Events

knowledge as make-belief

Abstract: Metaphorical statements operate under pretence, implying and introducing a learning-oriented game of make-believe: readers and hearers engage in the process of imagining one thing as if was another thing, in order to better understand that first thing. Two seemingly unrelated subject matters are joined; their respective values and properties, mingled.

In this presentation, I consider three cabin metaphors, where (the architectural properties of) cabins are operationalized to account for and strengthen a given normative theory. I insist on the specific spatial and built dimension of the metaphors, and clarify implied values. Bringing this philosophical inquiry into dialogue with contemporary architectural pedagogy (and, particularly, traditions of open, non-hierarchical forms of knowledge), I argue that teaching architecture today requires attentiveness to the representational and institutional frameworks through which we imagine collective presents and futures, and that philosophical metaphors provide tools to cultivate such attentiveness.

The puzzles of the presentation are: what is it about cabins which make them prone to be used in environmental and political philosophical theorizing? Conversely, what do the three metaphorical games of make-belief reveal about our spatial and material imagination of cabins? And how can architectural teaching engage with, expose, and possibly reconfigure the normative spatial imaginaries embedded in these philosophical metaphors?