Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
that acknowledges the placed nature of human being, Arendt links 3. Hannah Arendt, The
freedom to a thinking of place. She argues in Between Past and Future that Human Condition (Chicago:
The University of Chicago
without a political guaranteed realm, freedom lacks the worldly space to
Press, 1958), 7.
make its appearance.2 Arendts work marks a transformation in how
freedom is understood. Human freedom is not the freedom of the 4. The direct consequence
of this argument is that
individual. In the course of the arguments developed throughout her the ethical is incorporated
writings, freedom pertains to what she describes as the inter homines within the ontological. This
allows for the recasting
essenamely, the relations that obtain between people, such that what is
of the ethical as integral
(1) central is the between. In The Human Condition, she notes that the to the development of a
Romans, perhaps the most political people we have known, used the philosophical anthropology. I
have begun this undertaking
The option was always there. The following might have been said. It would words to live and to be among men (inter homines esse) . . . as synonyms.3 in my Virtue in Being (Albany:
have been possible that, in response to a general question, the reply was Again, it is this between (inter) that signals the already present sense of SUNY Press, 2016).
simply: It occurred in the building. Equally, as an attempt to register a place, relationality that defines human being. Moreover, to affirm the insistent
5. Saskia Sassen, The
the statement could have been the same: It occurred in the building. Finally, presence of this between is to allow for a redefinition of public space. Global City, The Brown
as if to capture an activity, to name a process, not an effect but Public space is not given within an opposition between the private and the Journal of World Affairs Vol.
XI, No. 2 (Winter/Spring
effectuation itself, that same formulation could have been deployed: It public, such that claims made for the presence of the public need to be set 2005). All future references
occurred in the building. Hence the question: What is building? That building in terms of their apparent mutual exclusion. (Relations thought of in are given in the text. While
there is a critical dimension
allows itself to emerge as a question, one exerting a demand on thought, is terms of negation and exclusion cannot account for the dynamic work of
in Sassens work, it would
a possibility that hinges on the recognition of its place. But what is that? relationality itself.) What is significant about public space, once be important to contrast
What is the place of building? To ask of the place of building, and here understood in terms of what Arendt refers to as the space of appearance, this conception of the city
to the position developed
building needs to be present both as object and as process, thus as effect is that it is the space in which what defines human being, the between as by Derrida in a number of
and effectuationbuilding/buildingis to note the two elements, at least an original condition, has the potential to be lived out. To be human, to contexts concerning the
city of refuge. For an
at the outset, that define what is of concern.1 live, is defined in terms of a continuity of appearing within the between
overview of the concerns,
The first is that buildings are incorporated within a network of that constitutes human being. Moreover, the particularity of the inter strengths, and limitations
relations. The consequence of such a description is that it then allows any need not be anthropocentric, since the inter marks the primacy of of his position, see: Puspa
Damai, Messianic-City:
one objectthe building as objectto be an after-effect of the relations relationality itself. In regards to human being, however, to restrict Ruins, Refuge and Hospitality
that pertain within a given conjunction. In other words, any singularity is appearingwhere the restriction pertains to the possibility of any one in Derrida, Discourse 27,
Nos. 2+3 (2005). See in
1. I want to thank my always an after-effect of a network of relations. Transformation, therefore, subjects appearing within that set of relations that constitute inter homines
addition Derridas own
colleagues at the University
is the process of a coming-into-relation. From this it follows that the object esseis an ontological concern and therefore not merely a moral one.4 argument, an argument that
of Technology Sydney,
Anthony Burke and Gerard can be transformed through a restaging of those relations. Hence the such a city would depend
Reinmuth, with whom as on international law (or at
question to be addressed here is how the network of relations, the (2) least a reconceptualization
part of a series of extended
discussions this approach network producing the building, is to be understood. The network, of the same). This is
to the question of building significant insofar as what
however, is not external to the building. The second element is therefore The challenge that resides in Saskia Sassens writings on what she calls the
was developed. This is part is being opposed to the
of a collaborative project with that buildings incorporate within them a network of relations. Indeed, it is global city is directly relevant, even if it is only implicit in her internationalization of capital
Gerard Reinmuth involving possible to go further and argue that internal relationality, which can be argumentation.5 It should be recalled that precisely because the building is the internationalization of
both theory and studio and law. See Jacques Derrida,
linked to the development of
understood as the intersection of materials, program, and circulation is an effect, it is always the after-effect of the network of relations that On Cosmpolitanism (London:
relational architecture. (knowing that each of these terms will overlap in different ways in certain individuates it. The particularities of the global city provide one way of Routledge, 2001), 3.
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Building, Building Benjamin
understanding that network. To address the global city is to address, politics, and on the other, the need to attribute different and incompatible
mutatis mutandis, the network that effects building. What is implicit, values to both flows and thresholds.
however, has a twofold quality. One folds open onto the other. The first Within this matrix of value and movement, a further consideration
sets up criteria of judgment and thus establishes a conception of value. of place is introduced. This emerges from an insistence on the global
The other implicit quality that is operative could, precisely because it is city, both as an existent reality, and thus descriptive of certain cities, and
there as a possibility, have an organizing effect on the process of design to as creating the framework in which developments within cities can be
the extent that program, in its interarticulation with volume creation, understood more generally. These cities have a specific quality, defined
becomes a locus of investigation and experimentation. These qualities can by Sassen thus: [C]ities that are strategic sites in the global economy
be thought of in terms of a certain conception of the architectural event.6 tend, in part, to be disconnected from their region. (38) At this point, a
Now, the global city is a structure of territorialization and continuity develops in the interplay between connection and
enforced deterritorialization. If there is a framework that delimits the disconnection. Their juxtaposition is decisive. The claim made above
specificity of the global cityand it will be a framework that has a certain concerning disconnection, which needs to be understood as enforced
transferable quality, allowing for shifts in scaleit comprises four deterritorialization, is just as true of the city itself as it is of the
interconnected elements: place, work processes, hypermobility, and elementsbuildingswithin it. While that disconnection can be
power. Hence, in Sassens terms, what marks cities of this type is that accounted for in terms of work patterns, it can be accounted for equally
they are the terrain where a multiplicity of globalization processes in terms of the relation of non-relation between the organization and
assume concrete and localized form. (40) The interplay of the concrete locales of production. This relation of non-relation, which is how Sassens
and the local within such a setting cannot be disassociated from the force term disconnect is being understood here (once it is recognized that
of the global as a virtual presence. Their interarticulation is part of the it is copresent with that which can assume concrete and localized form),
complex of relations in which not only can buildings be situated, but is the non-deterministic connection as form, and thus as building.
building as effect and building as effectuation take on their defining forms. It entails a set of relations that is as much a virtual state of affairs as it is
As such, what is staged here is a further clarification of the place of actual. The argument is clear. Form creation as an object of judgment
building. Neither the form of any one building, nor place understood occurs within a network. Form, therefore, cannot be taken as an end in
generally, but rather the interplay noted above is a further refinement of itself. Moreover, the process of form creation is neither inherently
the place of building. While the detail will always be important, it is mechanistic nor one in which literal form is already determined. This
essential to note the role of the virtual within this formulation. There are is why it is essential to note in such a context the complex created by the
now modalities of movement that have an inherently virtual quality. co-presence of the disconnected and the finding of form. Both are real;
Instances proliferate. The flow of money between nation states and both are interarticulated. As a consequence, the question arises as to how
transnational enterprises alike now occurs at a rate so fast that it defies the implication of the architectural event within relationalitybuilding
the temporality of human decision-making. Equally, the flow of as effect and building as effectuationis to be understood. The position
information can no longer be regulated by the temporality of the 24/7 that allows for the oscillation between city and building as the movement
news cycle, even if that cycle has to subdue it and incorporate it. between the network and the individuated, understood as a locus
Moreover, the flow of bodies through airports and border crossings, even demanding further investigation, is given the following precise
though they are actual, constitutes the latter as thresholds in which description by Sassen:
economic wellbeing, the fracturing of national identity and power, are
operative and all occur at the intersection of the virtual and the actual. The global city and the network of those cities is a space that is
6. I have discussed the
relationship between Once legal, movement across thresholds constitutes lines as borders, place-centered and embedded in particular and strategic
volume creation as a locus whilst underscoring, for example, the realization within developed and locations; and it is transterritorial because it connects sites that
of experimentation and its
link to the architectural developing economies of the ways that tourism continues to replace are not geographically proximate and yet are intensely
event in greater detail in my manufacturing as a determiner of economic well being. Once illegal, connected to each other. (39)
Architectural Projections
(Melbourne: RMIT Press,
what emerges is the contradictory relation between, on the one hand, the
2012). need for labor and its legal restriction in the name of the nation states Note again the parameters of place. There is a complex spatial
and temporal simultaneity between that which is place-centered and
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Building, Building Benjamin
embedded in a particular and strategic location and the transterritorial. between that defines being-in-placealready acknowledges. Another way 7. It can be argued that
Aristotle already recognized
Hence, what is at work here is a complex network of relations, and thus a in which neutrality is produced would be the claim that the economic can
such a possibility. In the
network that has been structured from the start by the interrelationship be held apart from the political. This occurs in order to take the latter as Politics, he argues thus:
between both the virtual and the actual as well as incompatible the only possible locus of the decision. There is, however, the fundamental Yet it is clear that if the
process of unification
differentials of power. These elements are interarticulated. One cannot be rider at work within such a production, namely that contestabilitywhich advances beyond a certain
thought without the other. (To which it should be added that to think them is the political itselfcould be controlled by the economic. (Within such point, the city will not be a
city ( ) at all for a
in their separation would be to idealize the virtual/actual relation in the a setting, contestability is then both constrained and delimited by the city essentially ( )
first instance and naturalize globalization, which is of course the already identified processes of naturalization.) Were this premise to be consists of a multitude of
persons (), and if
naturalization of late capitalism, in the second.) This is why, for example, accepted, which would amount to the assumption that the semblance was
its unification is carried
as Sassen argues, contestation between forces of global capital and the the real, there would then be a suspension of the political, and thus beyond a certain point,
presence of immigrant workforces is an inevitable part of the global contestability, in the name of the economic. The claim that the economic city will be reduced to
family () and family
citys actual presence. (Though it should be added here that this is only one can be differentiated from the political, which would be a separation and to individual ().
instance of the operation of differentials of power within the global city.) suspension allowing for both environmental and urban degradation in the (Politics, Book 2, section
1261a.)
A final point needs to be added to this opening inflection of name of the economic, is of course purely political.7 (If there is a related Here the distinction concerns
place. What is found here is a networked economy where power and project here, and one that an engagement with building/building as part of a relationship between the
many and thus the regulation
inequality are present. Yet this description should not be understood a network of relations will allow, then it is the politicization of the
of the manynamed as the
as an empty abstraction. What abstraction identifies in this instance is a economic. The context here would be the rethinking of development.) and the oikos that
setting that takes on a form of ubiquity. Globalization brings with it In opposition to the process of naturalization noted above, and demands a form of unity.
The oikosbecoming, of
a formal unanimity within networks of relations, which occur between thus recognizing the inherently political nature of the economic, once course, the oikonomeiasets
modes of presence that are as much actual as they are virtual. In the linked to a concern with the place of building, the argument has to be that the measure for an
understanding of the
repetition of samenessand this is how one aspect of abstraction in this place, even as a general term, has to have its ground in the inter. This economic that gives rise to a
context needs to be understoodwhat is reoccurring, being repeated, then reconfigures space as a locus of contestation. As a result, place would specific sense of the economy
as a unifying force precluding
is that set of relations. Shifts in style, if taken as ends in themselves, be reconfigured. Moreover, this act of reconfiguration would be the
the possibility of contestable
neither restrict nor transform this repetition. (It is the limit of form.) destruction of semblance in terms of the inter. The inter must be decisions. The economic,
Consequently, there is an organizing thematicnamely, that this seen as staging differentials of power. It must also, even though it may thus construed, is not a
locus of judgment. What has
modality of connection and disconnection affects function and movement involve a slight departure from the letter of Arendts argumentation, to be claimed is that what
as much as it does design (where the latter is understood generally underscore the fact that the network of relations individuating buildings, he identifies as both the
condition and the subject of
in terms of style functioning on a specific scale: for example, the scale at within which any one building is always an aftereffect, has to be thought the political pertains equally
which a building in Singapore, Atlanta, and London is the same of in connection to the anoriginality of the inter, once space as that which to the polis. The move that
equates the regulation of the
building). The extension of sameness as linking cities is, as has been is not determined in advance assumes centrality.8 What is being pursued
economy to the regulation of
suggested, a fundamental motif of the global city. here is that which is essential to the place of building and thus to any the family budget therefore
thinking of building. Furthermore, what has to be assumed is that misconstrues the nature of
the political subject and the
(3) judgment, both as possibility and practice, can only ever occur in place. identification of the political.
The key to the development of thinking about the particularity of building These are, in fact, held in
place by the interplay of
A concern with abstraction, however, cannot be differentiated from the can therefore be located in the concept of place as a form of abstraction. contestability and judgement
retained presence of the space of appearance. As a result, integral to However, as with all concepts, abstraction is neither a singular nor a occurring in what Arendt
calls the space of appearance.
the argumentation thus far is the claim that space cannot be generalized unified site. The lack of singularity means that place as an abstraction is
The passage above from
to the point of neutrality even though it can be produced that way. This essentially ambivalent once it is mediated by the interplay of the global Aristotle is also discussed
productionas well as the produced when understood as such, namely and the local, which are themselves to be understood in terms of relations by Giorgio Agamben in The
Kingdom and the Glory (Palo
as producedhas the quality of mere semblance. What is produced, of connection and disconnection. The demanding point is that the global Alto: Stanford University
however, which operates with the feint of neutrality, takes on different city as a network, and therefore building that takes the global as that Press, 2011).
forms. One such form is the claim that public space is simply open. This which organizes design, is constrained to preclude the mediation of place 8. The concept of
claim refuses the possibilities that the insistence on the interthe by the potentiality inherent in the space of appearance. Ambivalence is anoriginality is fundamental
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Building, Building Benjamin
to the development of a the acknowledgment that place is open to forms of conceptualization, that would question indifference. The second mode has to do with an
relational ontology. It is a
and thus to differing ways in which the network of relations, the importantly different modality of building and building (the latter again
term that designates an
original plural condition, and aftereffects of which are buildings, can be understood. This is the setup being any one buildings internal set of relations). Moreover, this second
it has both ontological and
that has to be pursued. mode needs to be understood in terms of what can be called a counter-
ethical implications. See
in this regard my Towards Taken generally, the setting of ambivalence is the relation measure, insofar as it introduces the possibility of forms of creativity
a Relational Ontology: between the local, the global, and that settings potential mediation, which whose project needs to be thought in terms of the othering of the global.
Philosophys Other Possibility
(Albany: SUNY Press, 2015). would follow from the recognition of place as the space of appearance. The implication of building as integral to the counter-measure means that
As is clear from the preceding formulation, ambivalence introduces an the interplay of materials, circulation, and program is also central to its
understanding of place in terms of contestability. Part of what yields place development. What this means is a relation between internality and
as such a locusi.e. the setting of contestabilityis the fact that its externality within which one network of relations has to be thought in
mediation by the space of appearance, and thus what can be described connection to another. As a result, the counter-measure is neither
as the insistence of the already present status of the inter, demand instrumental nor stylistically determined. (To allow for the latter, i.e.
affirmations of their presence. As has been suggested, the politics of determination on the level of style, is both to fetishize style and to
architecture is located at the point at which such an affirmation is possible overlook the location of the singular within the network of which it is
or its possibility is effaced. (Effacing will often resort to arguments the aftereffect, and finally to think that style alone comprises the
concerning the primacy of the economic and its politically enforced counter-measure.)
depoliticization.) However, ambivalence creates the opening within The second mode can be described as indetermination within
which to continue. relationality. Indetermination names a relation in which what is maintained
Relationality has to be maintained as the point of departure. is a spacing that, in not being determined in advance, becomes a locus of
Hence it is vital to continue with Sassens argumentative opening that both experimentation and research. Hence the strategy of architectural
global cities are disconnected from their region. Hence too the global is interventions that hold open a set of indeterminate relations to the locale
articulated in terms of the creation and repetition of relations of non- can still maintain a relation to the global and thus incorporate virtual
relation. It should be added here that within cities, be they global or not, relations. The difference would be that, both formally and in design terms,
there also endures the possibility of establishing objects and enclaves that relation would not be a relation of indifference. On the contrary, it
that create and reinforce a relation of non-relation to the locality in which would have to be thought of in terms of indetermination within
they are to be found. The other side of this ambivalence is the presence relationality. The contrast, then, is between the relation and non-relation,
within locales of modes of relationality that hold open modes of whichto repeat the point that has already been madenecessitates
indetermination. These locales are linked to the creation of strategies that, regulated indifference to the local. The counter-measure to indifference is
while abstract, are linked to indetermination within relationality insofar always indeterminate in the precise sense that there cannot be any one
as they are positioned against the non-relation. As a result, they allow for form or one programmatic possibility that stands counter to the global.
another thinking of the locale. This would be a conception of the locale no What is at stake is a reconceptualization of the network of relations
longer delimited by its assumed and axiomatic disconnection. Place themselves. Networks overlap and allow for the inscription of an interplay
would take on a different character. There are therefore two modes of values and modalities of movement. Indeed, the counter-measure may
of abstraction. involve, for example, as much a sense of complex programming as it
These two modes can be summarized thus: in the first instance, would the introduction of the differences inherent in modes of movement:
there is what may be described as determination within a relation of e.g. mass transit versus singular individualized transit, or transport
non-relation: what will be understood as the building of indifference. What integration as opposed to non-integrated transport.
is at stake here is a relation to the global that reinforces the disconnection This scenario creates the precise point at which a concern with
to the local and the regionwhat has already been described as enforced buildingbuilding now as a process and thus a site that incorporates a
deterritorialization, which equally refuses to allow mediation or the network of relationsneeds to be noted. Such a concern does not restrict
affirmed presence of the space of appearance. It should be added that any one buildings position within a network. Rather, it suggests that
if this disconnection is to function on the level of design, then the design building is itself a network of relations. As has already been suggested,
must itself refuse, for example, strategies and processes of urbanization transportation to buildings, movement within them, the relation between
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Building, Building Benjamin
work practices and internal organization, the way materials work (or While it is not Arendts project in any direct sense, it can
restrict) programmatic realization, are some of the elements integral nonetheless still be argued that this is the development of a conception
to building as a locus of relations. Insisting on the primacy of a network of power which, when understood as necessitating enforced
is important for at least three reasons. The first is that it allows the deterritorializationSassens disconnectin the sense of providing
question of representation to take on a different character. In other words, that in relation to which the possibility of the counter-measure can be
it would have an effect both on the processes of representation and, thought, it is one that stands counter to the force of globalization.
equally, on the subsequent judgment of any one representation. What Moreover, precisely because it is presented as a potentiality, it can only
counts, therefore, as the image of architecture is reopened as a question. have an indeterminate relation to actualization and thus the finding
The second is that it refuses to allow either appearance or form to of form. As has already been suggested, the forms of spacing that
function as self-defining or self-restricting ends. Finally, to allow the indetermination demands yield more than a locus of experimentation and
components of a building another quality and thereby to insist on building research. Just as significantly, they create the ground of judgment itself.
as a network of relations means, for example, that the potentialities of the What, then, of the place of building? It must be recognized that
interstitial and poche become central precisely because they are relational this is in fact the question of building. Buildings do not just occur. They
terms and not just effects of designor that circulation within the take place. However, if the taking place of building is to be allowed a
building and linking entrance and egress to circulation becomes another setting, then at that precise point what has to be addressed is the
way of plotting the points of connection between building as effect and singularity of building. And yet any singularity can only be thought within
as locus of effectuation. As a result, the static becomes an aftereffect of the network that individuates it as a singularity. Holding to the primacy
movement rather than something simply there to enable movement. of relationality, which is the condition within which building/building as
an architectural event can be thought, opens up the twofold possibility
(4) that Sassens work brings into consideration. Clearly not all cities are
global cities. But the argument she advanced assumed that the global city
At every point, there is building/building. Yet what has been described became the paradigm through which cities and buildings could be
as indetermination within relationality is not simply abstract, or abstract understood. Strategically, what this means is that processes of connection
in a simple way. It takes its point of orientation from Arendts formulation and disconnection, territorialization and deterritorialization, the global
of the space of appearance (remembering that this is the way in which and the local, all figure to varying degrees. What emerges in the attempt
a sense of human propriety is thought). This is a term she defines in The to delimit the place of building is the presence of networks of relations
Human Condition with great precision: that delimit modes of contestability. Not only is there a dominant
conception of relationality, which was addressed in terms of the building
Power is what keeps the public realm, the potential space of indifference, but there is also a way of understanding a mode of
of appearance between acting and speaking men, in existence. relationality that could function as a counter-measure to the naturalization
The word itself, its Greek equivalent dynamis, like the Latin of the global city. This has been articulated in terms of indetermination
potentia with its various modern derivatives . . . indicates its within relationality. What needs to be noted in conclusion is that while
potential character. Power is always, as we would say, a power buildingeven reformulated as the doubled building/buildingmay
potential . . . . While strength is the natural quality of an seem a term with a merely anodyne quality and thus barely architectural,
individual seen in isolation, power springs up between men once it is incorporated into a conception of relationality that identifies
when they act together and vanishes the moment they disperse. the presence of dominant modes of power and the possibility of
Because of this peculiarity, which power shares with all conceptualizing how a counter-measure is to be understood, then a concern
potentialities that can only be actualized but never fully with building becomes the concern of architecture itself.
materialized, power is to an astonishing degree independent
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