Architectures of Chance

Architectural discourse and practice are dominated by a false dichotomy between design and chance, and governed by the belief that the architect’s role is to defend against the indeterminate. In Architectures of Chance Yeoryia Manolopoulou challenges this position, arguing for the need to develop a more creative understanding of chance as aesthetic experience and critical method, and as a design practice in its own right. Examining the role of experimental chance across film, psychoanalysis, philosophy, fine art and performance, this is the first book to comprehensively discuss the idea of chance in architecture and bring a rich array of innovative practices of chance to the attention of architects. Wide-ranging and through a symbiotic interplay of drawing and text, Architectures of Chance makes illuminating reading for those interested in the process and experience of design, and the poetics and ethics of chance and space in the overlapping fields of architecture and the aleatoric arts.Table of ContentContents: Opening; Chance in Perception: Eyes and objects: after Beckett; Crossings: viewing instrument I; Behind the image. Chance in Design: Projections: after Duchamp; Shutters: House F; Fields: drafting Pier 40; The practice of observation; Drawing as event; Encounter and assemblage; Fragment, part, whole; Ironic fabrication; Aleatoric form; Double passage; Bibliography; Index.Review Quote’Recently in many architectural schools efforts intensified to further develop architectural research. Exciting new avenues are being explored, relying upon the design skills of architects and urban designers, combining them with intellectual rigor and in-depth thinking, in order to imagine new spatialities and to unfold hitherto unknown spatial experiences. This series highlights the innovative results of these explorations, opening up a new world of path-breaking research.’ Hilde Heynen, University of Leuven, Belgium 'This book calls us to think about architectural research as an opportunity to pose original questions, to employ different media and techniques, to introduce interdisciplinary discourse, and to acknowledge the open-endedness of architecture. Altogether the book easily absorbs the reader into its wonderful explorations. It invites us to appreciate, acknowledge, learn to recode, and even at times appropriate chance.' arqBiographical NoteYeoryia Manolopoulou is Director of Architectural Research at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, and co-founder of the studio AY Architects.