Relational Architecture IV

Towards a Relational Architectureis a Master of Architecture Studio at the University of Technology, Sydney, led by Professors Andrew Benjamin and Gerard Reinmuth. The studio is based on the assertion that buildings are located within a network of relations.  Any one object therefore – the building as object – is an after-effect of a network of relations.  At the outset, these relations define a given urban condition.  However, these relations are neither fixed nor immutable. They are always potentially transformable.  As a result, this creates a setting – a site – in which it is possible to interarticulate analysis, design and critique.  The design process is then able to distance the immediate determining effect of contemporary conceptual and political delimitations.  They can be reworked  thus creating openings for architectural interventions. These interventions whether within the work of a building, or at the urban scale are understood as the creation of third spaces.[i]

What emerges with the creation of third spaces, is a new thinking of autonomy; namely, autonomy-within-relationality.   Rather than a strategy of separation or addition what becomes possible is the creation of interventions that might have a transformative effect.  Such propositions occasion an architecture whose appearance and urbanism are neither structured nor determined in advance. Rather, there are openings and possibilities that while allowing form, function and place to be interconnected, these constitutive elements can be transformed or reconfigured in the process.