Overview

Ugly, Useless, Unstable Architectures traces productive intersections between architecture and the discourses of Post-Structuralism and New Materialism. It investigates how their unique ‘ontological regimes’ can be mobilised to supersede the classical framework that still informs both the production and the evaluation of architecture. Throughout its three main chapters, this enquiry challenges one of the most prevalent tropes of architectural assessment: Beauty, Utility and Stability. Author Miguel Paredes Maldonado critically unpacks the spatial and operational qualities of these three idealised concepts, before setting out an alternative framework of spatial practice that draws from Gilles Deleuze’s post-structuralist take on the production of the real and Manuel DeLanda’s model-based branch of New Materialism. This book reads and situates a series of spatial works through the lens of this critical methodology to contest the conceptual aspects traditionally underpinning architectural ‘value’. It posits that architecture can operate as a continuous, generative spectrum encompassing a broad range of potential configurations. Written for academics and students in architectural theory, design and contemporary philosophical thought alike, this book should appeal to a wide audience.

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9781032085203

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Reviews

"""Inspired by New Materialism, this book challenges the ultimately Platonic ideals of beauty, stability, and utility in architecture. In reversing all three, it expands our space of options. In particular, the book’s Bataillean appeal to ugliness will be of interest given the return of beauty in recent aesthetic theory."" - Graham Harman, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the Southern California Institute of Architecture, USA"

Inspired by New Materialism, this book challenges the ultimately Platonic ideals of beauty, stability, and utility in architecture. In reversing all three, it expands our space of options. In particular, the book's Bataillean appeal to ugliness will be of interest given the return of beauty in recent aesthetic theory. - Graham Harman, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the Southern California Institute of Architecture, USA

Author Information

Miguel Paredes Maldonado is a lecturer in Architectural Design at the University of Edinburgh, a chartered architect in the UK and a partner in award-winning research and design studio Cuartoymitad Architecture & Landscape. He taught at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid before relocating to Edinburgh in 2013. In the recent past he has been visiting faculty at the Università degli studi di Cagliari, the School of Architecture at Taliesin and the Technische Universität Graz. Miguel’s research is articulated through writing, speculative design and architectural practice. His enquiries operate at the intersection of computational media, the development of contemporary urban commons, and New Materialism as applied to design theory. As a body of design research, his work has been published and exhibited internationally, most notably at the 11th and 16th editions of the Venice Biennale.

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