Object-Oriented Ontology in the Design Studio: A Dialogue Between Simon Weir and Graham Harman Across Architecture and Philosophy

Abstract

This dialogue between Simon Weir and Graham Harman took place in 2021 discussing different ontologies and their consequences in the architectural design studio. Object-oriented ontology classifies three distinct kinds of access to objects. Two are forms of knowledge called undermining and overmining, which amount to false claims of direct access. The other is allusion, an indirect form of access we find most often in esthetics. These three kinds of access offer three distinct modes of discussion and analysis of architectural objects, and two potential problems for discourse in the design studio: aestheticizing knowledge and trying to make knowledge from esthetics.

Keywords:

• esthetics
• art theory
• architectural theory
• epistemology
• education
• studio critique
• studio pedagogy

Notes

  1. Ji Young Cho, “The Process of Aesthetic Education in Design Studio: A Layperson’s Acculturation to the Architecture and Design Community,” Journal of Architectural and Planning Research 30, no. 4 (2013): 328–343.

  2. Donald A. Schön, “The Architectural Studio as an Exemplar of Education for Reflection-in-Action,” Journal of Architectural Education 38, no.1 (1984): 2–9.

  3. M. El-Latif, K. S. Al-Hagla, and A. Hasan, “Overview on the Criticism Process in Architecture Pedagogy,” Alexandria engineering journal 59, no. 2 (2020): 753–762.

  4. Cho, “The Process of Aesthetic Education in Design Studio,” 340.

  5. Aristotle, Politics, 1.1252a. trans. H. Rackham, Aristotle in 23 Volumes, Vol. 21 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd., 1944) Available online: <http://data.perseus.org/citations/urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0086.tlg035.perseus-eng1:1.1252a> (accessed 1 Mar 2022).

  6. Graham Harman, Art and Objects (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2020).

  7. Graham Harman, “Asymmetrical Causation: Influence Without Recompense,” Parallax 16, no.1 (2010): 104.

  8. Graham Harman, “On Vicarious Causation,” in Collapse Volume II (London: Urbanomic, 2007), 204. See also, Harman, Art and Objects, 46–47.

  9. Simon Weir, “Art and Ontography,” Open Philosophy 3 (2020): 408–411.

10. Graham Harman, “Undermining, Overmining, and Duomining: A Critique,” in ADD Metaphysics, ed. J. Sutela, 40–51. (Aalto, Finland: Aalto University Design Research Laboratory, 2013).

11. Simon Weir, 2013, “On the Ability to Disable: Advocating the Necessity of Philosophy in Design Studios” (paper presented at the 7th International Conference of the Association of Architecture Schools of Australasia, Monash University, RMIT University and University of Melbourne, October 3–5, 2013).

12. Peter Eisenman, Written Into the Void: Selected Writings, 1990–2004 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011), 3, 162.

13. Tom Wiscombe, “Discreteness, or Towards a Flat Ontology of Architecture,” Project 3 (2014): 34–43.

14. Patrik Schumacher, The Autopoiesis of Architecture, Volume I : A New Framework for Architecture (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2011), xiii.

15. Mark Wigley, The Architecture of Deconstruction: Derrida’s Haunt (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995).

16. Rosi Braidotti, The Posthuman (London: Polity Press, 2013); Elizabeth Grosz, Chaos, Territory, Art: Deleuze and the Framing of the Earth (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008); Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010); Karan Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007); Bruno Latour and Albena Yaneva, “‘Give Me a Gun and I Will Make All Buildings Move’: An Ant’s View of Architecture,” in Explorations in Architecture: Teaching, Design, Research, ed. R. Gesier (Basel: Birkhäuser Verlag, 2008), 80–89.

17. Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. For a critical response see Graham Harman, “Agential and Speculative Realism: Remarks on Barad’s Ontology,” Rhizomes 30 (2016): 1–8.

18. Latour and Yaneva, “‘Give Me a Gun and I Will Make All Buildings Move’: An Ant’s View of Architecture,” 80–89. For a critical response see Graham Harman, “Buildings are Not Processes: A Disagreement with Latour and Yaneva,” Ardeth 01 (2017): 113–122.

19. Bennett, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things.

20. Graham Harman, Architecture and Objects (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, forthcoming 2022).

21. Graham Harman, “Zero-Person and the Psyche,” in Mind That Abides: Panpsychism in the New Millennium, ed. D. Skrbina (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2009), 253–282.

22. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, trans. W. Pluhar (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987), 191.

23. Kant, Critique of Judgment, 191.

24. Simon Weir, “Object-Oriented Ontology and the Challenge of the Corinthian Capital,” in Make Sense, ed. Kate Goodwin and Adrian Thai. (Sydney: Harvest, 2020), 114–116.

25. Kant, Critique of Judgment, 191.

26. A programmatic, room-sized version of “occasionalist tectonics,” Weir, “Object-Oriented Ontology and the Challenge of the Corinthian Capital,” 116.

27. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson (New York: Harper, 1963).

28. Graham Harman, Tool-Being: Heidegger and the Metaphysics of Objects (Chicago: Open Court, 2002).

29. Aristotle, Poetics, 1458a, trans. by W. H. Fyfe, Aristotle in 23 Volumes, Vol. 23 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1932). Available online: http://data.perseus.org/texts/urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0086.tlg034.perseus-eng1 (accessed March 1, 2022).

30. Bruno Latour, Aramis, or The Love of Technology, trans. C. Porter (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Simon Weir

Simon Weir, Associate Dean at the Sydney School of Architecture, Design & Planning at The University of Sydney, has written about the theory and philosophy of architecture for the Journal of Architecture, Architecture Philosophy, and ARQ: Architecture Research Quarterly.

Graham Harman

Graham Harman, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the Southern California Institute of Architecture, is a founding member of both the Speculative Realism and Object-Oriented Ontology movements in philosophy. He taught at the American University of Cairo from 2000 to 2016. Recently he was rated by Academic Influence as one of the world’s ten most influential philosophers for the years 2010–2020. He is editor of the Speculative Realism series at Edinburgh University Press, coeditor (with Bruno Latour) of the New Metaphysics series at Open Humanities Press, and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Open Philosophy. He is the author of more than 20 books, including the forthcoming Architecture and Objects (University of Minnesota Press, 2022).