Architecture from the Outside: Essays on Virtual and Real Space (Writing Architecture)

243 Pages·2001·1.14 MB·English

by  Elizabeth Grosz

grosz template 7/26/01 3:44 PM Page 1
WritingArchitectureseries
Architecture from the Outside Essays on Virtual and Real Space
Elizabeth Grosz
foreword byPeter Eisenman
Elizabeth Grosz is the Julian Park Chair in Humanities at the
State University of New York at Buffalo.
“Architecture’s best-kept secret is that it is not only knowledge
of form, but also a form of knowledge. Elizabeth Grosz’s
Architecture from the Outside explores that secret, revealing key
contemporary concepts and ideas and opening new routes for
spatial research and invention.”
—Bernard Tschumi, Dean, Graduate School of Architecture,
A Architecture from the Outside
Planning, and Preservation, Columbia University
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“It is a credit to the field of architectural theory that it is so c Essays on Virtual and Real Space
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open to its outside—to the creative contributions of other dis-
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ciplines and approaches. In this illuminating series of essays, t
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Elizabeth Grosz brings to architecture a Deleuzian philosoph-
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ical perspective that complements her longstanding engage- t
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ments with both the concept of space and the experience of
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bodies. The result casts a new light on both architecture and e
philosophy.”
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—Michael Hardt, Literature Program, Duke University r
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“Architecture’s boundaries are extremely porous, and the flow m
of ideas between its inside and outside is surprisingly unrestrict- ,
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ed. Elizabeth Grosz brilliantly exploits this porosity to make a !7 h
space for reflections and insights. Architecture from the Outsideis I e
required reading for any architect who wants his or her work to A2
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engage the wide array of challenges confronting us today.” 2
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—Ralph Lerner, School of Architecture, Princeton University h
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“With characteristic insight and rigor, Elizabeth Grosz pro- j i
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architecture during the past decade. More important, by t
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rethinking virtuality in relation to the body and materiality, and ;k G
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vice versa, she effectively moves beyond oppositional modes of ;k ro
analysis, which have created a critical impasse. For Grosz, the s
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virtual opens a future in which ‘the logic of invention’ can The MIT Press
Elizabeth Grosz
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the Arts and Humanities, Williams College
WritingArchitectureseries 0-262-57149-8
for this s cmyk cover image,
replace cyan with pms 801,
replace magenta with pms 806
Architecture from the Outside
Writing ArchitectureSeries
A project of the Anyone Corporation
Earth Moves: The Furnishing of Territories
Bernard Cache, 1995
Architecture as Metaphor: Language, Number, Money
Kojin Karatani, 1995
Differences: Topographies of Contemporary
Architecture
Ignasi de Solà-Morales, 1996
Constructions
John Rajchman, 1997
Such Places as Memory
John Hejduk, 1998
Welcome to The Hotel Architecture
Roger Connah, 1998
A Landscape of Events
Paul Virilio, 2000
Fire and Memory: On Architecture and Energy
Luis Fernández-Galiano, 2000
Architecture from the Outside: Essays on Virtual and
Real Space
Elizabeth Grosz, 2001
The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England
Architecture from the Outside
Essays on Virtual and Real Space
Elizabeth Grosz forew Peter Eisenman
ord by
© 2001 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any
form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopy-
ing, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permis-
sion in writing from the publisher.
This book was set in Janson Text and Franklin Gothic by Graphic
Composition, Inc., Athens, Georgia, and was printed and bound in
the United States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Grosz, E.A. (Elizabeth A.)
Architecture from the outside : essays on virtual and real space /
Elizabeth Grosz.
p. cm. — (Writing architecture)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN0-262-57149-8 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Architecture—Philosophy. 2. Space (Architecture)—Philoso-
phy. I. Title. II. Series.
NA2500 .G76 2001
720´.1—dc21 2001018300
Acknowledgments vii
Foreword by Peter Eisenman xi
Introduction xv
Part OneEmbodied Spaces
oneEmbodying Space: An Interview 3
twoLived Spatiality (The Spaces of Corporeal Desire) 31
threeFutures, Cities, Architecture 49
Part TwoTransitional Spaces
fourArchitecture from the Outside 57
fiveCyberspace, Virtuality, and the Real: Some
Architectural Reflections 75
sixIn-Between: The Natural in Architecture and
Culture 91
Part ThreeFuture Spaces
sevenThe Future of Space: Toward an Architecture of
Invention 109
eightEmbodied Utopias: The Time of Architecture 131
nineArchitectures of Excess 151
tenThe Thing 167
Notes 185
Bibliography 207
Index 215

I am an outsider to the field of ar-
chitecture. My access to this field
was facilitated in a most indirect
and unexpected way, for research
and writing in this area is some-
thing I never expected or directed
myself toward with any confi- Acknowledgments
dence or self-consciousness. It was
only in retrospect, after a period of
some eight or nine years, that it
became clear to me that architec-
ture and its associated questions of
space, spatiality, and inhabitation
held too much fascination not to
be addressed in more depth. This collection exists largely
due to the support and encouragement of Cynthia David-
son, to her extended invitations to participate in the Any
annual conferences, which she so creatively convened and
conceptually formulated over a ten-year period, and to her
encouragement in gathering my work as a volume in the
Writing Architecture series for the MIT Press. She helped
me see that a productive interchange between philosophy
and architecture can work for the mutual enrichment, and
opening out, of both historically distinct disciplines, and
that philosophy needs to think more carefully about archi-
tecture as much as architecture is capable of augmentation
by philosophy. I would also like to single out John Rajch-
man for his long-term vision of the relations between post-
modern theory and contemporary architectural reflection,
which has inspired and energized me to think about this
book and the various papers that comprise it. Our ongoing
conversations have always been illuminating, edifying,
challenging, and rewarding. I would like to thank Victor
Burgin and Beatriz Colomina for taking the risk over a
decade ago of asking a complete architectural novice to
turn her attentions to the question of space, initiating a
process which, unforeseeably and for better or worse, led
to the piecemeal production of this book. My thanks also
to Peter Eisenman, Bernard Tschumi, and Anthony Vidler
for their benevolence and welcoming tolerance of the out-
sider that philosophers tend to be, especially to architec-
tural practice and writing.
The support of institutions during the writing of pa-
pers and books is crucial and also deserves acknowledg-
ment. I would like to thank the Critical Theory and
Cultural Studies Program at Monash University, Mel-
bourne, Australia, where I worked from 1992 until 1998,
for the time and inspiration they provided me to write the
majority of the papers gathered here. I would like to ac-
knowledge the support and encouragement provided me
for this truly hybrid and interdisciplinary project by the
two interdisciplinary places I have worked since leaving
Monash—the Critical Theory Program at the University
of California, Irvine, and the Comparative Literature De-
partment at the State University of New York at Buffalo. I
would especially like to thank the various students of ar-
chitecture and the visual arts to whom I presented many of
these papers before they were ready for publication. One’s
texts are only ever as good, if one is lucky, as one’s audi-
ence, and I have been privileged to be involved with a
number of exciting and challenging audiences and inter-
locutors to whom I owe thanks for helping me to sharpen
these papers in the process of rewriting them for this book.
All the papers have been modified, changed, and in some
cases updated, although they are presented here in the or-
der in which they were written, with no attempt to remove
disagreements and points of uneasiness between papers
and no attempt to remove the transformation within my
arguments as they developed over many years.
viii
–
ix
criticWs—itohnoeu tr ais lkasr gteh en ektiwndo rokf o cf ofnrifernodnst—aticoonl lweaigthu elsim anitds Acknow
and frustrations that may drive a would-be author to de- ledgm
spair and even madness at the vastness, impossibility, and ents
presumptuousness of the process of writing, let alone writ-
ing in order to invite and create the new. Here Gai Stern,
Philipa Rothfield, Jacqueline Reid, and Judith Allen de-
serve my continuing gratitude for their humor, friendship,
and loyalty. Pheng Cheah, as always, has provided intelli-
gence and insight into my work. Nicole Fermon not only
has been an ongoing source of insight and inspiration
but has also provided the encouragement and strength I
needed to understand that struggle—political and con-
ceptual, with oneself and with others—is the condition of
everything worthwhile, and that courage is necessary to
think, to write, and especially to think and write as an out-
sider—a position that makes one especially vulnerable to
criticism, but also fresh and new to the inside.
Finally, I would like to dedicate this book to my par-
ents, Imre and Eva Gross.