The Journal of Architecture

Tracing architecture through the entangled | Deljana Iossifova & Doreen Bernath

To understand architecture as entangled is to follow its flows, exchanges, and negotiations — to observe how spaces are as much designed as they are continuously inhabited and contested. This perspective reimagines architecture as a dynamic and emergent field, resonating with the trajectories of urban anthropology, actor-network theory, and the so-called ‘spatial turn’ as these currents ripple across many disciplines. The articles in this issue invite us to recognise architecture as an ever-shifting field of entanglements — of cultural practices, material forms, and socio-political forces. We read here studies that trace such entangled processes: from histories and agencies of émigré architects transmitting social and embodied design processes; diasporic and trans-local mediations of educational, residential and climatic structures; participatory construction and repair methods that withstand fluctuations of inhabitants and resources; to forms of fictional and nomadic speculation that enable radical reimagining of resilience and adaptability in face of today's challenges. This is precisely the level of commitment and involvement provoked by Sherry Arnstein's ‘ladder of participation’ in resisting simplification and tokenism that so often disable our capacity towards relations and determinations of empowerment. Together, these cases urge us to reimagine architecture as inextricably relational — a form not confined by binaries like global versus local or modern versus vernacular, but existing within the intersections and slippages of these domains. Such a perspective foregrounds architecture's dynamic capacities for continual adaptation and transformation across diverse temporalities and geographies. CONTINUE READING