Foucault for Architects

Author: Gordana Fontana-Giusti
Year: 2013
Source type: book
Raw file: raw/books/fontana-giusti_2013_foucault_for_architects.md

Summary

Fontana-Giusti presents Michel Foucault (1926-1984) as having significant impact on architecture since the mid-1960s through his archaeological and genealogical approaches to knowledge. The book focuses on Foucault's crucial juxtaposition of space, knowledge, and power, which has unlocked new spatial possibilities for thinking design. Key themes include: archaeology (conditions of knowledge), enclosure (asylum, clinic, prison), bodies (sexuality, biopower), and spatiality/aesthetics. Foucault understood architecture as "an element of support, to ensure a certain distribution of people in space, a canalization of their circulation, as well as the codification of their reciprocal relations." The book argues against limiting Foucault to enclosure architecture, showing broader implications for knowledge, bodies, urban space, and aesthetics.

Key Claims

• Foucault's archaeological and genealogical approaches have transformed architectural history and theory
• The juxtaposition of space, knowledge, and power is Foucault's crucial contribution to architecture
• Foucault's attention to bodies and sexuality has defined understanding of possibilities and limits of human life and its relation to architecture
• Architecture functions as support element ensuring distribution of people in space and codification of reciprocal relations
• Foucault's thought spans three spatial modes: spatial metaphors, space/architecture as model of thought's spatiality, and architecture as extension of discourses and practices
• There is no "architecture of freedom" — freedom must be lived, practiced, fought for; it is not a property of architectural objects
• Foucault was familiar with Le Corbusier and considered criticisms of him as exaggerated and unjust
• Power/knowledge are inseparable in study of human beings
• Foucault resisted disciplinary boundaries, operating across philosophy, psychology, history of science, literature, and political discourse
• His thought demands constant examination of discourse space where vision, surface, and three-dimensional transcendental experience have a role

Connections

Concepts: power, knowledge, space, enclosure, biopower, discipline, panopticon, heterotopia, governmentality, archaeology, genealogy, technologies-of-the-self, spatiality, bodies, sexuality, madness, clinic, prison, asylum

Authors: foucault-michel, fontana-giusti-gordana, bachelard-gaston, saussure-ferdinand-de, merleau-ponty-maurice, deleuze-gilles, blanchot-maurice, le-corbusier, tschumi-bernard, vidler-anthony, canguilhem-georges, lacan-jacques, levi-strauss-claude, sartre-jean-paul, bataille-georges, artaud-antonin, genet-jean, donzelot-jacques, pasquino-pietro, rajchman-john

Debates: power-and-space, architecture-of-freedom, postmodernism-vs-modernism, critical-theory-and-architecture

Related source notes: elliott-benjamin-for-architects, yaneva-latour-for-architects,

Direct Quotes

"Foucault explained how he understood architecture 'as an element of support, to ensure a certain distribution of people in space, a canalization of their circulation, as well as the codification of their reciprocal relations'." (p. 15)

"Foucault believed that freedom was not a property of any object or space architectural. [...] Foucault argued that there was nothing like an architecture of freedom, since liberation was something that had to be lived, practiced and fought for." (p. 16)

"The concept dual of Foucault of 'power/knowledge' showed that at least for the study of human beings, the goals of power and the goals of knowledge cannot be separated." (p. 10)

"Foucault's thought always is clearly articulated spatially. This way of thinking contains at least three spatial modes different: a) spatial metaphors; b) space and architecture as model of the spatiality of thought; c) architecture as extension of discourses and practices within society." (p. 17)

"In a moment when representative democracy, government and governability are being marginalized by the global financial world that escapes public scrutiny or electoral responsibility, there is a renewed interest in the analyses of Michel Foucault." (p. 15)

Open Questions

• How might Foucault's concepts be translated into spatial and discursive categories that challenge entrenched positions?
• What would an architecture that conditions "a more full, good and happy life" look like through Foucaultian analysis?
• How do new conditions of digitalization and global networks change power/knowledge relations in architecture?
• Can private dwellings serve as "ultimate places of resistance" as Foucault suggested?