Representing the Discipline: The Operations of Architecture's Discursive Imagery

Abstract

This article examines the lineage of the discursive image and its capacity to represent the discipline of architecture. Emanating historically from Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie, and its desire to make cultural production intelligible, the paper considers this practice of representing the discipline through the techniques it deploys and considers the consequences, both representationally and with respect to our understanding of disciplinary knowledge. The author questions whether it is more appropriate to represent architectural techniques or the situated practices of the architect. Given that disciplinary discourse shapes our representations, while simultaneously exceeding the limits of representation, why is there a profusion of architectural images whose sole aspiration is to communicate the techniques of their own making?

Keywords:

• discursive image
• representation
• disciplinarity
• Learning from Las Vegas
• Archigram
• Buckminster Fuller

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Amy Catania Kulper

Amy Catania Kulper is an assistant professor of architecture at the University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, where she teaches theory and design. For the 2010/11 academic year she was the Steelcase Research Professor at the University of Michigan's Humanities Institute, working on a book manuscript entitled Immanent Natures: The Laboratory as a Paradigm for Architecture's Experimental Practices. She is a three-time recipient of the Donna M. Salzer Award for teaching excellence. Kulper is the Design Editor of the Journal of Architectural Education (JAE). Her publications appear as chapters in Experiments: Architecture between Sciences and the Arts (edited by Ákos Morávansky and Albert Kirchengast) and Intimate Metropolis: Urban Subjects in the Modern City (edited by Diana Periton and Vittoria di Palma). Her articles appear in the Journal of Architecture, Candide - Journal for Architectural Knowledge and Field: Journal for Architecture. Kulper holds masters' degrees from both the University of Pennsylvania and Cambridge University and a Ph.D. in the history and philosophy of architecture from Cambridge University.