ABSTRACT
Metaphors are diversly and intricately embedded in architectural practice and discourse. Precisely for this reason, this volume argues and sets out to explore, how they can be engaged to critically interrogate architecture’s social, cultural and political dimensions – past and present – and to productively challenge and intervene with established perspectives, debates and practices.
Mapping out not just potentials but also addressing the challenges, limitations and dangers inherent in using metaphors in architectural research and practice, the volume prominently illustrates the ambiguity and contradictoriness inherent in both metaphors and the process of engaging and exploiting them. Covering a broad range of historical and geographical cases and concerns, the contributions illustrate effectively that metaphors can expand or narrow our engagement with architecture, and consolidate or legitimise but also destabilise and challenge established social, cultural, disciplinary and political structures, concepts and categories.
With its aim to explore metaphors as both subject and method to critically challenge and expand established practices, perspectives and standards in architectural research and practice, the volume will be of interest for scholars working across the architectural humanities, including architectural history, theory, culture, design and urbanism, as well as for researchers concerned with architecture and the city from fields such as cultural, visual and area studies as well as art history.
List of Contributors
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Metaphors as Target and Tool in Architectural Research and Practice
Sarah Borree and Stephanie Knuth
Section I
Recovering Metaphorical Histories
Sarah Borree and Stephanie Knuth
Landscape as Metaphor for Post-War Office, Work and Research Architecture from the 1950s to 1970s
Christian Vöhringer
Mechanical vs Biological Metaphors and the Greek Notion of the Organic City in the Discourse of CIAM IV
Lina Dima
The Analogy of Means: The Ontological Function of Architectural Metaphor
Peng Xue
The Ghost Towns of Burma: Student Activism and the Politics of Memory under Military Rule
J. Hoay-Fern Ooi
Section II
The Material Production of Metaphors
Sarah Borree and Stephanie Knuth
Concrete Abstractions: Architectural Metaphors in the Design Practice of Warsaw’s Socialist Realism (1949-1952)
Konrad Matyjaszek
Analogy Versus Metaphor: Aldo van Eyck’s Poetic Images In-Between Fields
Alejandro Campos Uribe and Paula Lacomba Montes
Planning with Ecology: the PEP Group and Biosocial Design in Post-war Britain
Juliana (Yat Shun) Kei
YoruÌbaì Metaphor: From Mythoi to Contemporary Public Realm Urbanism
Mokoìòlaìdeì Johnson and Oòòlaìtuìnjiì AdeìjuÌmoÌò
Section III
Framing Narratives Through Metaphor
Sarah Borree and Stephanie Knuth
Disturbing Scenes: Architecture as Metaphor in Women’s Stories
Nadia Falfoul
The Star System: Denise Scott Brown’s Feminist Analysis of the Sociology of Architecture and its Repercussions
Inés Toscano
Inmundo: Architectural Metaphors from the Edge of the World
Ingrid Quintana Guerrero
A Clean Slate: Metaphors and the Smart City in India
Devika Prakash
Postscript: The Work of Metaphors
Olga Touloumi
Index
