Manchester test
Abstract
Interesting cross-fertilising projects have been recently emerging at the crossroads of design disciplines and Science and Technology Studies (STS): with STS becoming inspired to experiment with the methodological inventiveness of the former (expanding ethnographic repertoires), and design and architectural research increasingly captivated by the conceptual and descriptive attentiveness to material processes and their politics of the latter. Inhabiting this crossroads in different positions – due to both professional training, personal interest, and particular working appointments – both authors have felt impelled to explore what this crossroads might offer to rethink the pedagogy of architecture: Indeed, in the last years, an experimental agenda has unfolded, whereby STS’s anti-technocratic stance – its concern for the plurality of knowledge beyond those of experts, and the potential impact of neglected actors in the articulation of given socio-material assemblages – has particularly inspired relevant conceptual and practical explorations in design studio projects in a web of practitioners at the schools of Architecture in Alicante and Munich. Beyond architectural solutionism, these experimental briefs have revolved around particular more-than-human challenges provoking a crisis in conventional methods and means of design, hence speculating what architectural practice might turn into when put in crisis, re-learning its ways from a variety of agents who are usually not taken into account. Drawing from this, both authors engaged in developing a joint auto-pedagogical programme, developed since late 2019. Our contribution will describe in detail an exploration into what neurodiversity could teach to architecture. For this, we will show speculative and provisional results of how our concern with the embodied knowledge of neurodiverse people and their atmospheric spatial practices led to a series of pedagogical experiments, whereby we could address its impact not only on (i) the processes, materials, and devices of design practice, but also on (ii) the conventional ocular-centric and volumetric visual culture of architecture.
Micol Rispoli is Ph.D candidate in Philosophical Sciences at Federico II University of Napoli,
from which she graduated in architecture. She obtained a master’s degree in Events and
Museum Curator from IED, Roma. She carried out research activities at Politecnico di Milano
and ELISAVA Barcelona. Her research lays at the crossroads of Architecture and Science and
Technology Studies (STS), focusing on the impact that pedagogical experiments – both in
conventional training and everyday practice – inspired by ‘ANT’ and reflections around
‘Cosmopolitics’ and ‘Matters of Care’ might be having
Tomas Sánchez Criado is Senior Researcher at the Chair of Urban Anthropology and co-
coordinator of the Stadtlabor of Multimodal Anthropology of the Department of
European Ethnology, Humboldt-University of Berlin. Working at the crossroads of Anthropology
and STS, he has developed a particular concern around how bodily diversity comes to matter in
the knowledge, material and care politics of city-making. He is currently working on a book
project, drawing from ethnographic and archival materials from the city of Barcelona, tentatively
titled The Uncommon City: Bodily Diversity and the Activation of Possible Urbanisms. In his
work he has also been experimenting with different forms of public engagement, ethnography
and pedagogy. He has recently co edited Experimental Collaborations: Ethnography through
Fieldwork Devices (Berghahn, 2018, with Adolfo Estalella) and Re-learning design. Pedagogic
experiments with STS in design studio courses (DISEÑA, 2018, with Ignacio Farías). For more
information and publications, please check: www.tscriado.org