bodyoftheory
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Podcast: “Phenomenology, Merleau-Ponty and Architecture”
My latest output is a podcast interview with Ambrose Gillick, as part of his fascinating series entitled A is for Architecture: “In Season 2, Episode 15 A is for Architecture, I speak with architect and writer, Jonathan Hale, Professor of Architectural Theory at the University of Nottingham, about his 2017 book, Merleau-Ponty for Architects, published by Routledge as … Continue reading
The Tectonic Sensibility
One of the problems that haunts any discussion of tectonics in architecture (typically defined as the raising of construction to an art form) is that it can often seem like an obvious fallacy is being committed, broadly of the pars pro toto variety. If we become too fixated on the fabric of the building as … Continue reading
The Extended Self: Architecture, Memes and Minds
Review of: The Extended Self: Architecture, Memes and Minds, by Chris Abel (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015) ISBN 978-0-7190-9612-9, Pb, pp. 357. This is both a fascinating and a frustrating book. It ranges freely across a broad intellectual landscape and is rich with philosophical references. For me, the real fascination came from the discussion of architecture as a category of technology, … Continue reading
Rosemary Butcher – Moving in Time
Exhibitions about dance have to face a similar dilemma to most exhibitions about architecture – literally a dance around the void created by the notable absence of the object. But in the case of Rosemary Butcher this problem takes on a whole new meaning in the sense that in much of her work the performance … Continue reading
Ingold on Making – Agency and Animacy
In his latest collection of essays subtitled ‘Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture’ [1] Tim Ingold continues his interdisciplinary investigations into the messy world of making. Written in a typically lively, direct and highly accessible style, one of the strengths of Ingold’s approach is the intimate connection between philosophy and field work – you get the … Continue reading
Unlocked-for-Editing: Architecture and the Image
Surprisingly little has been written about the creative use of sketching as a tool for the design process. Particularly the question of how it is possible for the architect to discover something new about the emerging design within the act of drawing. Typically, a vague and half formed idea of how a space could be configured is … Continue reading
Harman on Heidegger: ‘Buildings as Tool-Beings’
Much of Graham Harman’s so-called ‘object-oriented philosophy’ takes up Martin Heidegger’s account of the nature of tools and equipment, as set out in the first part and first division of his major work Being and Time. The key problem I have with Harman’s reading of this account is the overly binary view of perception which … Continue reading
Eye and Mind
‘Seeing and Being-Seen’: In the second section of ‘Eye and Mind’ Merleau-Ponty describes what goes on in the act of making paintings – an intertwining of body and world that also serves as the model for perception in general. There are a number of ways of understanding this process of intertwining, all of which involve … Continue reading
Critical Phenomenology
One of the latest products of Columbia University’s formidable factory of theory is Jorge Otero-Pailos’ book Architecture’s Historical Turn [1] which threatens to overturn at least two longstanding conventions. One is that the rise of postmodernism in architecture was mainly due to the influence of structural-linguistic and semiotic models of meaning and communication; the other … Continue reading
Making Sense in the Mid-Lands
In a recent lecture at the University of Nottingham, David Leatherbarrow (University of Pennsylvania) set out what might be called – in an echo of his Philadelphia neighbours Robert Venturi and Denise Scott-Brown – a ‘gentle manifesto’ for a not-too-complex-but-just-a-little-bit-contradictory approach to contemporary design. [1] In a typically precise and measured delivery, and in language … Continue reading
Latest Book
BORSI, K., EKICI, D., HALE, J., HAYNES, N., ed's. Housing and the City (AHRA 2020). Abingdon: Routledge, 2022.
Latest Article
JIN, X., & HALE, J., Unbinding architectural imagination: Wang Shu’s textual bricolage in theoretical writing and design. Journal of Architecture, 28(1), 2023.
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