In September of 2004, a museum was dedicated to honour the work of Bruno Gironcoli, one of the most idiosyncratic Austrian artists of the twentieth century who developed an unmistakable form of expression. The museum is in the Alpine Foothills and is joined by unexpected neighbours: a zoo, a castle, and historic gardens. The article explores Gironcoli’s relational networks as defined through invitation, transition, opposition, and perspective. The paper highlights the interplay of the physical, imaginative, and visual boundaries between Gironcoli’s work, the zoo, castle, and gardens. Visitors appreciate this unique setting, which enables them to formulate their own vision of Gironcoli’s hybrid sculptural forms.

This article comes from a collaboration between the departments of Architecture, Mechanical Engineering, Civil Engineering, the College of Natural Resources at the University of Idaho (US), and a team from Auburn University’s (US) School of Forestry and Wildlife Sciences, known collectively as the PrinTimber Group. The focus of this work is to develop an additive manufacturing construction technique that repurpose the 20% of wood waste from wood-product manufacturing and wood construction waste that currently goes to landfills. The idea is to use this material in novel combinations with various additives in order to create a high-performance biobased construction material. This article discusses the challenges inherent to the development of this new building technology, with particular focus on the role of architecture within a multidisciplinary team. The discussion is structured around the thinking of French philosopher of technology, Gilbert Simondon.

The platform, one of architecture’s essential forms in both design and theory, is shown to have purposes and meanings that are simultaneously practical and representational. The study begins with Louis I. Kahn’s design for the Salk Institute. After that, his deep interest in ancient Greek architecture provides a gateway into the Classical period of ancient Greek architecture. Temples, tholoi, and other types are interpreted as equivalent articulations of the platform theme. Where relevant, the ideas and work of other modern architects are considered, Louis Barragan and Le Corbusier particularly. Tectonic issues are addressed, but more largely matters of spatial and topographical definition. The built work’s interplay with forces of the natural environment, especially seasonality, is also addressed, particularly the moods that arise from this interplay. The study materials include the architects’ statements, ancient poetry, art, and myth. Boundaries between categorically distinct types are crossed in order to describe the platform’s polysemy and its several kinds of articulation.

Valerio Olgiati’s architecture is fascinating. At first sight, this fascination comes from the contradictions one faces when encountering the architecture. Along with the visible contradictions, Olgiati’s architecture also has this invisible and almost inexpressible effect on people – an archival familiarity, and a disquieting confusion – from where the fascination comes.

This paper reflects the inexpressible aspects of Valerio Olgiati’s architecture starting with its visible contradictions, through an encounter with the Bardill Studio. It proceeds by theorising this architectural approach in dialogue with the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze’s notion of the ‘diagram’, exemplified in conjunction with the works of the Irish painter, Francis Bacon.

This paper explores the role of parallax in architecture and the so-called ‘parallax gap’ proposed by philosopher Slavoj Žižek in 2009. For Žižek the parallax gap is grounded in psychoanalytic short circuits, prompting a hypothesis about postmodern conflicts within architecture. While the concept of parallax has appeared within architecture at various points historically, Žižek’s parallax gap affords a possibility for the redirection of the viewer’s gaze away from the architectural object to the spaces inflected by, and between, neighbouring urban fabric. Reflecting on the potentialities of interrogating architecture and urban space psychoanalytically, I argue for an expansion of parallax focused on understanding spatial dislocations and disorientations. The result retraces parallax in urban space research, catering for a fertile investigation at the intersection of architecture, culture, politics, and psychoanalysis.

Anne Tyng’s pioneering work in morphology is a stark counterpoint to the dominant paradigms of architectural design during the twentieth century. She saw in academic research a primary driver of advanced design practice and education, becoming one of the earliest interdisciplinary educators to rigorously bring a research-based ethos into the discipline. She produced knowledge not merely to indulge her personal curiosity or as fodder for peer consumption, but also as pedagogical fuel. Though there has recently been increasing interest in this mathematician-architect’s thought and work, little has been said about her oeuvre’s relationship to her pedagogy. Deploying a recondite intellectual interest as an epistemology undergirding both design and scholarship, Tyng conceptualised and taught architecture as a process of induction that takes up the natural world as its field of investigation. Pedagogy was her means of effecting a disciplinary turn to architecture as a process of Truth seeking. Her academic activity sustained her intellectual infidelity to the prevailing ethos. Such principled perfidy, however, has not been a guarantee of widespread recognition.

This article recommends Foucault’s archaeological method as a means to challenge the dominant narrative of the British postwar social housing estate’s inevitable failure. Through this process, it is proposed that common historical and present-day rationalisations for the demolition of such places can be valuably problematised. An explanation of how archaeology can be applied to the postwar estate is provided, with a document pertaining to James Stirling’s Southgate estate analysed as an example. Conceived as an intrinsic part of Arthur Ling’s masterplan for Runcorn New Town and completed in 1978, Southgate was demolished just over a decade later in 1989. This happened despite an absence of structural faults and many residents expressing a preference to stay in their homes. As such, Southgate’s trajectory represents an extreme example of the legitimising effects that stem from the discourse of the failed postwar estate. Such framing continues to underpin arguments for the demolition of postwar social housing stock today. In this context, archaeology offers an opportunity to bypass the epistemological trap of speculating over causes of failure, instead illustrating the contingent nature of the rules that led to the postwar estate’s negative social construction.

In 2007, the Royal British Institute of Architects (RIBA) commissioned Jeremy Till’s now seminal essay, ‘Architectural Research: Three Myths and One Model’. Till’s essay called out ‘unnecessary antipathy’ between practitioners and academics, arguing for enhanced collaboration to enable a more ‘dynamic system’ of research. This paper presents a pilot study of five large architectural practices engaged in research that seeks to understand what is driving greater research engagement within contemporary architectural practice, what knowledge is being created for what purpose, and the relationship of practice-generated research to that produced within academia. Five semi-structured interviews and three written questionnaires were elicited from practices, each of whom have dedicated research staff or a demonstrated track record of research engagement and/or utilisation. Ultimately, it is suggested, a more honest discussion of the relational dynamics of collaborations between practice and academia is needed. Such discussion requires researchers from both to embrace ethnographic approaches, reporting not just the outcomes of their work together but also revealing the ‘mess’ involved in generating those outcomes.