scale model; they trust the monocular image of the internal space obtainedwith the tiny eye of the modelscope. Then, they return to the large-scalemodel to make it binocular and to perform some adjustments.

Scoping in and scoping out the tiny model, the exhibition hall of theWhitney is made bigger and bigger, allowing architects to see its ‘insidequalities’.

The bigger it gets, the more details and more interior you see, and youstart really looking at the way a surface meets a floor, or the way you detailsomething around the window, and it gets much more refined as it getsbigger. (C1102)

With every move of the modelscope, architects acquire more visibility tothe particular details of the exhibition hall, and get more data about it.Although they can see the escalator inside the small model by scoping inwith the modelscope, they need to see it again in a more open space; that iswhy they scope out, fabricate it with paper, and install it in the huge modelof the exhibition hall. By doing so, they transform the ephemeral experi-ence of seeing with the modelscope into physical arrangements of thelarger foam model, thus translating a lonely visual experience into acollectively accessible material space. That is why every instance of model-scope inspection is followed by a series of operations with paper, scissors,foam, cutters and paints.27 Thus, the escalators and the transparent stair-case are made out of paper and installed. Moreover, even miniature


paintings from the museum collection are placed on the walls of the modeland white plastic figures – future exhibition visitors – are painted in red;that is, they are rendered more visible and real. These operations enablearchitects to accurately arrange the interior architecture, by numeroushand movements, to shape and produce its space (Figure 4).

The scale shift makes the model larger and more accessible for theviewer’s body; that is, it becomes large enough to simulate an interior eyelevel view. It provides more visibility to concrete interior details. Architects’corporal operations require less effort to see into the building; comparedwith the scoping operation, their postures are less stooped, tense anduncomfortable when assuming the appropriate viewing position. Thisphysical space manufactured with foam and paper becomes an object ofcollective experience, which is visible for many actors at the same time(Figure 5).

Only by following the material re-arrangements of the big model canwe become aware of what each architect has seen while inspecting the tinymodel with the scoping instrument. What a single architect sees is sharedwith the others and changes the cognitive properties of the team.28 The wayhe imagines the building, now, is made visible for the other architects bythe tentative movements of his hands that repeatedly change the escalator’splacement. Only when we follow architects’ hands as they point to, andwork with, the huge model to transform its composition – taking the same

FIGURE 4The interior of the exhibition hall as seen in the large-scale model. (Photograph:Albena Yaneva)


paper figures, manipulating the space – are we able to see how architectsthink together.

However, scoping in and scoping out describe two different settingswhere other real agencies than humans (with their intentions and isolatedindividual minds) take part and shape complex metaphysical imbroglios:stairs, escalators, foam materials, foam cutters and recalcitrant models. In

FIGURE 5The Whitney team working on the spatial arrangement of a large-scale model.(Photograph: Albena Yaneva)


the two settings of partial visualizing into the model and through themodels, cognition is a complex social phenomenon, distributed amongindividuals, model scope, team, visual puzzles, and materially shape-ablemodel. The passage from the setting 1 in which a single architect scopes,many others react and subsequently lend their bodies to puzzling scopingprocedures, to the setting 2 in which many architects stand together at theside of the model, inspect it with naked eyes and collectively transform itsmaterial body, is not a transition from individually to a socially structuredexperience, from a self-contained disembodied technology of cognition toa collectively and publicly shared one. These settings differ only by thedistinctive way of distributing the action of scaling.

The task of positioning the escalator is organized in such a way thatarchitects use their visual language more often than their verbal expres-sions; therefore the main resource for communicatively mediating theperformance is also predominantly visual. No single architect occupying acentral position in the process supplies verbal directives. Instead, thearchitects communicate in a centre-less heterogeneous network that in-cludes the materials at hand. When viewed as the externalization of anindividual cognitive process, the gestures of the impatient architects be-come entangled with those of the person inspecting the model, and providean additional network for mutual actions among members of the scalingteam. That is what makes the inspection of the model always a collectivelyshared experience.

By following the scoping in and out procedures that architects deployon a daily basis to see a building, we can find two main actors simultane-ously present in the architectural work: the small-scale model and thelarge-scale model.

We did small models with different cuts to see how it looks. But since thesmall model is too tiny to think about the possibilities of the internalspace, we have to build the big one. People think that it’s a lot of effort tobuild the huge model, but I am glad it works . . . And also, we weren’t ableto resolve the circulation problem in the small model. I did a box, a smalljewel box, and Rem liked it, but it wasn’t sufficient to resolve thecirculation problem. So, we shifted the scale. (S1102)

If the small model of Whitney is undefined and abstract, deploying roughfigures and approximate relationships, the large-scale model is meticulousand enriched with more data and concrete details. While the former can‘evoke things and make broader assumptions’, the latter visualizes sizes,shapes and precise positions. The details come out only after numerousrepeated procedures with the small model and the standardized paper andfoam materials. Since small models lack sufficient visibility of concretedetails (such as transitions, escalators, thresholds and stairs), architectsscale-up to define and clarify more aspects of the building interior. Suchrepetition with scale variations is how working with the small model leadsto detailed relations incorporated into the large one. Scale variations donot change in a random way, nor do they follow strict metric rules. The


scale moves ‘up’ as architects develop a larger gathering of things. Conse-quently, the large scale model is more powerful, not because of an inherentsuperiority of size, but because it has the ability to capture more para-meters and concerns, to sum up more requirements and limitations, toreflect more details, corners and finishing, to enrol more viewers, to enablemore bodies to gather around it, to mobilize the public awareness better, toprovoke more violent disputes or to trigger more unpredictable actions.That is why the small and the large scale do not differ only in size, in someneutral or absolute sense, but in their distinct capacity to capture heteroge-neous actors in a model.

From the very beginning architects do not understand what designingthis particular escalator position means. That is why the artistry of thinkingarchitecturally of space seems elusive and mysterious, as though burdenedwith epistemological paradoxes.29 Without knowing the spatial featuresthey are looking for in the new (or, rather, not-yet-existent) exhibition hall,or what exactly they need to know in order to be able to conceive of thosefeatures, architects take a plunge into the scaling circuit and rely only on afew stable parameters. Thus, the fundamental features of the building aregrasped only in the process of doing – by scoping in and scoping out,architects gain knowledge about the building. The modelscope providesthem with a direct30 access to an unknown (and sometimes disputed) stateof affairs at small scale, supplying resolutions of the particular design issuesthat are then brought ‘up’ to a larger-scale. Two arrangements of foammodels are kept on two adjacent tables in the office. They account for twodistinct states of the building. One table contains tiny fuzzy and abstractmodels, which present a state at which little is known of the building.Fewer actors are being mobilized in the model, and the modelscope allowsarchitects to gain more information about it. A second table, situatednearby, contains larger and more precise scale models of the same build-ing: paper and foam figures, cutting instruments, glue and drawings. Thistable provides a distinct presentational state of the building – a state atwhich more is known about it and more actors have been gathered by it.These two tables are part of a rich network of mutual representationaldependencies. Each borders the other and is part of a continuum throughwhich the scaling venture takes place. The states of ‘knowing less’ and‘knowing more’ of the building are simultaneously maintained within thecognitive unit of the Whitney team.

The table of models described at the beginning of this paper is not justa peripheral detail of the office interior, randomly chosen for the purposesof an introduction. Tables form an important environment that organizesthe team’s cognitive activities in the Office for Metropolitan Architecture.It is impossible for architects to imagine the building without all themodels and try-outs on the tables. All changes are made with the materialskept on the tables, as the building emerges out of the multitude ofpresentational states. Just as they make the Whitney team’s cognitive movesvisible, the models also render the building accountable: exposing options,possible scenarios, failures and decisions. As architects move from one


table to another, they pass from the small model to the large one, from thetiny detail to a larger spatial arrangement of the exhibition hall, from thedisposition of the escalator to the overall circulation principle, mechanicalengineering and the philosophy of artistic display. That is, they move froma small, stabilized composition of things towards a composition of a largerscope, with greater cognitive and representational power.

Speeds of Scaling Up

Architects use the expression ‘jumping up the scale’ to describe the moveof passing suddenly to a much larger scale and a larger gathering ofthings.

We started from the small ones, and I jumped up the scale. It’s dangerousto shift to the big scale. If we start from the big one, we will lose ourconcept. If we start from the huge model, it’s dangerous because we willbe lost in details. (S1102)

The ‘jump’ is rapid – an almost impulsive and radical shift in scale, not aslow and gradual one, and so it can become risky. The ‘jump’ can bedangerous, according to Shiro, because as architects go into a more refinedversion of the building, they risk ‘losing’ the coherence of the small model– the main features of the building (the so-called ‘concept’31). The ‘jump’also can mean that suddenly knowing more about the building can make itimpossible to maintain a ‘knowing-less’ state. Its logic can be dispersed innumerous practical details; ‘disperse’ meaning that when the particularelements are more visible and articulated on the large-scale model, themain idea – those less well-defined, but key, features of the building thatmake it function – can become lost. What has to be retained when passingsuddenly from the small to the large scale, is the consistency of the wholeassemblage, representing a state of the building when only ‘few things areknown’. In addition, what is retained is the possibility to return to a smallerscope of gathering.

‘Jumping’ the scale can be a risky move, because it interrupts thegradual process of slow-scale doubling.

Of course there are some times when you ‘jump’. In the Whitney projectwe did such a thing. So, we do something and then, we go to a really big,big scale to show some details that are really important. For example, forthe scheme ‘A’ of the Whitney project, it was the windows’ shape, and wewanted to show how it looks with the colour graphs, and we did a reallybig model – 1:25. These are really big models. Like a person, like that . . .(he shows a human size model with his hand). And you can see how thedetail of the glass is, and then we went back. Sometimes it’s important todo these jumps. But usually we are going up slowly. (E1102)

The ‘jump’ accelerates the visualization process. It allows one to gainbetter visibility of internal displays and spatial arrangements, to inspectthem with precision and foresight. In the ‘jump’, materials and dispositionscan ‘talk back’ to architects. When they step back, they reinterpret what


they see or reframe the problem to be solved. By doing so, architectsconstantly go down to refine the small model instead of simply progressingslowly towards a bigger and bigger version of the building, increasingprecision, and attaining more and more knowledge about it.

This ‘jump’ is reminiscent of the movement of ‘partial seeing’ with themodelscope inside the shady space of the small foam model. The ‘jump’permits sudden visibility of the higher scale, just as the modelscopeprovided Kunle with the possibility of directly seeing the interior space at amicroscopic level. Both of these moves supply zooming views of particularspatial arrangements: if the modelscope allows virtual travelling throughthe spaces, then the ‘jump’ to the higher scale allows an architect to peerinto a human-sized model, a ‘doll house’. If the modelscope goes downinto the tiny unreachable space, and makes its experience visually possible,the sudden scale ‘jump’ goes up, to the building, and makes it possible toexperience it physically.

In the move of scaling up there is no reference to the parametersaccording to which the first models of Whitney have been fabricated –parameters such as existing site conditions, adjacent buildings, city fabrics,urban density and district fragmentation. Thus, the upward move producesa double detachment – from these parameters, and at the same time fromthe small-scale model. The large model is brought into existence byreference to the small one, but not all of the initial parameters areincorporated into its fabrication; the small model points to the large one.In this way, there is a particular moment in which models refer only toeach other and trace a circular trajectory (instead of adopting an externalfactor as a centre of meaning). This circularity is important, as it providespossibilities for re-examining again and again the different presentationalstates of the building before further development and definition.

Scaling Down

Reaching finer details through scaling up does not naturally guide archi-tects, slowly and linearly, to an ever-larger version of the building, wheremore and more becomes known about it. Scaling up is immediately andreversibly followed by scaling down.

When all the escalators of the new exhibition hall of Whitney aredecided upon, constructed in paper and painted red, they are definitivelyplaced inside the large-scale model of the exhibition hall. Then, thearchitects return to the adjacent table to translate the changes that havebeen made in the large model onto the small one: tiny red paper escalatorsare carefully manufactured by Torsten and Shiro and placed in the small-scale model so that it is revised with new details and becomes a jewel-likereplica of the huge model. However, the small scale of the model doesn’tallow complete translation of all the details from the large model. Nor is acomplete reproduction needed. Some figures are simply sketched onto thesmall one: the escalators are indicated as red endings, and the elevator isindicated by a transparent Plexiglas box in the middle of the hall. In this


way, the small and large models are mutually revised and enriched withnew details from latest developments in the project. The small-scale modelis then closed and placed back on the table, shaped proportionally andadjusted to other visual representations. It is made compact and easilymovable from one place to another in the office, and from the architect’soffice to the client.

All these briefly drawn operations are aimed at scaling down themodel. Scaling up scatters the original unity of the small-scale model,while scaling down incorporates a patchwork of the complex scattereddetails back into that unity. Scaling down is performed as a skilful arrange-ment of these disparate pieces. To achieve this patch-up, a specific tinymovement of ‘taking down the change’ is realized. We can see this move-ment in another design task, which consists of determining the shape andthe position of the windows in the new Whitney extension.

We had this idea of the windows’ shape and particular position, and wewanted to see whether it works well, whether it’s really good; because inthe small model we liked it, but we weren’t sure if it will look good in thebig one. It wasn’t only that we weren’t sure that it will look good, but weweren’t sure that it would look convincing. So, we wanted to convinceother people that it was looking good. So, we built the big model, andthen we took this detail and we brought it back to the small model, and wesaid: ‘Okay, that’s how we are going to determine it.’ (E1102)

With the large model, architects can see whether the windows of the newWhitney building ‘work well’. Every part of the building has to be inte-grated with numerous other interior features, such as lighting, air-conditioning, circulation and infrastructure, mechanical structure, mate-rial properties, as well as with architects’ worries, clients’ concerns andusers’ anticipations. As the windows’ position is being defined on the large-scale model, a new adjustment, a new ‘good fit’32 among the variouselements is obtained, and then translated to the small model. Oncebrought back to the small model, it is then pushed again towards the largeone.

The larger and more differentiated model does not differ in a quasi-evolutionary fashion from the small one; rather, it is a tool for seeingbetter, gaining new knowledge, enrolling more actors and refining thesmall-scale model. Although it is a mediator in the scaling process, not itsfinal goal, it is not an ephemeral visual device. It is kept on the ‘table ofmodels’ along with numerous small-scale models, drawings and collages,and foam and paper try-outs. Although stabilized in a given shape, none ofthem is completely defined, and any of them can be materially changed,thus triggering a chain of modifications.

As the design process develops, the scales are shifted and new data forthe building are gained:

We work on a model and a drawing at the same time, sometimes thedrawing will tell you more than the model and you go back and forthbetween the two. And then, you go back to the model that tells you


something different and you have to change the drawing. And I think it’sthe same for the large scale and the small scale. If we get further on in theprocess, in design development, we know the shape, we know where thefloor levels are, we know where the windows are, but then you start to lookat more interior spaces and you might do a much larger model which isproportional to the space. But that may affect the smaller one. And youmight say this window has to be like this to get this kind of light and thatmeans changes, and we have to take it back down and to see how it looks.So, it’s back and forth between the scales. (C1102)

As architects shift scales they enter into dialogue with objective materials,far from any mental models (Gorman, 1997), that compel them and ‘tellthem more’ about the building, offer resistance, opposition and set uptensions within. By doing so, they acquire more knowledge about shapes,dispositions, locations; again, this is not knowledge of facts, but ratherknowledge about spatial transitions, not ‘knowing that’, but ‘knowingwhere’. In the translation from the small to the big, a special connection ismaintained between the two models that makes it possible for changes inthe large model to ‘affect the smaller one’. Architects ‘take the changesback down’ to the small model and update it. That is, more data are beingtransmitted to the small model, but always schematically, so it can accountfor an abstract and broad-spectrum method for presenting the state of thebuilding. Moving up and down in scale lets us discover two hologram-likefaces of the building: one small, vague and data-poor, the other large,detailed and data-rich; being maintained as such, they make it possible forthe building to emerge in the architectural office.

Models are considered as small and large, respectively abstract andconcrete, as they treat compositions of things in a rather different way.While the large model closely deals with the things – recalcitrant materialproperties and adjustments – the small one stands apart from them. Noeffort of translation is needed to understand the position of a window, anescalator or a plug in the large model of the exhibition hall. However, themeaning of the small model can be grasped only by calling to mind a fewevocative features of the building, and tracing out connections betweenthem. While the small model, as a first approximation of the building, hasthe purpose of facilitating knowledge, inquiry and speculation, the largemodel is associated with practical concerns. Therefore, since the smallmodel is employed simply as a means to encourage more thinking, it isconsidered abstract; as the big model is used as a means to define figures ofthe building beyond itself, it is a concrete presentation of the building.However, the development of the practical cognitive power of the largemodel does not weaken the abstract properties of the small one. Made forthe sake of knowing more of the building, the abstract model is pushedtowards the large one, in order to facilitate concrete achievements; regard-less of what these achievements turn out to be, the small model remainsabstract, as a tool for defining and perfecting the building.

Detached from the site parameters, the small- and the large-scalemodels mutually inform each other and are simultaneously modified.Jointly replicating and referring to each other in their redundancy, together


they constitute a circuit: when the small model is no longer neededbecause its job has been completed, it is scaled up and transformed into alarge one; when the large model accomplishes its function, it is necessaryto return to the small one. In this circuit, one can observe an importantdegree of abstraction from the building ‘programme’;33 the building isrendered diffuse, nearly atmospheric, and mundane; it is lost in transit.Likewise, some problematic issues are dissolved in the scaling.34

By defining a multitude of technical details of materials, proportionsand sizes, and by supplying numerous ‘convincing images’35 of the build-ing, every scale shift reduces uncertainty about the future building. It helpsarchitects avoid possible failures that can occur when a sudden scale up isperformed at the end.36 As the scale goes up and down, architects witnessthat they are dealing with a ‘defined’ building; a building that is simultane-ously ‘less-known’ and ‘well-known’, abstract and concrete. The continuityof scaling activity across settings relies on the flexible variability in theirstructuring, and builds a continuum in which overall and detailed, abstractand concrete are no longer distinguishable.

Conclusion

What Scaling Attains

We have seen that models ‘jump’ from scale to scale, without referring tothe site parameters as a defining reality or a transcendental centre of thescaling enterprise. Thus, the small and large models exist together, guidingthe architects from one to the other, and crystallizing in a circuit. In thiscircuit, there is no stable distinction between small and large, real andvirtual.

What is visible in the circuit is a double movement in time. There isnot a chronological succession of past and present images of the building.This movement can be defined only according to an actual present, fromwhich it derives in an absolute and simultaneous way through the processof scaling. The small- and the large-scale models are correlated, but not insimple relation of past and present versions; instead, they are simultane-ously connected, with each following the other. The past co-exists with thepresent in a perpetual recurrence: the present state of the building followsfrom an immediate spatially adjacent past; the past state is the particularpresent state of the building that existed a few minutes ago, at a differentscale. As the present state of the building proceeds, the past state ispreserved on the adjacent table; a small model emerges into a large one, alarge model retires in the small. The temporal sequence is not chrono-logical, in a linear sense. Time is recreated and reinvented through a circuitof scaling, each moment of which refers back to its, simultaneouslypresent, past states. This contrasts with the chronologically successivemoves of an evolutionary design process.37

Each move is tentative, and the circuit does not run in a senselessfluctuation, as a game having no end other than itself. The scaling does not


move in a random and chaotic way, nor is it a matter of pure routine; it hasdefinite cumulative effects. Something new emerges out of the circuit: aprojected reality – the new building. This reality becomes visible in theredundancy between ‘knowing-less’ and ‘knowing-more’: abstraction andconcretization, idea and multiple pragmatic details. It emerges as scales areshifted between small and large models; one pushes to the other in a long-lasting game, and all of them make the building happen. Thus, scaling upand scaling down are not successive moves, but parallel states, eachcontaining the other and referring to it. Instead of emerging in a propor-tional relationship to site parameters with a definite referent or ‘content’,the building is defined in scaling trials; as it passes through these trials, itbecomes more and more visible, more present, more material, real. ‘Scal-ing’ is not a way to fit into reality; rather, it is a conduit for its extraction.

Scaling implies seeing in different scales, through a variety of presenta-tional states. The building is simultaneously present in all of these states: itappears as less-defined and well-defined at the same time. Architecturaldesign develops, at a given moment and for a certain span of time, througha circular generative regime instead of a linear process of varying possibledesigns and selecting solutions, which subsequently generates the building– a process of ‘punctuated evolution’38 or a process in which successiveartefacts follow one another ‘along trajectories’.39

How Scaling Ends

The scaling venture is long lasting, but not infinite. Scales vary until theyare ‘stabilized’ at a certain level of definition of the building. Then thearchitects stop scaling and ‘fix’ the building.

I wouldn’t say that there is a constant variation of scales. Not constantly. . . You are going basically up and down all the time until you stabilize it inone scale. In this project it’s 1:50. And then, you can develop the projectin that scale. And sometimes you are going up, you jump to a bigger scaleto check some details, some corners, it’s always details. You have even thedetails for the furniture. In the big model you see the chairs and every-thing. But then, you are going back to the small model and you aredesigning again. So, there is one level when you stop and you stabilizethings. (E1102)

At a given moment in the process, a few models are detached from thescaling circulation network. They are stabilized in a certain profile and startworking on their own, taking new, independent, and straightforward linearpaths of development. Thus, the scaling process ends up with ‘stabiliza-tion’.40 Contrary to all expectations, the scaling venture fails to have as itsupshot a huge detailed ‘realistic model of the whole’. The final product ofarchitectural design is neither the building nor a mock-up sample of thebuilding in scale 1:1. It is instead that particular assembly of a few ‘one-shape models’ detached from the scaling continuum and its circularnetwork. This is what I found on the ‘table of models’ in the earlyafternoon of November 2001 (Figure 1). It was not a bunch of successors


and predecessors, but a myriad of presentational states generated, col-lected and stabilized in the office through time. This is the Whitneybuilding: the building is ubiquitous in the scaling operations, and is notspecifically located in any of them. Resulting from a rhythm with fineundertones of variation and distance, acceleration and slowing down, itappears as something quasi-unreachable and at the same time ever-presentin all models and states: a multiple, cumulative object visible through all ofthem and in the movements connecting them.

NotesI am indebted to the people from the Office for Metropolitan Architecture in Rotterdam,and especially to Ole Scheeren, Erez Ella, Carol Patterson, Torsten Schroder, SarahGibson, Kunle Adeyemi, Shiro Agata, Shohei Shigematsu, Olga Aleksakova and RemKoolhaas for welcoming me in the office and letting me follow them at work; they devoteda lot of time and patience to me and my questions. For their comments on earlier versionsof this project, I acknowledge Bruno Latour, Peter Galison, Lorraine Daston and JoelSnyder. Albena Yaneva is a grantee of the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in theFine Arts, grant # 03069

1. This research is based on a two-year ethnographical observation in the Office forMetropolitan Architecture (OMA) of Rem Koolhaas in Rotterdam.

2. In a recent study, John Law shows how aircraft designers engage in a sequential processof prototyping and testing to learn what is acceptable for establishing the best wingdesign, in terms of relatively stable and determinate shape. Through different tests ofthe extent to which the wing passes through vertical gusts of wind, the way it bouncesup and down, and the way it experiences turbulence, they find a strategy for modellingthe factors that might affect gust response. These factors refer to a variety of externalrealities: the weight leads into the realm of bureaucratic politics, the size of the wing, tothe Russians (the need for short take-off from camouflaged airstrips), and so on (Law,2002).

3. The term of ‘translation’ is used in science studies to designate, with all its linguisticand material connotations, the displacements realized by actors whose mediation isindispensable for any action to occur. Instead of maintaining the rigid opposition ofcontent and context, words and world, the ‘chain of translations’ points to themeticulous work though which actors modify, displace and translate their variousinterests in practice, multiplying the mediators instead of demystifying the pretensionsof science as critical sociology does (Latour, 1990, 2001: 33–82). Translations,transfiguration, transformation, transfer – any of these terms refer also to the multipleprocedures through which a building is brought into existence. They sit happily overthe blind spot between architectural drawings, models and diagrams and their object –the building. However, it remains unclear ‘how things travel and what will happen tothem on the way to the final building’, and . . . ‘the transmutation that occurs betweendrawing and building remains to a large extent an enigma’ (Evans, 1997: 160; Allen,2000).

4. Michel Callon argued for the importance of an STS study of architecture focusing onthe materiality of design as a world of graphs and strategies of visualization, groundedin negotiations (Callon, 1996). Other authors addressed criticisms to this programme(Raynaud, 2001), but did not suggest empirical alternatives.

5. They focused on the social underpinning of design and production activities (Blau,1984), or analysed the products of architectural design as socially constructed innegotiations among architects and an array of contributors (Cuff, 1991).

6. On the notion of rhythm in architecture see Itten (1975) and Greene (1976).


7. Compare this with studies that consider design as a work of the brain when, in amysterious moment of inspiration, delirium and concealment, an image of the buildingappears in a flash (Boyd, 1965; Akin & Weinel, 1982).

8. A fascinating study on the cognitive dimension of engineering, conducted by Vincenti(1990), noted that engineering design knowledge is acquired in a day-to-day enterpriseaccording to a systematic experimental methodology. That is how engineers acquireempirical data needed to carry out design, since the theoretical methods cannot supplythe requisite data.

9. Architectural design is not a gradual step-by-step transfer from one scale to another,developing towards a ratio of 1:1 (Boudon, 1972); rather, discontinuity and versatilityare its main figures (Schatz & Fiszer, 1999). It relies on surges, breaks, sudden ‘jumps’and meticulous inspections, repetitions and returns; it sets into play simultaneouslydifferent sized actors and several scales, many of which persist throughout all the stagesof the project, regardless of their precision. This story of discontinuity to some extentfollows recent studies on engineering design that treat it as a messy non-linear process,full of unforeseen pitfalls and unpredicted actions (Henderson, 1999) – a maze, orcomplex multidimensional web of interconnections, moving toward a final well-designed product (Bucciarelli, 1994).

10. This view differs from that in studies in the philosophy of technology, which describethe genesis of technical objects as concretization, that is, as ascending from the abstractto the concrete; from an unpredictable abstract object, open to its environment,towards a closed, predictable, differentiated and concrete object (Simondon, 1989).

11. On the building as a ‘multiverse’, not socially constructed but a stabilized gathering offew models, tentatively adjusted together and composed in a whole, see Yaneva (2005).

12. Design studies considered constraints as a ‘primary generator’ triggering a process ofarchitectural exploration that led to a conjectural solution (Darke, 1979). Althoughexplicitly articulated, constraints and boundaries, which are so critical for engineeringdesign, are not considered inflexible; rather, they are subject to change and negotiation(Bucciarelli, 1994). Science studies also have argued that scientific experimentationruns according to ‘multiple constraints’, considered as material obstacles that shapeand delimit action in experimentation (Galison, 1995, 1998).

13. See Koolhaas & Mau (1995) and the Office of Metropolitan Architecture & Koolhaas(2004). Koolhaas analyses different scale-projects at OMA, investigating how they areproportionally applied to different-sized cities and urban spaces, as well as how theygenerate multiple contents.

14. However, there are few accounts of scale models in architecture, as compared with theenormous amount of writing on architectural drawing (Porter, 1979; Blau & Kaufman,1989; Robbins, 1985, 1994; Evans, 1997).

15. Models often travel outside the architectural office to gain powerful allies amongclients, sponsors and future users, community groups and city planning commissions.They are supposed to express concerns, expertise, opinions and expectations, which arefurthermore taken into account in design. Thus models incorporate not only a varietyof technical concerns, but also a range of other viewpoints.

16. On the dual existence of molecular models in chemistry as quasi-inscriptions and anti-inscriptions at the same time, see Francoeur (1997, 2000). Like models of molecules,architectural models are submitted to various manipulations, assembled, probed andmeasured, and are used to gain knowledge about spatial arrangements. However, theydo not reveal properties of structures to ascribe them to hidden phenomena (such asmolecules in chemistry stand); they all work together in a common visual space to‘obtain’ a building.

17. They tend to develop different characteristics as the result of a change in the initialcomposition; like mutants, models are physically distinct variants of the same species,the building. None of them is identical to another; each of them is a distinctcomposition of things. All together they shape and contain the building.

18. ‘Scription’ terms include in-scription (Latour & Woolgar, 1979), and con-scription(Henderson, 1999) and pre-scription.


19. According to Henderson the visual communication (expressed in sketches andprototypes) is the ‘glue’ that holds engineering groups together (Henderson, 1999).

20. Various actors are enlisted at different stages of architectural design: structural andmechanical engineers, experts, stage designers, client representatives, future users, andso on. Although these consultants are not directly mobilized in the scaling venture,some of their concerns, expectations and requirements are taken into account whilearchitects scale up and down. However, it is beyond the scope of this essay to depicttheir specific modes of participation.

21. On the term of ‘composition’ versus ‘construction’ see Latour (2003). Nothing is moreconvincing for showing the composite character of the building than a scale model inwhich a variety of concerns and requirements have to be fitted together.

22. The real name of this instrument is a borescope. It is primarily designed for theobservation and inspection of the inside of machines, equipment and structures. Sincein the architectural office it is used to inspect the interior of the scale models, it iscalled ‘modelscope’.

23. The attachment of a miniature video camera or a special viewing adaptor would allowarchitects to attend the endoscopic examination simultaneously with the operatorKunle, and can enable a filmed real-time movement through and around the model.Perceived movements can also be simulated by the simple operation of panning andtracking, which also can be photographed.

24. The awareness of our own physical size and bulk in relation to that of a scale model isknown in architectural theory as ‘Gulliver Gap’ (Porter & Neale, 2000).

25. It is a constrained experience, because seeing in the small model requires efforts withthe body and straining the eyes. By bending his own body to the model’s folds, passingthrough numerous trials, it is as though the scoping architect reduces himself to thescale of the small model. Doing so, he scales down, plunges inside the building, andstands at the same level. This differs from presenting the building from a dominantposition, which normally states that phenomena have been investigated in a laboratoryand are under control (Latour, 1984; Sibum, 1992; Schaffer, 2004). Thus, seeing thebuilding requires a series of material operations to adjust the architect to the modelsize, instead of a mysterious work of his brain.

26. The terms of ‘scoping in’ and ‘scoping out’ are borrowed from the computer languageof ‘zooming in’, ‘zooming out’ and ‘fit into image’.

27. The material realization of the huge model requires more accurate procedures ofcutting, pasting and modelling. These procedures all require exact measurements forreproducing shapes, sizes, openings and proportions. In the model-making process,architects ‘follow the drawings with precision’, cut the paper plans and sections, applythem meticulously on the foam blocks; the sequence of operations has to be performedwith rigorous accuracy rather than through a random exercise with materials andshapes. A detailed description of these operations is beyond the scope of this paper.

28. As shown by Hutchins, the cognitive properties of the group differ significantly fromthe cognitive properties of an individual member (Hutchins, 1991, 1995). On cognitionas embedded in social practices and distributed within group activities, see also Lave(1988).

29. By following architecture students as they learn to design, Schon (1985) defines anepistemological paradox of the architectural studio: on the one hand, students need tolearn a new competence, and they do not initially understand what they need to learn;on the other hand, they can only educate themselves by beginning to do design work.

30. Sometimes the viewing experience is mediated by a camera, with tiny manoeuvrablelenses, which is able to enter the model and to document the static interior of themodel in the form of a moving image. If the first reason why architects enter the smallmodel is to experience the space and to use this immediate knowledge for the physicaltransformation of the model, the second reason is to obtain images of the building thatwill be closer to the ways people will experience it.


31. Architects call a ‘concept’ the main idea of the building, taken in its relationships withthe client demand, the city, the urban fabric, and the broader social, political andcultural context.

32. Following Alexander’s definition of successful design as a ‘good fit’ (Alexander, 1964),we can consider scaling up as an attempt to make a myriad of small elements andmicro-equipment fit together and ‘work well’. While the ‘good fit’ at large scale providesincentive for scaling down – when successful it is taken down and ‘determined’ on thesmall scale – a ‘misfit’ provides an incentive for making radical changes to the smallmodel. Thus, scaling up and down aims at neutralizing the incongruities that cause a‘misfit’. The follow-up of scaling operations gives us the possibility to experiencecognitively the sensations about what architects call a ‘good test’.

33. Architects call a ‘programme’ the content of the building – the internal distribution ofspaces according to functional needs, general scope and insertion in reality.

34. To solve a ‘problem’ means in architectural terms: ‘isolating’ the problematic feature,transporting it between scales, zooming and reducing, pushing and defining, thus ‘dis-solving’ it through travel. By ‘dis-solved’ I mean ‘solved’ in a particular way. I use thetwofold meaning of ‘solution’ – as the resolution of a difficulty and as two substancesmixed together and uniformly dispersed. As scales are shifted the problematic feature issolved in the same way one substance is dissolved in another and the building becomesknowable.

35. Images are regularly produced at every scale-up and scale-down move; the images serveas protocols for carefully maintaining the traces of the scaling experiences, investing thetrials with materials and shapes; documenting new data about the building. On the flatsurface of multiple collages, montages and drawings one can find imprinted the ‘faces’of the three-dimensional models, the traces of their movements and transformations.Thus, the pure and formal redundancy of models cannot occur without the expressiveimages, which capture their meaning and transmit information. The building can beinterpreted through the material body of these images that make it presentable forclient and publics.

36. The ‘ability to anticipate’ errors in size and relationship is considered important in thescaling venture (Licklider, 1966). Examples from the history of technology highlightthat building successful full-sized machines was one of the challenging intellectualproblems with which early modern engineering confronted pre-classical mechanics inthe 17th century. All attempts to scale-up models of machines and to enlarge them incorrect proportion used to fail because scaling was only approached mathematically,without taking into account the properties of the materials; namely, the robustness andresistance of materials, qualities that diminish proportionally when a device is enlarged(Popplow, 2003). Likewise, the difficulty of scaling-up models of vessels in navalarchitecture in the 18th century was defined as the incapacity of rational mechanics todescribe or predict ship behaviour. Only the skilful model-maker was able to foreseethe displacement, stability, weathering qualities and other essentials of a large ship,instead of using pure calculation (Schaffer, 2004).

37. According to evolutionary theories (Forty, 1986; Petrovski, 1992, 1994, 1996; Basalla,1988; Pye, 1988) a new design product follows from earlier products throughsuccessive functional changes. To elucidate the multiplicity of technical tools and thedrive for their improvement, these theories argue that novelty appears amongcontinuously evolving artefacts. They explain how the new design object comes intobeing in relation to an external factor (social context, cultural atmosphere, economic orpolitical factors, society), always being the starting point of a new process of series oftransformations – that is, a linear and temporal succession of finished and limitedevents.

38. According to which the development of an artefact – understood in relation to itsancestors and successors – follows a staircase-like evolution of sequences of change andcontinuity (Bijker, 1995: 88).

39. See what Latour (1989: 322–52) has called ‘diffusion model of technology’ ascompared with the ‘translations model’.


40. I am following here the actors’ definition of stabilization, although the term was used inlaboratory studies (Latour & Woolgar, 1979). Architects define stabilization as amomentary pause in the scaling up and down process; a clarification of the buildingprofile slowing down the versatile scaling course.

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Publishers Association).Basalla, George (1988) The Evolution of Technology (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press).Bijker, Wiebe (1995) Of Bicycles, Bakelites, and Bulbs. Toward a Theory of Sociotechnical

Change (Cambridge, MA & London: MIT Press).Blau, Eva & Edward Kaufman (eds) (1989) Architecture and its Image (Montreal: Canadian

Centre for Architecture).Blau, Judith (1984) A Sociological Perspective on Architectural Practice (Cambridge, MA: MIT

Press).Boudon, Philippe (1971) Sur l’Espace Architectural. Essai d’épistemologie et d’Architecture

(Paris: Dunod).Boudon, Philippe (1972) La Ville de Richelieu (Paris: AREA).Boudon, Philippe (1992) Introduction a l’Architecturologie (Paris: Dunod).Boudon, Philippe (1999) ‘The Point of View of Measurement in Architectural Conception:

From the Question of Scale to Scale as Question’, Nordic Journal of ArchitecturalResearch 12(1): 7–18.

Boyd, Robin (1965) The Puzzle of Architecture (Carlton, Australia: Melbourne UniversityPress).

Bucciarelli, Louis L. (1994) Designing Engineers (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).Callon, Michel (1996) ‘Le Travail de la Conception en Architecture’, Situations, Les Cahiers

de la Recherche Architecturale 37(1): 25–35.Cuff, Dana (1991) Architecture: The Story of Practice (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).Darke, Jane (1979) ‘The Primary Generator and the Design Process’, Design Studies 1:

36–44.Dupire, Alain, Bernard Hamburger, Jean-Claude Paul, Jean-Michel Savignat & Alain

Thiebaut (1981) Deux Essais sur la Construction (Bruxelles: Mardaga).Evans, Robin (1997) Translations from Drawing to Building and Other Essays (London:

Architectural Association).Ferguson, Eugene (1992) Engineering and the Mind’s Eye (Cambridge, MA & London: MIT

Press).Forty, Adrian (1986) Objects of Desire (New York: Pantheon).Francoeur, Eric (1997) ‘The Forgotten Tool: Design and Use of Molecular Models’, Social

Studies of Science 27(1): 7–40.Francoeur, Eric (2000) ‘Beyond Dematerialization and Inscription: Does the Materiality of

Molecular Models Really Matter?’, Hyle – International Journal for Philosophy ofChemistry 6(1): 63–84.

Galison, Peter (1995) ‘Context and Constraints’, in J.Z. Buchwald (ed.), Scientific Practice.Theories and Stories of Doing Physics (Chicago, IL & London: University of ChicagoPress): 13–41.

Galison, Peter (1998) Image and Logic. A Material Culture of Microphysics (Chicago, IL &London: University of Chicago Press).

Gorman, Michael (1997) ‘Mind in the World: Cognition and Practice in the Invention ofthe Telephone’, Social Studies of Science 27: 583–624.


Greene, Herb (1976) Mind and Image: An Essay on Art & Architecture (Lexington, KY:University Press of Kentucky).

Henderson, Kathryn (1999) On Line and On Paper: Visual Representations, Visual Culture, andComputer Graphics in Design Engineering (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).

Hutchins, Edwin (1991) ‘The Social Organization of Distributed Cognition’, in L. Resnick& J. Levine (eds), Perspectives on Socially Shared Cognition (Washington, DC: APAPress).

Hutchins, Edwin (1995) Cognition in the Wild (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).Itten, Johannes (1975) Gestaltungs- und Formenlehre: Mein Vorkurs am Bauhaus und Spater

(New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold).Knorr-Cetina, Karin (1999) Epistemic Cultures: How the Sciences Make Knowledge

(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).Koolhaas, Rem & Bruce Mau (1995) Small, Medium, Large, Extra-Large (Rotterdam: Office

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Decouverte).Latour, Bruno (1989) La Science en Action, Introduction a la Sociologie des Sciences (Paris: La

Decouverte).Latour, Bruno (1990) ‘Drawing Things Together’, in M. Lynch & S. Woolgar (eds),

Representation in Scientific Practice (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press): 19–68.Latour, Bruno (2001) L’Espoir de Pandore: Pour une Version Realiste de l’Activite Scientifique

(Paris: La Decouverte).Latour, Bruno (2003) ‘The Promises of Constructivism’, in D. Ihde & E. Selinger (eds),

Chasing Technoscience. Matrix for Materiality (Bloomington, IN: Indiana UniversityPress): 27–47.

Latour, Bruno & Steve Woolgar (1979) Laboratory Life (London: SAGE Publications).Lave, Jean (1988) Cognition in Practice: Mind, Mathematics, and Culture in Everyday Life

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).Law, John (2002) Aircraft Stories: Decentering the Object in Technoscience (Durham, NC: Duke

University Press).Licklider, Heath (1966) Architectural Scale (New York: Brazillier).Lynch, Michael (1985) ‘Discipline and The Material Form of Image: An Analysis of

Scientific Visibility’, Social Studies of Science 15: 37–66.Office for Metropolitan Architecture & Rem Koolhaas (2004) Content (Koln: Taschen).Orr, Frank (1985) Scale in Architecture (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company).Petrovski, Henry (1992) The Evolution of Useful Things (New York: Vintage Books).Petrovski, Henry (1994) Design Paradigms. Case Histories of Error and Judgment in

Engineering (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).Petrovski, Henry (1996) Inventing by Design, How Engineers Get from Thought to Things?

(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).Popplow, Markus (2003) ‘Models of Machines: A “Missing Link” Between Early Modern

Engineering and Mechanics?’, Preprint no. 225 of the Max-Planck Institute of theHistory of Science in Berlin.

Porter, Tom (1979) How Architects Visualize (London: Studio Vista).Porter, Tom & John Neale (2000) Architectural Supermodels. Physical Design Simulation

(Oxford & Boston, MA: Architectural Press).Pye, David (1988) The Nature and Aesthetics of Design (London: The Herbert Press).Raynaud, Dominique (2001) ‘Competences et Expertise Professionnelle de l’Architecte

dans le Travail de Conception’, Sociologie du Travail 43: 451–69.Robbins, Edward (1985) ‘Drawing and the Social Production of Architecture’, in P.L. Knox

(ed.), The Design Professions and the Built Environment (London & Sydney: CroomHelm/New York: Nichols Publishing Company): 42–61.

Robbins, Edward (1994) Why Architects Draw? (Cambridge, MA & London: MIT Press).Schaffer, Simon (2004) ‘Fish and Ships: Models in the Age of Reason’, in S. de

Chadarevian & N. Hopwood (eds), Models: The Third Dimension of Science (Stanford,CA: Stanford University Press).


Schatz, Françoise & Stanislas Fiszer (1999) ‘Dealing with Space: Tales and Scales inArchitectural Design’, Innehåll 1: 43–59.

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Sibum, Otto (1992) Shifting Scales: Microstudies in Early Victorian Britain. Unpublishedmanuscript, Max-Planck Institute for the History of Science.

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Vincenti, Walter G. (1990) What Engineers Know and How They Know It: Analytical Studiesfrom Aeronautical History (Baltimore, MD & London: The Johns Hopkins UniversityPress).

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Yaneva, Albena (2005) ‘A Building is a Multiverse’, in B. Latour & P. Weibel (eds), MakingThings Public (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).

Albena Yaneva completed her doctoral thesis on ethnography of artinstallation in the Centre de Sociologie de l’Innovation, École des Mines deParis. She has worked at the Max-Planck Institute for the History of Sciencein Berlin and the Department of the History of Science at HarvardUniversity. She is currently the director of The Gallery of Research (Galerieder Forschung), Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna.

Address: The Gallery of Research (Galerie der Forschung), Austrian Academyof Sciences, Wollzeile 17, 1010 Vienna, Austria; email:[email protected]


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Why agency and criticality?Architecture is, by its very nature, ‘in the world’, in both spatial and temporal terms: buildings are concrete and tangible elements of our everyday life-world. Yet, also architectural designs, urban plans, utopian schemes or paper architecture are ‘in the world’: they might not define the way things work, but they do change the way we think about how they work, or should work. It is this peculiar, myriad being-in-the-world-ness of architecture that raises fundamental questions about how architec-ture enacts, how it performs, and consequently, how it might ‘act otherwise’ or lead to other possible futures. This possibility underlies all questions regarding architecture’s ability to be critical. Agency can be understood as the very vehicle of such drive or intention to create alternative worlds.

In the wake of the problematisation of modern-ism, the discipline of architecture has witnessed a marked turn in its understanding of this ability. The potential for architecture to be engaged with and thus critical of the existing, was no longer to be located in the affirmative realm of the architectural project, but shifted, with Tafuri - under the influence of various schools of Marxism and critical theory - to the realm of history and theory. Whether asserting architec-ture’s socio-economic determination, or promoting its autonomy, the arguments were founded upon one central inclination: the preference for theory as the ultimate guide for criticality in architecture.

Over the past decade, this paradigm has been

called into question. With the demise of ‘big schools’ of thought, the idea of a Theory that would directly guide architectural practice has lost its appeal. What has become known as the ‘crisis of theory’ can be brought back to the awareness that critical theory does not automatically lead to a form of critical prac-tice. While in US architectural culture the rejection of theory as the preferred locus of criticality has been expressed most vocally by advocates of a so-called ‘post-critical’ or ‘projective’ approach,1 there has actually been a more general emergence of propos-als for an alternative to the reign of critical theory.2 These range from neo-Marxist derivatives of the old critical theory now turning towards critical practice, to those re-claiming the agency of the architectural object, against the decades-long influence of the social sciences in architectural production.3

But more is going on. Concerns with criticality have hardly been limited to architecture alone. The now landmark conference on the future of theory and criticism, organised by the editors of Critical Inquiry in 2003,4 mirrors architects’ preoccupations in the wider arena of the humanities and social sciences. In domains from geography to cultural studies, renewed critiques of late capitalism have often been inspired by a search for new ways of thinking about criticality and political engagement - whether through theoretical ‘third ways’, or, more concretely, by imagining alternatives to ‘global neoliberalism’ as it manifests itself in the contemporary city.5 Most importantly, as these disciplines outside of archi-tecture have shown, the world outside has radically

Agency in Architecture: Rethinking Criticality in Theory and PracticeIsabelle Doucet and Kenny Cupers, editors

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Agency in Architecture: Reframing Criticality in Theory and Practice, Spring 2009, pp. 1-6

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the agency to do what: to act in service of the client, or to guide society towards a better end? Or do we mean instead the power of the architectural project or the building itself, to convince its users about the virtuous lifestyle it hopes to instil, or its spectators about the beauty of its form? Or is it rather the role of the user, or of the built environment at large, in the make-up and transformation of society? Are we perhaps even referring to the world of concepts, of architectural theory, to have some concrete effects in the world beyond? Facing such a wide and seem-ingly disparate range of questions, how is it possible even to propose agency in architecture as a single topic of analysis?

Rather than constructing a ‘big theory’ of agency that would replace a ‘big theory’ of structure gone out of fashion, this issue proposes to work with the concept of agency by - as Margaret Crawford describes it in her contribution to this issue - cutting it up into workable bits that can then be reconfigured and stitched together. As such, we break up the question of agency into smaller sub-questions.

An obvious first question that would allow expli-cating the notion of agency is to ask: ‘the agency of what?’ Posited in the realm of architecture, this question brings up not only the by now familiar human / non-human division, but perhaps more fundamentally, the issues of multiplicity and rela-tionality. In something as mundane as the process of constructing a building, how many agents do we take into account, and how do we conceive of the relation between them?

A second set of questions, which follows directly from the first, circles around the question of ‘how?’ How do agents operate? How does an object exert agency? How do they, together, shape or affect a certain situation or condition? This is, more broadly, a question about means, modes and vehicles. In architecture, a key divide in this respect has been that between empiricism and idealism: what is the

challenged some of the foundations of architectural production. New conditions - from global economic restructuring to an emerging information society based on networks, simultaneity, multiplicity and nonlinearity - provoke us to question not only archi-tecture’s critical potential but also, the univocality of its agency in the world. Consequently, rather than casting architecture in terms of either societal relevance or aesthetic quality, current approaches tend to be guided less by what architecture means or intends, than by how it works, and what it does. Whether addressed as ‘an object in flight’,6 or an ‘imbroglio’,7 such approaches aim to unravel archi-tecture in its spatial and temporal engagements, which have undoubtedly leaked out of the hermetic space of critical theory.

Hence the main question of this issue: if we think differently about architecture’s being in the world today, what to do with theory and critical-ity? If, despite its current inability to deal with the complexity of architecture’s ‘earthly’ entanglements, theory cannot be given up, then how to use it? A particularly fruitful concept for understanding archi-tecture’s multiple ways of engaging with the world is that of agency - a notion that in current debates is as fundamental as it remains implicit. The goal of this Footprint issue is thus to rethink critical-ity in architecture by harnessing the multifarious notion of agency. Theorising agency, and making it more explicit as a category of contemporary think-ing in architecture, this issue aims to transcend the engrained dichotomies of the current debate - such as that of critical, progressive social change versus the allegedly uncritical performance of the architectural object - and to trace novel connections between such seemingly disparate concerns.

Explicating / Implicating agencyThe question of agency in architecture seems to be a common one. So common, in fact, that it is hard to pin down exactly what is meant by it. Are we talking about the agency of the architect, and if so,

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a sense of direction. Perhaps one possible way is to conceive of agency in terms of activity, and of struc-ture in terms of situation. This could also lead to a better understanding of ‘un-intentionality’, a crucial idea when thinking about the multiplicity of actions that makes up the city. Many of these suggestions have emerged out of our conversation with Scott Lash, Antoine Picon and Margaret Crawford, which has served as the theoretical exploration of our overall editorial concerns, and in this respect adopts a particular position in this issue.

The contributions to this issue have been assem-bled with the idea that focusing expressly on agency allows one to transcend, in diverse ways, the constraining dichotomies of current debates about criticality mentioned above. We believe that each article in this issue throws new light on one or more of our questions outlined above.

By focusing on material contingency, Pep Avilés has carefully disentangled the multiplicity of histori-cal agents shaping postwar Italian neorealist architecture. Charting the historical coalescence of economic autarky with aesthetic austerity in 1930s Italy, his article transcends the teleological idealism that tends to protrude some analyses of architec-tural style, while at the same time avoiding the trap of material determinism. Avilés has conceived of autarky not just as an agent in itself, but as a complex including political-ideological, as well as economic and material agents.

With his analysis of Venturi and Scott Brown’s project for South Street in Philadelphia, Sebastian Haumann places architectural aesthetics on a par with the political agency pursued by so many architects and planners of that period. By empha-sising this project over Learning from Las Vegas, Haumann confronts architecture theory with its own limitations. With the new perspective of urban history he brings to it, Haumann is able to question the unitary nature of agency: he demonstrates how

relative importance of ideas versus action, thinking versus doing, theory versus practice?

The third question - undoubtedly the most crucial for this issue - is that of ‘why?’ or ‘to what effect?’ This encompasses, more broadly, the notion of intentionality. If we acknowledge that the concept of agency is indebted not only to the figure of the goal-oriented actor, but more fundamentally, to ‘subject-verb-object thinking’,8 then this question pertains literally to the goal or the object. The prevail-ing way of answering this question in the discipline of architecture has for a long time been to focus on meaning: architecture tended to be interpreted according to models and principles developed in the realm of theory and focused primarily on the inten-tions of the architect. The recent infatuation with performance in architecture can be understood as an attempt to move away resolutely from meaning as it was espoused in architecture theory, and to think instead through the Deleuzian concepts of immanence and affect. What is most striking is how these recent attempts are accompanied by the triumph of ‘star architecture’, and thus entail, despite their lofty ambitions, a return - in the most confining of guises - to authorship and intentional-ity. A more productive endeavour would thus be to expand the notion of intentionality in architecture, without reverting to the conventions of architectural hermeneutics, but also, without trying to do away with the notion of meaning altogether.

How to go about this? Network theories have suggested one possible answer, which is to trace the real in the ongoing construction of networks of agents in the making of architecture. Yet, such a strategy fails to take into account the imaginary and the symbolic in shaping a particular constellation of agents. Without falling into the trap of the idealism of a zeitgeist that would determine historical reality, we need to complement our analysis of the multiplicity of the real - of emergence and invention - with a depth: a dimension that would provide agency with

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which is architectural’ while facilitating ‘architec-ture’s entanglement with the constructive structures of capitalism’.

For Tatjana Schneider and Jeremy Till, the notion of agency in architecture is directly linked to social and political power. Against the internalisation of architectural discourse, they posit the notion of spatial agency in order to question the architect as neutral expert, and instead to emphasise the architect’s responsibility in the politics and process of building. By showcasing a number of alternative empowering practices, they understand critical-ity primarily as a matter of practice, yet inevitably guided by theory. Ultimately, they propose a more careful use of theory, based directly on the concrete (political) conditions of architectural practice.

Two of the three review articles included in this issue demonstrate the ideological rifts of the current debate, despite their communality in defending practice as the preferred locus for criticality. The first, a report by ‘The Agency’ group of the 2008 AHRA conference entitled ‘AGENCY’, proposes to include in the notion of agency not only architec-ture theory or practice, but also teaching, pedagogy, social activism, and the organisation of conferences like this particular one itself. With the second report, starting from the 2006 conference ‘The Projective Landscape’, Lara Schrijver invites us to consider ‘projective’ architecture not as an argument against theory, but rather as a potential for criticality through practice. She argues for a return to the disciplinary core of architecture, by valorising the craft and expertise of the architect. In a third review article, Tahl Kaminer explores, through a meticulous reading of Beatriz Colomina’s Privacy and Publicity, a recent trend in architectural history, namely the shift away from understanding architecture as part of the concrete base of society, towards casting it as a cultural product in the realm of representation. While he understands this shift as part of a larger ‘retreat from social concern’, Kaminer questions its

architecture is shaped by the duality of the archi-tect as a societal agent - in between architectural culture, discourse, and theory on the one side, and political engagement on the other.

Rolf Hughes argues that, because transdisci-plinarity is pertinent to contemporary practice, the agency of architecture needs to be seen as located not in its disciplinary identity, but rather in novel approaches to design research, theory and prac-tice that are shaped by what he calls ‘transverse epistemologies’. Such approaches - based on a concern with relationality - have yet to be taken on seriously by architecture theory. Taking ‘experience design’ as the primary example, the paper sketches the outlines of such a novel form of practice, which allows combining conceptual creativity and innova-tion with critical thinking and societal responsibility.

Robert Cowherd brings in the sociological notion of reflexive modernisation - developed by Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens and Scott Lash - as a way out of what he sees as the false dichotomy between theory and engagement in the so-called post-crit-icality debate. He argues that a ‘reflexive turn’ in architecture would not necessarily entail the vili-fication of theory, nor would it prolong the current infatuation with innovation; it could instead lead to a renewed capability to be critical. Rather than locat-ing criticality in either theory or practice, Cowherd thus makes a case for the indispensable both/and of theory and practice.

Gevork Hartoonian argues that the theme of agency in architecture is tectonic in nature. Departing from New Brutalism’s critique of International Style modernism, his paper proposes tectonics as the legitimate base for criticality in contemporary archi-tectural practice - being inevitably faced with what he calls the image-laden culture of late capitalism. Reading two projects, Zaha Hadid’s Phaeno Center and OMA’s Casa da Musica, in this light, Hartoonian recognises in the tectonic an attempt to ‘reach that

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challenged by both theory and practice, by both earthly accounts speaking through the real and by hopeful accounts for things yet to come.

Notes

1. See: Robert Somol and Sarah Whiting, ‘Notes Around

the Doppler Effect and Other Moods of Modernism’,

in Perspecta, 33 (theme: Mining Autonomy), ed. by

Michael Osman, et al. (New Haven: Journal of the

Yale School of Architecture, 2002), pp. 72-77; Michael

Speaks, ‘After Theory’, Architectural Record (June

2005), pp. 72-75; George Baird, ‘“Criticality” and Its

Discontents’, Harvard Design Magazine, 21 (Fall 2004/

Winter 2005), pp. 16-21; Reinhold Martin, ‘Critical of

What? Toward a Utopian Realism’, Harvard Design

Magazine, 22 (Spring/Summer 2005), pp. 1-5. This

debate found reception in Europe with the 2006 confer-

ence ‘The Projective Landscape’ organised by Stylos

at TU Delft.

2. See: Jane Rendell, Jonathan Hill, Murray Fraser, and

Mark Dorrian (eds.), Critical Architecture (London:

Routledge, 2007); Véronique Patteeuw, Joachim

Declerk and Filip Geers (eds.), Oase, 75 (theme: 25

Years of Critical Reflection on Architecture, 2008);

http://www.criticat.fr [accessed on 15 March 2009];

http://www.field-journal.org [accessed on 15 March

2009].

3. For instance: the AHRA (Architectural Humanities

Research Association) initiative established in 2003

and its first conference entitled ‘Critical Architecture’

(2004), and its most recent one entitled ‘Agency’

(2008); the Architecture Biennale Rotterdam on Power;

Conference ‘Architecture of the New World Order’

(Bauhaus, Weimar 2009). Recent initiatives to revive

the architectural project of autonomy resonate with:

Pier Vittorio Aureli, The Project of Autonomy (New

York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2008).

4. See: Critical Inquiry, 30, 2 (2003); Emily Eakin, ‘The

Latest Theory Is That Theory Doesn’t Matter’, New

York Times (19 April 2003).

5. For instance: Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture

(London: Routledge, 1994); Arjun Appadurai, Modernity

outright denial of architecture’s agency in society.

Agenda, by way of conclusionThe contributions to this issue allow us to rethink some of the basic assumptions and polarities of the debate around criticality in architecture. By expli-cating the notion of agency in architecture, they provide new insight in how criticality both informs and is shaped by the relation between theory and practice, between architecture’s disciplinarity and its societal embedding, and between the individual, the social, and the architectural object. Yet, does this fundamentally challenge the way we under-stand criticality? If one conclusion is to be drawn from the diversity of threads in this issue, it is that agency, and thus criticality, in their very essence, still entail the question of ‘what can we hope for?’, or the creation or imagination of alternative worlds. In other words, that agency and criticality still imply some form of transcendence, above the here and now of the real. And, that agency, no matter how multifarious or intricately entangled, is what contin-ues to give architecture its critical potential.

A better understanding of agency, so we believe, will help us steer away not only from the outright denunciation of (critical) theory, but also from dismissing the proposals that have recently emerged - the ‘projective’, calls for new political engagement, or the importation of Actor-Network-Theory - no matter how contradictory or premature they may seem.

Rather than doing away with it, the focus on agency in architecture allows us to transcend the notion of criticality as an a priori - as if architec-ture is either critical or not; or as if these practices are entirely critical, and those are not at all - or as something that can be evaluated, tested or realised only by following the principles developed from an external viewpoint. Instead, we can now approach criticality as a question, and an agenda for further research. Such an agenda would continue to be

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at large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization

(Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press,

1996); Edward Soja, Thirdspace: Journeys to Los

Angeles and Other Real and Imagined Spaces

(Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1996); David Harvey,

Spaces of Hope (Los Angeles, Cal.: California University

Press, 2000); Neil Brenner and Nik Theodore, Spaces

of Neoliberalism: Urban Restructuring in North America

and Western Europe (London: Blackwell Publishing,

2002). Frank Moelaert, Arantxa Rodriguez, and Erik

Swyngedouw (eds.), The globalized City: Economic

Restructuring and Social Polarization in European

Cities (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).

6. Bruno Latour and Albena Yaneva, ‘Give me a Gun

and I will Make All Buildings Move: An ANT’s View of

Architecture’, in Explorations in Architecture: Teaching,

Design, Research, ed. by Reto Geiser (Basel:

Birkhäuser, 2008), pp. 80-89.

7. Imbroglio was used as the name for the website (www.

imbroglio.be) related to the ‘The loyalties of knowledge’

research project, funded by the Belgian Science Policy,

and involving amongst others Serge Gutwirth, Isabelle

Stengers, and Bruno Latour. It is dedicated to the study

of imbroglios of knowledge, institutions, actants and

things.

8. Suggested by Scott Lash in this issue, see the article

‘Agency and Architecture: How to Be Critical?’

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