Beatriz Colomina – författare

The sequel to the authors’ Are We Human?, this provocative book is an urgent manifesto for an alternative architectural philosophy. It treats bacteria as the real architects, construction workers, maintenance crews and inhabitants of buildings. Colomina and Wigley draw on the latest research into microbes to rethink the past and possible futures of the built environment. The book explores the intimate entanglements of the microbes within bodies and buildings over the last 10,000 years, culminating in the antibiotic philosophy of contemporary architecture. The diseases of our time are diseases of the built environment. The deadly combination of rapidly declining microbial diversity and rising antibiotic-resistant bacteria is as great a threat as climate change. Hostility to bacteria has to give way to new forms of hospitality from a more symbiotic architecture that learns from bacteria, embracing them and reconnecting with soil, plants and other species. Buildings based on fear of bacteria, which is to say fear of life itself, must give way to buildings learning from models of coexistence based on bacteria themselves.The main goal of the book is to rethink the very idea of shelter in terms of forms of inclusion rather than prophylactic forms of exclusion.

Are We Human? rethinks the philosophy of design in a multi-dimensional exploration from the very first tools and ornaments to the constant buzz of social media. The average day involves the experience of thousands of layers of design that reach to outside space but also reach deep into our bodies and brains. Even the planet itself has been completely encrusted by design as a geological layer. There is no longer an outside to the world of design. Design has become the world. Design is what makes the human. It is the very basis of social life. But design also engineers inequalities and new forms of neglect, such as lawlessness, poverty, and the climate at the same time as the human genome and the weather are being actively redesigned. We can no longer reassure ourselves with the idea of "good design." Design itself needs to be redesigned.

Experiments in architectural education in the post–World War II era that challenged and transformed architectural discourse and practice. In the decades after World War II, new forms of learning transformed architectural education. These radical experiments sought to upend disciplinary foundations and conventional assumptions about the nature of architecture as much as they challenged modernist and colonial norms, decentered building, imagined new roles for the architect, and envisioned participatory forms of practice. Although many of the experimental programs were subsequently abandoned, terminated, or assimilated, they nevertheless helped shape and in some sense define architectural discourse and practice. This book explores and documents these radical pedagogies and efforts to defy architecture’s status quo. The experiments include the adaptation of Bauhaus pedagogy as a means of “unlearning” under the conditions of decolonization in Africa; a movement to design for “every body,” including the disabled, by architecture students and faculty at the University of California, Berkeley; the founding of a support network for women interested in the built environment, regardless of their academic backgrounds; and a design studio in the USSR that offered an alternative to the widespread functionalist approach in Soviet design. Viewed through their dissolution and afterlife as well as through their founding stories, these projects from the last century raise provocative questions about architecture’s role in the new century.

A wide-ranging and challenging exploration of design and how it engages with the selfThe field of design has radically expanded. As a practice, design is no longer limited to the world of material objects but rather extends from carefully crafted individual styles and online identities to the surrounding galaxies of personal devices, new materials, interfaces, networks, systems, infrastructures, data, chemicals, organisms, and genetic codes.Superhumanity seeks to explore and challenge our understanding of “design” by engaging with and departing from the concept of the “self.” This volume brings together more than fifty essays by leading scientists, artists, architects, designers, philosophers, historians, archaeologists, and anthropologists, originally disseminated online via e-flux Architecture between September 2016 and February 2017 on the invitation of the Third Istanbul Design Biennial. Probing the idea that we are and always have been continuously reshaped by the artifacts we shape, this book asks: Who designed the lives we live today? What are the forms of life we inhabit, and what new forms are currently being designed? Where are the sites, and what are the techniques, to design others?This vital and far-reaching collection of essays and images seeks to explore and reflect on the ways in which both the concept and practice of design are operative well beyond tangible objects, expanding into the depths of self and forms of life.Contributors: Zeynep Çelik Alexander, Lucia Allais, Shumon Basar, Ruha Benjamin, Franco “Bifo” Berardi, Daniel Birnbaum, Ina Blom, Benjamin H. Bratton, Giuliana Bruno, Tony Chakar, Mark Cousins, Simon Denny, Keller Easterling, Hu Fang, RubÉn Gallo, Liam Gillick, Boris Groys, Rupali Gupte, Andrew Herscher, Tom Holert, Brooke Holmes, Francesca Hughes, AndrÉs Jaque, Lydia Kallipoliti, Thomas Keenan, Sylvia Lavin, Yongwoo Lee, Lesley Lokko, MAP Office, Chus MartÍnez, Ingo Niermann, Ahmet ÖgÜt, Trevor Paglen, Spyros Papapetros, Raqs Media Collective, Juliane Rebentisch, Sophia Roosth, Felicity D. Scott, Jack Self, Prasad Shetty, Hito Steyerl, Kali Stull, Pelin Tan, Alexander Tarakhovsky, Paulo Tavares, Stephan TrÜby, Etienne Turpin, Sven-Olov Wallenstein, Eyal Weizman, Mabel O. Wilson, Brian Kuan Wood, Liam Young, and Arseny Zhilyaev.

A wide-ranging and challenging exploration of design and how it engages with the selfThe field of design has radically expanded. As a practice, design is no longer limited to the world of material objects but rather extends from carefully crafted individual styles and online identities to the surrounding galaxies of personal devices, new materials, interfaces, networks, systems, infrastructures, data, chemicals, organisms, and genetic codes.Superhumanity seeks to explore and challenge our understanding of “design” by engaging with and departing from the concept of the “self.” This volume brings together more than fifty essays by leading scientists, artists, architects, designers, philosophers, historians, archaeologists, and anthropologists, originally disseminated online via e-flux Architecture between September 2016 and February 2017 on the invitation of the Third Istanbul Design Biennial. Probing the idea that we are and always have been continuously reshaped by the artifacts we shape, this book asks: Who designed the lives we live today? What are the forms of life we inhabit, and what new forms are currently being designed? Where are the sites, and what are the techniques, to design others?This vital and far-reaching collection of essays and images seeks to explore and reflect on the ways in which both the concept and practice of design are operative well beyond tangible objects, expanding into the depths of self and forms of life.Contributors: Zeynep Çelik Alexander, Lucia Allais, Shumon Basar, Ruha Benjamin, Franco “Bifo” Berardi, Daniel Birnbaum, Ina Blom, Benjamin H. Bratton, Giuliana Bruno, Tony Chakar, Mark Cousins, Simon Denny, Keller Easterling, Hu Fang, RubÉn Gallo, Liam Gillick, Boris Groys, Rupali Gupte, Andrew Herscher, Tom Holert, Brooke Holmes, Francesca Hughes, AndrÉs Jaque, Lydia Kallipoliti, Thomas Keenan, Sylvia Lavin, Yongwoo Lee, Lesley Lokko, MAP Office, Chus MartÍnez, Ingo Niermann, Ahmet ÖgÜt, Trevor Paglen, Spyros Papapetros, Raqs Media Collective, Juliane Rebentisch, Sophia Roosth, Felicity D. Scott, Jack Self, Prasad Shetty, Hito Steyerl, Kali Stull, Pelin Tan, Alexander Tarakhovsky, Paulo Tavares, Stephan TrÜby, Etienne Turpin, Sven-Olov Wallenstein, Eyal Weizman, Mabel O. Wilson, Brian Kuan Wood, Liam Young, and Arseny Zhilyaev.

This book explores the impact of medical discourse and diagnostic technologies on the formation, representation, and reception of modern architecture. It challenges the normal understanding of modern architecture by proposing that the architecture of the early twentieth century was shaped by the dominant medical obsession of its time: tuberculosis and its primary diagnostic tool, the X-ray.If architectural discourse has from its beginning associated building and body, the body that it describes is the medical body, reconstructed by each new theory of health. Modern architects pre- sented their architecture as a kind of medical instrument for protecting and enhancing the body. X-ray technology and modern architecture were born around the same time and evolved in parallel. While the X-ray exposed the inside of the body to the public eye, the modern building unveiled its interior, inverting the relationship between private and public.Colomina suggests that if we want to talk about the state of the art in buildings, we should look to the dominant obsessions about illness and the latest techniques of imaging the body-and ask what effects they may have on the way we conceive architecture.

Architects are expected to create original ideas resulting in a unique, bespoke design. With the rise of Modern Architecture, originality became ingrained in perceptions of good design. As a result, originality has become a barometer against which we measure the value of design. However technology today allows for ease of replication and copies, thus originality in design has become an ostensibly hollow prospect. Originals gathers a wide range of responses, varied in their opinions and approaches to originality and authorship in design and architecture.Inflection is a student-run design journal based at the Melbourne School of Design, University of Melbourne. Born from a desire to stimulate debate and generate ideas, it advocates the discursive voice of students, academics and practitioners. Founded in 2013, Inflection is a home for provocative writing—a place to share ideas and engage with contemporary discourse.

A NEW MANIFOLD, the inaugural issue of SAC JOURNAL, addres- ses the increased specialisation and possible fragmentation of ex- pertise within architecture. Whilst historically always an amalgam of numerous forms of input, architecture is currently facing the necessi- ty to assimilate and process hitherto unknown amounts and rates of information flow. How can architecture relate to the emerging forms of specialisation within the discipline - not the least in its pedagogy and academic programmes? The issue uses the academic programme of the Städelschule Architecture Class to reflect on these questions. The work presented comprises the finalists for the AIV Master Thesis Prize 2013.

A NEW MANIFOLD, the inaugural issue of SAC JOURNAL, addres- ses the increased specialisation and possible fragmentation of ex- pertise within architecture. Whilst historically always an amalgam of numerous forms of input, architecture is currently facing the necessi- ty to assimilate and process hitherto unknown amounts and rates of information flow. How can architecture relate to the emerging forms of specialisation within the discipline - not the least in its pedagogy and academic programmes? The issue uses the academic programme of the Städelschule Architecture Class to reflect on these questions. The work presented comprises the finalists for the AIV Master Thesis Prize 2013.

Architects are expected to create original ideas resulting in a unique, bespoke design. With the rise of Modern Architecture, originality became ingrained in perceptions of good design. As a result, originality has become a barometer against which we measure the value of design. However technology today allows for ease of replication and copies, thus originality in design has become an ostensibly hollow prospect. Originals gathers a wide range of responses, varied in their opinions and approaches to originality and authorship in design and architecture.Inflection is a student-run design journal based at the Melbourne School of Design, University of Melbourne. Born from a desire to stimulate debate and generate ideas, it advocates the discursive voice of students, academics and practitioners. Founded in 2013, Inflection is a home for provocative writing—a place to share ideas and engage with contemporary discourse.

A history of the modern architectural manifesto, with a focus on Mies van der Rohe.

The history of the avant-garde (in art, architecture, literature) can't be separated from the history of its engagement with mass media. It is not just that the avant-garde used media to publicize its work; the work did not exist before its publication.   

In architecture, Adolf Loos, Le Corbusier, and Mies van der Rohe came to be known through their influential writings and manifestos published in newspapers, journals, and little magazines. Entire groups, from Dada and Surrealism to De Stijl, became an effect of their manifestos. The manifesto was the site of self invention, innovation, and debate. Even buildings themselves could be manifestos. The most extreme and radical designs in the history of modern architecture were realized as pavilions in temporary exhibition. 

In the third book in the Critical Spatial Practice series, Beatriz Colomina traces the history of the modern architecture manifesto, with particular focus on Mies van der Rohe, and the play between the written and built work. This essay propels the manifesto form into the future, into an age where electronic media are the primary sites of debate, suggesting that new forms of manifesto are surely emerging along with new kinds of authorship, statement, exhibition, and debate.

Critical Spatial Practice 3Edited by Nikolaus Hirsch, Markus Miessen Featuring artwork by Dan Graham

This book showcases the sculptural project by Cristina Iglesias entitled Tres aguas, a trilogy spanning all of Toledo to highlight the relationship between the city and its river, the Tagus.Beginning on the river banks at the Torre del Agua, then going up as far as the Plaza del Ayuntamiento, the project reached the highest point in the city, where the third installation was put in place at the Santa Clara convent. These are three works in which the artist developed sculptures featuring the appearance and disappearance of the river's waters, creating a dialogue between the work, the water and a reflection of their surroundings.The book shows one of the largest works of contemporary sculpture, a major expression of architecture and sculpture along with riveting texts by Beatriz Colomina, James Lingwood and Maria Warner, and amazing photographs by Attilio Maranzano.