Architecture and reflection: Places, bodies and machines in a prospective key

Abstract

In the reflective field of architecture, over the last twenty years there has been a notable increase in the production of publications and the discussion about place as a concept capable of promoting a new vision, both in terms of design and appreciation of architectural work. Emerging from the growing awareness of environmental instability and its need to rethink urban environments, place involves a multidisciplinary corpus that ranges from philosophers and sociologists to historians, anthropologists and geographers who develop their analysis from the understanding of human habitation.

Thinking about architecture in terms of place allows us to observe the transition from an objective autonomy to the contingency of the productive fact; enabling the framing of its imaginary, currently governed by new technological impulses and a digital culture. Thus, in this essay I propose the reflection of three elements of significant construction of the architectural field through the categories of order, projection and prospective implicit in the notions of space, assessment of the project and practice of architectural knowledge as a multidisciplinary prospection for human habitation in the 21st century.