(BIOLOGICAL) LIFE: THE PEDAGOGY OF AN ARCHITECTURAL CONCEPT
- Publication Type:
- Article
- Issue Date:
- 2007-10-05T01:24:14Z
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This paper analyses the techniques and technologies mobilized under the imprimatur of
biological life in architectural production beyond their manifestations as (bio)mimetic processes.
The arguments do not take ‘life’ as a priori to architectural thinking, but as immanent to each
enactment of technique or application of technology within the biological paradigm. Using the
work of Roger Caillois on pyschasthenia as the collapse of space between an organism and its
milieu, the analysis avoids elevating biological life to a transcendent concept. Biological life in
architecture instigates the pragmatic concern for whether a philosophical or scientific concept
works, or matters, regardless of whether it fits within an ontology or metaphysics. Thus,
architectural production using biological life subscribes to a Deleuzo-Guattarian “pedagogy of a
concept” – the creation of perceptual and affective habits that are self-jeopardising and highly
idiosyncratic to ensure further concept formation.
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