CENTER 21: The Secret Life of Buildings employs the nascent philosophies of speculative realism and object-oriented ontology to illuminate architecture as a peculiar set of objects, phenomena, relations, materials, and operations. Object-oriented ontology (OOO) is a philosophy that considers all objects (virtual or physical, large or small, singular or plural, closed or open) to be on equal ontological footing. Although it doesn’t exclude humans, it treats them as just another set of objects. This volume explores OOO’s significance to architecture, and possibly vice versa.
ISBN: 978-0-934951-28-9
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction, by Michael Benedikt with Kory Bieg
Objects, by Kory Bieg
Object-Oriented Ontology as a Design Philosophy, by Ian Bogost
Folds of Being: Acts of Architecture, by Levi R. Bryant
Aestheticizing the Literal: Art and Architecture, by Graham Harman
A Critique of Object-Oriented Architecture, by Patrik Schumacher
Response to Schumacher, by Graham Harman
This or That?, by Craig Dykers
Architecture in the Second Person, by Michael Benedikt
Architectural Speculation and Radical Sincerity, by Keith Ragsdale
What "No!" Means for Architectural Conservation: The Secret Life of Drawings in Collections, by Albena Yaneva
EDITORS
Michael Benedikt
Kory Bieg
SERIES EDITOR
Michael Benedikt
MANAGING EDITOR
Leora Visotzky
ASSISTANT EDITOR
Andrea Manrique
AWARDS AND RECOGNITION
2018 Independent Publisher Book Awards Gold Medal in Architecture
