Industries of Architecture cover

2015
Common Projects and Privatised Potential
Difference, creativity and architectural labour

White, S., ‘Common projects and privatised potential: projection and representation in the Rotterdam Kunsthal’. In: Industries of Architecture , Editors Lloys Thomas, K., Amhoff, T., Beech, N. Series: AHRC Critical Architecture.

This chapter appears in an edited collection of peer-reviewed papers from the prestigious AHRC Annual International Conference. Published as part of the original ‘Critiques’ series as a special project of the AHRC for critical studies in architectural humanities, the annual conference examines a specific theme while disseminating new and emerging critical research in the areas of architectural history, theory, culture, design and urbanism.

The 11th volume arrives out of the 2015 conference entitled ‘Industries of Architecture’ that examined the material practices of architecture and the impact of the exclusion or inclusion of technical and socio-economic contexts from the valued concerns of the discipline. This chapter explores how contemporary process philosophy enables construction of design epistemologies and practices better able produce, ‘a plausible connection between architecture and the social’ (Rem Koolhas). The chapter constructs parallels between Gilles Deleuze’s critique of dualist representational thinking and the pragmatic conception and performance of the protection of authorial knowledge provided by the UK’s Intellectual Property system. It outlines the pragmatic nature of the commercialisation of architectural knowledge as well as providing alternative trajectories enabling more equitable valuations of creative labours.

This contributes to international research discourse by addressing Ferro’s call for ethical valuations of the discipline of architecture and its relation to labour processes and appears alongside newly translated canonical texts such as that of Sergio Ferro ‘Design/Chantier’.