A geography of big things

Abstract

This paper sketches some conceptual tools by which cultural geographers might advance geographies of architecture. It does so by thinking specifically about one architectural form: the modernist residential highrise, which is the ‘big thing’ of this paper. The paper draws on recent developments in material semiotics in order to interrogate features often uniquely associated with the highrise, such as its global reach, uniformity, and scale. The paper first rethinks how cultural geography has traditionally explained the movement of built forms, explicitly turning from diffusionist accounts to the notion of translation. It then offers a reconsideration of the way geographers might think about scale in relation to a ‘big’ and ‘global’ thing like the modernist highrise, arguing that scale is produced relationally and in specific contexts. Finally, it offers a template for cultural geographical scholarship which takes seriously the technical work entailed in things, like a highrise, materialising or de-materializing. It does so by way of two illustrative stories: one about the productive social science of highrise suicides in Singapore; the other about the destructive role of the inquiry into collapse of Ronan point in the UK.

Resident-centred care and architecture of two different types of caring residences: a comparative study

“…Emergence and becoming are two central concepts in this theory, indicating how different components are shaped in processes of interaction (DeLanda, 2006, 2016). The concept of assemblage has been applied to architecture in the sense that architecture is an assemblage formed by its included material, human and spatial components (Dovey, 2013; Jacobs, 2006). Assemblage theory endows dead material with agency.…”

Architectural movements, utopian moments: (in)coherent renderings of the hundertwasser‐haus, vienna

“…Third, Jane Jacobs' rich, subtle and innovative work on the Modernist high-rise has moved beyond purely semiotic and/or practice-based approaches (Jacobs 2006;Jacobs et al 2007). Her work accounts for the form-ing of artefacts that obtain coherence as buildings: in this case, "big" buildings.…”

“…However, whilst writing this article, I found that it became increasingly difficult -and problematic -to articulate the kinds of traceable "relations" which inform geographical work on architecture and beyond (e.g., Jacobs 2006). I identify utopian designs, texts, practices and emotions whose relationship with one another is unclear; similarly, I suggest that there is at best an ambivalent relationship between diverse architectural movements around the HundertwasserHaus.…”

“…Geographers and architectural historians have adopted diverse approaches to the study of buildings (compare, e.g., Goss 1988;Borden et al 2001;Lees 2001;Jacobs 2006;Kraftl 2010). …”

“…This results in a two-fold conclusion where, first, I summarize the contribution that my analysis of the Hundertwasser-Haus makes to reinterrogating architectural utopias, and, second, I critically reflect upon my assumption -perhaps a widespread one within contemporary human geography -that human endeavour is almost always characterized by relations and relatedness. That a single building cannot be confined to a single narrative is perhaps not surprising, given the "messiness" of materials, discourses and practices that constitute "buildings" (Lees 2001;Jacobs 2006). Nevertheless, geographers' accounts of buildings retain an inevitability about the relations that constitute their narratives (perhaps except Jacobs et al 2007), displaying a desire to tie up loose ends.…”