Architecture from the Outside: Essays on Virtual and Real Space

Writing Architecture #8

by Elizabeth Grosz, Peter Eisenman (Foreword)

Essays at the intersection of philosophy and architecture explore how we understand and inhabit space. To be outside allows one a fresh perspective on the inside. In these essays, philosopher Elizabeth Grosz explores the ways in which two disciplines that are fundamentally outside each another―architecture and philosophy―can meet in a third space to interact free of their internal constraints. "Outside" also refers to those whose voices are not usually heard in architectural discourse but who inhabit its space―the destitute, the homeless, the sick, and the dying, as well as women and minorities. Grosz asks how we can understand space differently in order to structure and inhabit our living arrangements accordingly. Two themes run throughout the temporal flow and sexual specificity. Grosz argues that time, change, and emergence, traditionally viewed as outside the concerns of space, must become more integral to the processes of design and construction. She also argues against architecture's historical indifference to sexual specificity, asking what the existence of (at least) two sexes has to do with how we understand and experience space. Drawing on the work of such philosophers as Henri Bergson, Roger Caillois, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Luce Irigaray, and Jacques Lacan, Grosz raises abstract but nonformalistic questions about space, inhabitation, and building. All of the essays propose philosophical experiments to render space and building more mobile and dynamic.

Genres: Architecture, Philosophy, Nonfiction, Theory

248 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2001

About the author

Elizabeth Grosz is a professor at Duke University. She has written on French philosophers, Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Luce Irigaray and Gilles Deleuze.

Grosz was awarded a Ph.D. from the Department of General Philosophy at the University of Sydney, where she became a lecturer and senior lecturer from 1978 to 1991. In 1992, she moved to Monash University to the department of comparative literature. From 1999 to 2001, she became a professor of comparative literature and English at the State University of New York at Buffalo. She taught in Women's and Gender Studies at Rutgers University from 2002 until joining Duke University in 2012.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Uneven, but Grosz has got some gems in this short collection. "Embodying Space" is just great, and "Futures, Cities, Architecture" packs a punch in spite of its brevity. I find this to have some good thought pieces for students.

[Alexander · Rating 4 out of 5]

The virtual - following Bergson and Deleuze - must not be seen as something non-existant, or even 'less real' - but an exteriority within the actual, an Outside, as the author coins it. In thinking of what the virtual is, we must investigate spatiality, perhaps we are forced to redefine it itself in light of virtual spaces. This is in part what Grossz sets out to do.

Grossz takes what is arguably a Deleuzian-Bergsonian-'Feminist Deconstruction' approach to critiquing the mainstream notion of Space and Time, to quite a fruitful harvest. The popular conception of VR is not a neutral space, an exterior with an unlimited amount of becomings. The notion of virtual space itself, for Grossz, has entered into popular consciousness in a male-dominated form, particularly in hedonist visions of potential futures.

Third paragraph, but I have yet to mention architecture, which this book seems to promise a great deal about. What gives? Well, Grossz is not an architect, nor does she claim to synthesize them; she explores the 'in-between,' like Plato's Chora in conception. She doesn't seek to 'force' elements from each onto each other, but simply point out some mutual flows and intensities.

The way she does this is how she explores the notion of Space; by exploring how virtual space has reconfigured the meaning of Space as we know it, architects can look at how they can rethink architecture. A room is constructed for the common activities that occur in it, by constructing a space for a different purpose, such as for bodies or better, by analyzing these activities and searching for a more creative layout, architecture can draw from the virtual.

Her architectural 'suggestions' are a little wanting, especially considering the Introduction seems to hype that up as an important polemic, however - this book is a highly engaging Deleuzean analysis of Space and Time, bodies, all that good late 90's/2000's structuralist stuff.

[Xeena Rodriguez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Elizabeth Grosz talks about how architecture and the spaces we experience are connected.
It challenges the usual ideas about architecture and looks at how digital spaces and technology affect our understanding of buildings. The author uses different fields to explain these ideas in a way that's easy to understand. It makes you think about how architecture shapes our lives and how we interact with our surroundings.
I really liked how the author examines how buildings treat men and women differently. They study how the design and layout of a building can affect how people interact and if it treats everyone fairly. By using these ideas from feminism, the author helps us understand how architecture is connected to fairness in society.

[Kathleen Quaintance · Rating 5 out of 5]

insanely good theory: lucid but complex, malleable but powerful, above all generative...elizabeth grosz does it again

[Ariana Ibañez · Rating 5 out of 5]

tqm elizabeth

[mahatmanto · Rating 4 out of 5]

ini kumpulan esai yang keren.
sebagai perempuan, ia merasa leluasa bergerak "di luar" arsitektur mapun filsafat, dua disiplin yang menurutnya terlalu didominasi pria.
belum semua terbaca, baru bab pertama yang berupa wawancara dengannya EMBODYING SPACE.
dalam wawancara itu ia bilang bahwa arsitektur adalah disiplin yang selalu membutuhkan komentar orang luar tentang dirinya.
hehe...
bener jugak!
ntar sambung lagi aah...
[eh, ini bukan preview lho]

[Jes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Elizabeth Grosz just hits all my theory kinks.