ABSTRACT
This chapter explores what it means for architectural pedagogies and practices to “start from difference” – collecting contributions from staff and students around the “&rchitecture” (and-architecture) master’s-level architecture studio at the Manchester School of Architecture (MSA). Responding to the Deleuzian affective imperative to give “the Different” priority over “identity”, we explore three pedagogical implications for design. Firstly, in relation to how we conceive of and construct identity when we think about differences between bodies, our design processes, and in ourselves. Secondly, in disciplinary terms, how different bodies, processes, and practices are valued in the ways that we design and behave creatively and professionally. Thirdly, how different bodies, processes, and practices are differently privileged in the production of the built environment, and the way architects think, design, and behave contribute to this. The synthesis of these three concerns is explored through pedagogic examples. In our practice, we argue that this begins by personally and collectively seeking more differential subjectivity, requires using more engaged productive processes, and can lead to non-normative collective activities with the explicit potential to produce situations where more different bodies matter more. We explain how working affectively and collectively can make explicit the inequalities and injustices that occur both within and beyond the discipline and help articulate the unfair spatial and material practices through which they are differentially enacted.
