Five Lessons in a Ficto-Critical Approach to Design Research Practice

Abstract

This article offers the outline of five preliminary lessons in a ficto-critical approach to creative research practices in architecture, or more precisely, between architecture and philosophy; a transversal relay I pursue through my own research. I will identify these creative and critical practices as operating amidst what can be called an ‘ecology of practices’, a formulation I appropriate from the philosopher of science Isabelle Stengers (who also stresses the power of fiction with respect to explorative practices in the sciences). The five lessons will include: 1. A ficto-critical opening as a means of setting out an approach and what is to follow; 2. Lesson two will commence with Michael Spooner’s Clinic for the Exhausted, in order to discuss the importance of reinventing precursors, and even murdering precedents, because we always-already proceed from amidst an ecology of practices of some kind; 3. Lesson three will open by way of an introduction to Julieanna Preston’s performative project Room, Wool, Me, You (2012) suggesting an instance of an ecology of practices and ‘your situated knowledge’, or how the thinker-doer of design specifically locates her work and best follows the materials of an occasion. 4. Lesson four will open with the posthuman landscapes of joyful affect Margit Brünner composes. Here I will explore ethical experimentation as the reversibility of experiencing-experimenting. Then I will close with a fifth lesson, 5. Making worlds consistent on a plane of nature-thought.

Read the full article online at: https://drawingon.org/Issue-01-01-Five-Lessons