The Routledge Handbook of Architecture and Anthropology by Stender, Marie; Bech-Danielsen, Claus; Landsverk Hagen, Aina;

Short description:

This Handbook provides fresh insights into the debates and challenges that unfold in the cross-disciplinary field of architecture and anthropology. Based on studies of empirical contexts across the globe, the authors launch and test a broad variety of methods and advance various theoretical concepts.

Long description:

This handbook provides fresh insights into the debates and challenges that unfold in the cross-disciplinary field of architecture and anthropology. Based on studies of empirical contexts across the globe, the authors launch and test a broad variety of methods and advance various theoretical concepts.

Architecture and anthropology have always had overlapping interests, but a range of developments in both areas make it more relevant than ever to intersect, overlap, combine or even merge the two disciplines. In anthropology, the spatial, material, and nonhuman turns have paved the way for an increasing interest in, and need for, of changing the world, rather than just studying it. On the other hand, architecture, beyond designing structures, has become interested in the uses and processes that unfold in, during, and after construction. The contemporary research and practices in both disciplines are testimonies that a cross-disciplinary exchange is inspiring for engaging with, and responding to, the challenges of a world in ecological, societal, and political turmoil.

This handbook addresses established scholars, students, and practitioners alike by outlining contemporary developments and tensions at the intersection of architecture and anthropology.

Table of Contents:

Introduction: Critical Agendas and Contemporary Approaches to the Cross-Disciplinary Field of Architecture and Anthropology 

1_METHODS 

1.0_Section Introduction

1.1_Paperwork of the Everyday: Re-working Welfare State Housing with Dirt, Dogs and All

1.2_“Relevé” as a Tool for Drawing Attention: Migrant Dwellings in the Rif (Morocco)

1.3_On Sketch and Script. Artistic Sensibility in Urban Investigation

1.4_Comparing Fieldnotes, Converging Methodologies: Architectural and Anthropological Perspectives on Socialist-Modernist Mass Housing in New Belgrade

1.5_Visual Narratives of Inhabitation for Interrogating Inclusion in Social Housing Renovation in Brussels

1.6_Drawing Matters: Graphic Anthropologies in Architectural Education

1.7_The "Organic" Production of Space and its Social Order

2_PROCESSES

2.0_Section Introduction

2.1_Of Flesh and Concrete: Autoconstruction in the Fitness Architectures and Anti-Architectures of Medellín, Colombia

2.2_The Temporalities of Demolition: Anticipation and Refusal on a London Housing Estate

2.3_The Timeless Fruition of Perishable Buildings: Correspondences with the Mebéngôkre People 

2.4_The Frustrated Need for Meaning: Situational Aesthetic Boredom and Collaborative Creativity in Everyday Architectural Competition Work

2.5_Tiny Homes, Unreal Estate, and the Precarious Politics of Housing: The Case of the Wendy House 

2.6_Form Follows Kinship: Loneliness and Family by Design  

3_USES 

3.0_Section Introduction

3.1_Making a City, Reinventing Ruins: The Social Life of an Urban Infrastructure

3.2_Sharing Space and Making Home: Everyday Belonging in Multicultural and Low-income Neighbourhoods in Norway

3.3_Ways of Inhabiting and Perceiving an Álvaro Siza House

3.4_Can Good Fences Make Good Neighbours? Anthropological Explorations of Openness and Boundary-making in Architecture  

3.5_From Function to Affordance: Observing Pedagogic Shifts Through Use of Space in an Open-plan School 

3.6_Blue ‘Tin’ Roof: How Architecture and Social Life Reflect, Inflect and Deflect e-Each Other, in Nepal 

4_ENVIRONMENTS

4.0_Section Introduction

4.1_On Polystyrene and Zebras: Integrating Ethnographic Perspectives and Architectural Innovation in Housing Retrofits 

4.2_Circular Practices, Learning Processes, and Doing-It-Yourself on Japan’s Empty House Renovation Projects

4.3_“Nothing Goes to Waste!”: Processes of Demolition Material Reclamation in Istanbul and Beyond

4.4_Growing Spaces for at Least 100 Years: The Vegetal Politics of the Theatre of the Long Now

4.5_Dreams of “Stoffwechsel”. Matter, Evolution, and Form in Architectural Anthropology

5_FLOWS

5.0_Section Introduction

5.1_Volcanic Ties: Mutually Constituted Landscapes in Mexico and the US

5.2_Cementing Settler Colonialism: An Ethnography of Israeli West Bank Construction

5.3_The Cosmopolitan Pastoral: Mobilizing Peripheries from the Village to the City and Back

5.4_ Chinese Enclaves in Spain: Urban Transformation of Industrial Districts and the Global Economy

5.5_Foreign Experts and Chinese Airports

Parallel Worlds: Missed Encounters Between Architecture and Anthropology