![Sample our Education journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5932/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Education.jpg"})
Abstract
Architecture has often looked at science fiction to understand the way that new technologies have an effect on the buildings we create. Here we advocate for a broadening of the canon suggesting that there are other traditions and forms of speculative fiction that destabilize the canon through which we imagine the future of buildings. Inspired by the recent coinage of “auto-theory” and the work of feminist writers such as Donna Haraway, Eula Biss, Valeria Luiselli, and Selva Almada we write this essay in the form of a semifictional diary spanning six nonconsecutive days during the COVID-19 pandemic.Footnote1 As two Latin American writers operating in English-speaking academia, we draw on our own positionality to think through the consequences that the canon of speculative fiction has on our ability, as designers, to imagine. The paper is driven by the narrative of teaching “online” and turning our home into a ‘smart’ one while teaching design studios on speculative futures. Interspersed in the narrative are the conversations we had with students during this period and our collective readings of three works of speculative fiction—one proto-science-fiction and two Latin American—which we use to try and make sense of our new forms of (technified) domesticity.
Notes
Notes
1 We are inspired by practices of autoethnography in feminist scholarship in writing this essay, and by other writers and practices that it has inspired. Donna Haraway, “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective,” Feminist Studies 14, no. 3 (1988): 575–99, https://doi.org/10.2307/3178066; Eula Biss, On Immunity: An Inoculation (London: Text Publishing Company, 2015); Valeria Luiselli, Lost Children Archive (London: HarperCollins UK, 2019); S. Almada and A. McDermott, Dead Girls (London: Charco Press, 2020).
2 The quote is from the preface of the German edition of Das Kapital by Karl Marx. Quoted and translated by John Rieder. Colonialism and the Emergence of Science Fiction. (Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 2012): i.
3 Peter J. Hammond, dir., Sapphire & Steel sci-fi series (London: ITV1, 1982).
4 Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures (London: Zero Books, 2014).
5 Michael Houser, “Live Better Electrically: The Gold Medallion Electric Home Campaign,” Department of Archaeology & Historic Preservation, Washington State, 2010, https://dahp.wa.gov/historic-preservation/historic-buildings/historic-building-survey-and-inventory/live-better-electrically-the-gold-medallion-electric-home-campaign.
6 Tim Nudd, “Amazon Made More Than a Hundred 10-Second Ads Asking Alexa the Funniest Things,” Adweek, 2016, http://www.adweek.com/creativity/amazon-made-more-hundred-10-second-ads-asking-echo-funniest-things-173901/.
7 Stoke Newington: Growth, from 1940 | British History Online. Accessed 29 May 2021. https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/middx/vol8/pp160-163.
8 Graham Harman, The Quadruple Object, 1st ed. (Winchester, England: Zero Books, 2011). The notion of time as a dimension keeping things from happening all at once has proved, as with the whole movement of object-oriented ontology, highly controversial. The debate is explored in Arjen Kleinherenbrink, “The Two Times of Objects: A Solution to the Problem of Time in Object-Oriented Ontology,” Open Philosophy 2, no. 1 (October 30, 2019): 539–51, https://doi.org/10.1515/opphil-2019-0038.
9 The work of Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby has been highly influential in the development of “speculative design” and “design fictions,” parallel movements of design practice that position themselves outside a market-oriented understanding of products and see design as a way of critiquing consumerism: Anthony Dunne and Fionna Raby, Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2013). A good introduction to the “currency” that the work of Archigram and other experimental architecture groups from the 1960s and 1970s has acquired recently can be found in: Todd Gannon, Return of the Living Dead: Archigram and Architecture’s Monstrous Media,” Log 13/14, no. 13 (2008): 171–80; Ross K. Elfline, “Superstudio and the ‘Refusal to Work,’” Design and Culture 8, no. 1 (2016): 55–77, https://doi.org/10.1080/17547075.2016.1142343; Andrew Blauvelt, ed., Hippie Modernism: The Struggle for Utopia (Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 2015).
10 Dean Koontz, The Eyes of Darkness (London: Hachette UK, 2012).
11 David A. Wilson, The History of the Future (Toronto: McArthur, 2000).
12 E.M. Forster, The Machine Stops (London: Penguin Books, 2011).
13 Forster, The Machine Stops, 2.
14 Forster, The Machine Stops, 7.
15 Forster, The Machine Stops, 19.
16 Forster, The Machine Stops, 36.
17 Forster, The Machine Stops, 28.
18 Eugene Thacker, “The Science Fiction of Technoscience: The Politics of Simulation and a Challenge for New Media Art,” Leonardo 34, no. 2 (2002): 155–58, https://doi.org/10.1162/002409401750184726; Philip K. Dick, The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick: The King of the Elves [1947–1952], Vol. 1 (Burton, Michigan: Subterranean Press, 2010): 12.
19 Amy Butt, “‘Endless Forms, Vistas and Hues’: Why Architects Should Read Science Fiction,” Arq: Architectural Research Quarterly 22, no. 2 (June 2018): 151-160, 151.
20 Butt, “‘Endless Forms’”: 151.
21 Peter Cook, Archigram: Zoom (London: Archigram, 1964). The influence of graphic artists such as Carmine Infantino and Jack Kirby in Archigram’s publications is analyzed in the interview with Peter Cook: Clara Olóriz and Koldo Lus Arana, “Amazing Archigram!”, MAS CONTEXT, no. 20 (December 14, 2013), https://www.mascontext.com/issues/20-narrative-winter-13/amazing-archigram/.
22 A good description of the way Bernard Tschumi and Nigel Coates explored connections between architecture and literature in their teaching can be found in: Claire Jamieson and Rebecca Roberts-Hughes, “Two Modes of a Literary Architecture: Bernard Tschumi and Nigel Coates,” Architectural Research Quarterly 19 (June 1, 2015): 110–22, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1359135515000366. More recently, Aaron Betsky reflects on the influence of Tschumi and Peter Cook on the highly speculative work of students at the Architectural Association and the Bartlett School of Architecture in: Aaron Betsky, “English Students Continue Archigram’s Sci-Fi Tradition,” Architect Magazine, January 7, 2013, https://www.architectmagazine.com/practice/professional-development/english-students-continue-archigrams-sci-fi-tradition_o;
23 Joanna Page argues that science fiction does exist in Latin America, going against the almost unanimous agreement of literary critics who deny the existence of a robust tradition in the continent. She mentions Elvio E. Gandolfo, Elsa Drucaroff, and Pablo Capanna as representative. For a fuller description, see Joanna Page, Science Fiction in Argentina: Technologies of the Text in a Material Multiverse (Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 2016), 2.
24 Roberto Bolaño, The Spirit of Science Fiction (London: Pan Macmillan, 2019), 21
25 Bolaño, The Spirit of Science Fiction, 86.
26 Bolaño, The Spirit of Science Fiction, 84.
27 John Rieder, Colonialism and the Emergence of Science Fiction (Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 2012); Jessica Langer, Postcolonialism and Science Fiction (London: Springer, 2011); Patricia Kerslake, Science Fiction and Empire (Liverpool University Press, 2011); Ericka Hoagland and Reema Sarwal, Science Fiction, Imperialism and the Third World: Essays on Postcolonial Literature and Film (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2014).
28 Eugene Thacker, “The Science Fiction of Technoscience: The Politics of Simulation and a Challenge for New Media Art,” Leonardo 34, no. 2 (2002): 155–58, https://doi.org/10.1162/002409401750184726:156; Philip K. Dick, The Collected Stories [1947-1952], 12.
29 Thacker, 156.
30 Thacker’s interpretation of science fiction as linked to the technologies of simulation is based on Jean Baudrillard, “Simulacra and Science Fiction (Simulacres et Science-Fiction),” trans. Arthur B. Evans, Science Fiction Studies 18, no. 3 (1991): 309–13.
31 Alfredo Ignacio Poggi, “El Realismo Mágico y La Teología de La Liberación: Una Agenda En Común Frente a Los Discursos Europeos de Secularización y Secularismo,” Transmodernity: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World 5, no. 2 (2015), https://escholarship.org/uc/item/234449pf.
32 Wendy B. Faris, “The Question of the Other: Cultural Critiques of Magical Realism,” Janus Head 5, no. 2 (2002): 101–119, 101.
33 Angel Flores, “Magical Realism in Spanish American Fiction,” Hispania 38, no. 2 (1955): 187–92, https://doi.org/10.2307/335812.
34 The quote by Ray Verzasconi is included in Lindsay Moore, Magical Realism—Postcolonial Studies, accessed 18 January 2021, pa 1,https://scholarblogs.emory.edu/postcolonialstudies/2014/06/21/magical-realism/.
35 Moore, Magical Realism.
36 Preface, “El Arcón de Roberto Bolaño,” by Christopher Dominguez Michael, translated by the authors in: Roberto Bolaño, El espíritu de la ciencia-ficción (Madrid: Alfaguara, 2016), 4. Translation by authors.
37 Idem.
38 An English translation of The Pursuer is included in Julio Cortázar, Hopscotch ; Blow-up and Other Stories ; We Love Glenda So Much and Other Tales (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2014).
39 The interpretation of The Pursuer as an exploration of Western rationality and linear chronology is explored in detail by Graciela P. García, “Time, Language, Desire: Julio Cortázar’s The Pursuer,” Pacific Coast Philology 38 (2003): 33–39.
40 García, 720.
41 García, 724.
42 García, 725.
43 García, 727.
44 García, 724.
45 García, 729.
46 Luiza Prado and Pedrio Oliveira, “Futuristic Gizmos, Conservative Ideals: On Anachronistic Design,” Modes of Criticism, 2014, http://modesofcriticism.org/futuristic-gizmos-conservative-ideals/.
47 Thao Phan, “Amazon Echo and the Aesthetics of Whiteness,” Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience 5, no. 1 (2019).
48 William Gibson has been credited with different variations of the quote. The earliest one seems to be William Gladstone, “The Science in Science Fiction,” National Public Radio, November 30, 1999, https://www.npr.org/2018/10/22/1067220/the-science-in-science-fiction.
49 Bolívar Echeverría, Modernidad y blanquitud (Ciudad de México: Ediciones Era, 2010). The use of the term “whiteness” as the translation to the original “blanquitud” used by Echeverria follows the translation of Rodrigo Ferreira in: Bolivar Echeverria, Modernity and ‘Whiteness,’ trans. Rodrigo Ferreira (Wiley, 2019).
50 The idea of irony and cynicism, in the context of the work of Alejo Carpentier, is explored by Maria Takolander, “Magical Realism and Fakery: After Carpentier’s ‘Marvelous Real’ and Mudrooroo’s ‘Maban Reality’,” Antipodes 24, no. 2 (2010): 165–71.
51 Bolaño, The Spirit of Science Fiction, 21.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Luis Hernan
Luis Hernan is a researcher and designer based at Sheffield School of Architecture. Trained as an architect, Hernan’s work explores the interface of digital, physical, and living computation with everyday life, combining philosophical and design-based explorations. His work is based on the conviction that design is a form of doing philosophy, and that philosophical thought is crucial in understanding and reframing the role of designers and architects in an ever-changing material realm.
Carolina Ramirez-Figueroa
Carolina Ramirez-Figueroa is a research tutor in design products at the Royal College of Art and theory tutor at the Master’s in Architectural Design at the Bartlett School of Architecture at UCL. Her research explores the challenges and opportunities found when living systems are understood as matter. She is interested in understanding the cultures, practices, tools, and economies of working and designing with living systems.
Ramirez-Figueroa has collaborated with a number of artists, designers, and scientists and has exhibited and participated in different art and design venues around the world including Helsinki, Edinburgh, Belgium, Canada, Taiwan, and Japan and more recently at the Barbican Centre as part of the exhibition Biological Buildings, showcasing her work on the AHRC funded project NOTBAD. The project operates in the context of contemporary efforts against antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and looks at the way materials can alter and improve health and the human microbiome.