Flat Ontology

Definition

A flat ontology is an ontological position that refuses hierarchical distinctions between kinds of entities or levels of reality — here, specifically in architectural production, the refusal of the "split ontology" that separates the "high" (the masterwork, the genius, the authored object) from the "low" (the banal, the everyday, the anonymous). In the architectural-historiographical usage drawn from Agarez & Mota (and the phrase "flat ontology" has a broader philosophical lineage in DeLanda/Deleuze-Guattari), it means treating all modes of architectural production as equally real and worthy of study.

Key Thinkers

• Ricardo Agarez & Nelson Mota — deploy "flat ontology" against the "prejudice of the split" (Tim Gough) in studying bread-and-butter architecture.
• Dell Upton — argues for relinquishing the Architecture/architecture (high/low) hierarchy: "There can be no Architecture, only architecture."
• Manfredo Tafuri — his refusal to hierarchize between operative-critical and other histories has affinities with a non-hierarchical treatment of production (via Wallenstein).

Related Concepts

• Everyday Architecture — the object a flat ontology makes visible.
• Authorship — a flat ontology dissolves the privilege of the authored masterwork.
• Ideology — the high/low split is treated as ideological.

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• Architecture is Always in the Middle (Gough 2015) — the fullest statement of the "prejudice of the split" and its Spinozist, flat-ontological refusal.
• The 'Bread & Butter' of Architecture
• Architecture, Critique, Ideology
• Architecture in Everyday Life (Upton 2002) — relinquishing the Architecture/architecture split.
• What the Files Reveal: Making Everyday Architecture Talk
• Making New Connections in Vernacular Architecture
• Between Traditionalism and Modernism: Approaches to a Vernacular Architecture
• Buildings Without Architects: A Global Guide to Everyday Architecture
• A Discourse on Method: The Segal System

Open Questions

• Is a "flat ontology" of production compatible with retaining a critical (normative) distinction between better and worse architecture, or does it collapse into mere description?

Theme

• Vernacular Architecture — the field a flat ontology makes visible.