The Journal of Architecture

Difficult lineage and hopeful disobedience | Doreen Bernath & Deljana Iossifova

The task of looking into the past to make sense of now is never straightforward; our relation to questions of lineage, and to the ideas and tools we have inherited, is often disquieting and disrupted by changing contemporary circumstances and the burden of future visions. Today’s calls for multiplicity and diversity, for working at the margins and connecting edges, and for ecological and ethical awareness have made the question of ‘upon what basis’ we rest our enquiries and experimentations even more difficult. Architectural research in recent decades has witnessed a tremendous surge in proposing and rebuilding such questionable bases, most notably by widening recognition of the factors and values at stake, often those not previously regarded as relevant to architecture, and by reconsidering who the stakeholders are within this inclusive scope of actions and implications, thereby articulating new constituencies of architecture that were previously neglected. This is the arduous and treacherous task of hopeful disobedience, requiring a refusal to take things for granted and a willingness to think and work in ways that may appear to contravene established narratives, projected histories, value judgements, status quos, and rules of engagement. This constitutes the connecting intention behind the assembly of articles in this issue. CONTINUE READING