The Threefold Logic of Advanced Architecture: Conformative, Distributive and Expansive Protocols for an Informational Practice: 1990-2020

During the last 30 years, Advanced Architecture has consolidated an interactive and informational logic that differs from that of Modernity and Postmodernity. This logic is threefold; it is modulated through three coexisting protocols -modes of action- whose peaks of intensity occur in three different decades: Conformative Protocols (1990-2000), Distributive Protocols (2000-2010) and Expansive Protocols (2010-2020).

This work proposes a threefold cultural narrative whose interactive and informational logic differs from that of modernity and postmodernity. It positions three different ethos by critically approaching the architectural side of a cultural mutation that has been affecting the Western experimental areas of knowledge and practice since the end of the last century. A transformative process constituted by a constellation of transdisciplinary manifestations, accelerations, turns, shortcuts and clusterizations that by no means can be read under one single epistemological umbrella. In this sense, rather than approaching the practice of architecture focusing on its disciplinary inner specificity, this book approaches the research of experimental architecture focusing on its extra-disciplinary entanglements. It argues that a vast multiplicity of fields of knowledge participates in a cultural endeavour modulated through three protocols -forms of action- that singularize three decades: Conformative Protocols (1990-2000), Distributive Protocols (2000-2010) and Expansive Protocols (2010-2020). These three periods shouldn’t be read as three hermetic and concatenated monades, but as three different modulations of the same narrative, that is, as three overlapping and coexisting systems whose peaks of intensity occur in three different decades.

However, the main purpose of this book is not limited to unveiling the ethos of these three conjugations. It also aims at using this framework as a “time-field”, a narrative map that moves from the classificatory to the cartographical in order to vectorize the last 30 years of experimental architecture. In this sense, this book argues that this threefold set of protocols represents the progressive attempt to constitute critical interiorities “looking for” and “produced through” interactions that are increasingly more intimate and whose agents are increasingly more diverse. A tendency oriented towards the consolidation of an “intimacy between strangers” that highly resonates with the cultural and technological landscape in which experimental architecture operates.

Manuel Gausa PhD (2005 – ETSAB), by the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (European Mention). Since 2014, Full Professor of Architecture and Landscape Design, DSA- Faculty of Architecture (UNIGE-Università degli Studi) of Genova. Since 2014, coordinator of the ADD, Dottorato in Architettura e Design, PhD Architectural and Design Program, UNIGE. Director of the GIC-Lab (Genoa Intelligent Contexts Laboratory), Urban and Territorial Research Laboratory, UNIGE and Co-director of the Group of Research LUAD, LANDSCAPE AND URBAN Advanced Design. Since 2000 Principal Partner and Co-Director of Gausa+Raveau actarquitectura, the office of architecture, landscape and urban design. From 2012 to 2015, Dean of the IAAC, Institut d´Arquitectura Avançada de Catalunya, Barcelona. From 2008 to 2012 Vice-president of the Advisory Council for the Sustainable Development (CADS), Generalitat de Catalunya. From 2008 to 2014. Professor of Design Projects Studio in the DSA- Faculty of Architecture, UNIGE (Università degli Studi) of Genova. From 2006 to 2008, Director of the Master Program “Intelligent Coast” hosted by Fundació Politècnica de Catalunya. From 2011 to 2014 Member of the Consell Consultiu de l’Hàbitat Urbà, Ajuntament de Barcelona and Member of the Scientific Technical Committee of CRUIE (Centro di Ricerca per l’Urbanistica, le Infrastrutture e l’Ecologia” – UNIGE). From 1998 to 2003 he was President of Metropolis and President of the Scientific Committee at the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia. From 1997 to 2000 Member of Governing Board – Director Cultural – of the ESARQ-UIC, Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de la Universitat Internacional de Catalunya. Responsible of FORO, Theory and Critics Area. From 1995 to 2000 Associate Professor of Projects in the ETSAB-UPC, Escola Técnica Superior d’Arquitectura de Barcelona, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. From 1991 to 2000 Director of the magazine “Quaderns d’Arquitectura i Urbanisme”. Founding Member of Actar Architecture and Actar Projects Editorials. Author of various articles and published works, such as “Housing, new alternatives, new systems”, “Metapolis Dictionary of Advanced Architecture”, “HiperCatalunya: Research Territories”, “Operative Optimism” among others. Honoured with the Médaille de l’Académie d’Architecture de France in 2000.

Jordi Vivaldi is a writer and theorist based in Vienna. PhD Architect (IOUD, Austria, 2014-18) and PhD Philosopher (EGS (cand.), Switzerland, 2018 - ...), Jordi’s areas of research include 20th and 21st century’s theory of experimental architecture and technology, as well as various forms of Speculative Realism and New Materialism. His current field of investigation orbits around the notion of “Limes”, both in its philosophical and architectural registers. More specifically, Jordi’s current philosophical research applies Eugenio Trias’ ontological theory of limits to Graham Harman’s Object Oriented Philosophy in order to construct a liminal approach to the notion of object. From an architectural perspective, Jordi’s research focus in articulating the concept of “Limes” as a contemporaneous form of space associated with our current subjectless condition, particularly in relation to the design of the floor as an architectural element. Jordi is currently working as theory faculty and researcher in several international universities such as IaaC in Barcelona, Bartlett in London, PROPUR in Buenos Aires and IOUD in Innsbruck. Besides his curatorial tasks as editor in chief of the architectural magazine “IaaC Bits”, his work has crystallized in several articles, essays and lectures.