Architecture After the House: A Commitment to Sustainable Practice

CRAC – Teresa Hoskyns, Tordis Berstrand, Amir Djalali and Glen Wash, ‘Architecture After the House: A Commitment to Sustainable Practice,’ presented at Towards an Architectural Theory for Sustainability, International Symposium, Lancaster University, 5 July 2023.

As the world has been experiencing a prolonged state of crisis, it has become increasingly evident that the problems of the Anthropocene cannot be effectively addressed from ontological perspectives that emphasise the boundaries of categories and prioritise the static over the dynamic. Technological fixes are short-term solutions, not effectively addressing any crisis. Solutionism obfuscates the problems that need to be addressed. Like in many other fields, the practice of architecture has embraced technical approaches that constitute a reduction of the possibilities of technology as a means to ecological practice and thereby has contributed to an amplification of the problems of the Anthropocene. In a radical reversal of conceptualising the problems, we suggest thinking architecture after the house, beyond the authored edifice, and refocusing the discourse on transformation and dynamic relations that include aesthetic experiences and enact ethical concerns. 

CRAC, a collective of scholars, architects, and artists engaging in research on contemporary architectural issues and knowledge exchange that situates China within an unfolding global narrative, proposes a cross-cultural approach to architecture after the house, including a re-evaluation of Eastern traditions.

The Chinese philosophical tradition introduces a different logic that can be linked to the discourse of ontological expansion or relational ontology, where instead of a clean separation between ‘nature’ and ‘culture’ they mutually construct each other in the ongoing process of action and becoming. It offers an opportunity to radically rethink sustainability with its zoetological approaches [1], understood as an art of living, as they shift the focus of enquiry from entities to dynamic relations. Zoetological approaches to architectural design may emphasise the interdependencies of art, technology and the environment. They may construct frameworks for methodologies of design that reach across disciplines and cultures to create relations where they are needed. Forming a relational practice that reframes modesty as a value, further invites us to rethink architecture as a form of ethical expression that integrates technology as a means to respond to future aspirations.

CRAC proposes presenting the above-outlined themes in five scenes: sheltering zoetology, living modesty, writing forms, cultivating landscape, framing air.

CRAC bio

CRAC is an international collective of scholars, architects, and artists engaging in research on China’s places, and the complexities of relations these places embody between modernisation and tradition, local, regional and global, the rural and the urban. CRAC is developing a platform for crosscultural and interdisciplinary discourse and collaborative research on contemporary architectural issues and knowledge exchange that situates China within an unfolding global narrative. 

This proposal has been prepared by Tordis Berstrand, Amir Djalali, Teresa Hoskyns, Glen Wash Ivanovic, and Claudia Westermann. Teresa Hoskyns plans to present the paper at the symposium.

[1] Ames, Roger T. (2023), ‘Zoetology’: A New Name for an Old Way of Thinking. Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements, 93: 81–98.