In the last several years, a crisis of capitalist development has redefined our understanding of cities in terms of international policy making, political constituencies and individual and collective political expressions in the urban realm. Inter Unit 8 has been experimenting with possible new scenarios for this political readjustment at a global scale, departing from its most basic expressions in the city. As a result, students have constructed innovative political arguments by experimenting with the relationship between everyday material activities–such as waiting for a bus, dancing, chatting in the streets, or wheeling and dealing in the city squares–and a particular material organization. In these common everyday practices, students have found the materials from which to reconstruct the political experience in the city. Manifested in public and constructed as a physical material expression, these everyday practices acquire a political value — understanding the political as what Hannah Arendt described as action in public — and redefine new models of the interaction between the individual and the collective in the public arena.

9.11.09

8th Seminar

Self-organisation and Self-control: The Networked subject of Late Capitalist Urbanism

This lecture presents a critique of architectural and managerial theories of so-called 'self-organisation' focused at the points of their convergence within urban and pseudo-urban public space. Drawing upon post-autonomist accounts of networks, 'swarms' and multitudes as the instruments of contemporary processes of capital accumulation, and upon original research, architecture's engagement with contemporary organisational paradigms and their material expression will be critically examined.



Douglas Spencer has studied design and architectural history, cultural studies and critical theory, and has taught history and theory at a number of architectural schools. His research and writing on urbanism, architecture, film and critical theory has been published in journals including The Journal of Architecture, Radical Philosophy, AA Files and Culture Machine. He has contributed chapters to collections on urban design, utopian literature and contemporary architecture, and is currently researching for a book which formulates a Marxian critique of contemporary architecture and ‘control society’.

The Seminar will be held on Saturday 14th Novemberat 11am in Open Room 5
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Design and research work of Intermediate Unit 8 Architectural Association School of Architecture London UK