No Body, Never Mind: The entanglement of how architects construct imagination

This essay focuses on the relationship between the inside and outside of human bodies in constructing imaginations. More specifically, the text sheds light on embodied impulses – such as a gaze, a gesture – within a (architectural) team that relates (in design) to a particular action with a material – such as drawing, model-making, sketching. This requires a certain amount of attention and, above all, trust in one’s own body and the knowledge of its power. When I get to know my own physical (cells, organs, bodily systems, emotional anatomy, relationships, etc.) and conceptual (concepts, distinctions, categories, etc.) boundaries, I begin to understand my values. This enables me to live according to my values, be authentic, and make them clear to others: I can create a platform to enable the sharing of needs and empathy. For me, the boundaries between internal and external do not exclude but invite, and must be understood through the transformation of the inner mind, which begins to reflect on the outside what happens inside. ¹ Judith Hanson Lasater and Ike K. Lasater, What We Say Matters: Practicing Nonviolent Communication (Boulder, CO: Rodmell Press, 2009), 5. In The Thinking Hand (2009), Juhani Pallasmaa notes: ‘in this sense, the art form of architecture does not only provide a shelter for the body, it also redefines the contour of our consciousness, and it is a true externalisation of our mind’. ² Juhani Pallasmaa, The Thinking Hand: Existential and Embodied Wisdom in Architecture (Chichester: Wiley, 2009), 20. He is concerned that educational pedagogies and practices keep on separating ‘mental intellectual and emotional capacities from the senses and the multifarious dimension of human embodiment’. ³ Ibid., 12.

In the following, I will follow Pallasma’s main argument of the body as a ‘knowing entity’, but add another layer of investigation to the bridge between body and mind by considering how theories of performance studies provide architectural theory with a platform capable of acknowledging and incorporating such ‘subjective’ aspects as researchable, valid, and productive components of architectural practice. Since the issue of the mind–body connection is not sufficiently theorised in architecture theory, I attempt to address the intuitive, the imagination that transcends the rational in the design process. In order to do so, I use performance theories, which help me to learn about methods that deal with the entanglement of imagination of the actor–spectator relation. I argue that the integration of strategies of possible scenarios to tell a story into architectural practice and research would help to unmask ‘tacit hierarchies of knowledge, power, labour and cultural value’. ⁴ Anna Harpin and Helen Nicholson, “Performance and Participation,” in Performance and Participation: Practices, Audiences, Politics, ed. Harpin and Nicholson (London: Palgrave, 2017), 11. Pallasmaa is one of a set of scholars ⁵ These include Glenn Adamson, Jonathan Hill, Tim Ingold, Ann-Sophie Lehmann, Michael Polanyi, Donald Schön, and Albena Yaneva. who address the overlooked interpersonal relationships between person, subject, and emotion embedded in architectural production, i.e., the constellation within each individual and in relation to each other. This approach is the overarching, philosophical position of the relationship between body and mind, often referencing the thinking of the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty. ⁶ Jonathan Hale, Merleau-Ponty for Architects (Oxfordshire: Routledge, 2016). Here, this text critiques Pallasmaa’s mode of describing the authority of architects, seeing the architect as the only ‘testing ground’ for design, and ask how the possibilities he develops, placing the architects and architecture at the centre, can be nuanced. ⁷ Pallasmaa, The Thinking Hand, 125. I will employ techniques and protocols used in the performing arts to understand the relationships between human actions and affects in architecture. I focus in particular on the potential of performance to create new realities that are experienced rather than interpreted, and that drive reality-constituting actions of interest to this study of architecture. ⁸ Erika Fischer-Lichte, Ästhetik des Performativen (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2004), 19. These created realities could allow architecture to expand the spectrum of intimacy. In what follows, I use affect as a means of establishing relations and connecting with the context by being in direct bodily contact with things. ⁹ Sara Ahmed, “Happy Objects,” in The Affect Theory Reader, ed. Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010), 32. Emotion, on the other hand, is understood as a readiness to act, with a great potential for empathy.

Complex Systems

My argument is that feelings internal to the body that are apparent on the outside of the body offer new ways of communication in architecture. To better illustrate this, I use Elinor Carucci’s photograph, ‘My mother’s back’ (Fig. 3.1), which depicts a naked back showing the mark of what was presumably an over-tight bra the subject was wearing before the picture was taken. Such remains, or imprints, on the body convey what I try to explore when it comes to the in-between of human bodies and materials, which are difficult to put into words. According to architect and writer Sarah Robinson, ‘the skin is the surface of our nervous system turned inside out’. ¹⁰ Sarah Robinson, “Boundaries of Skin: John Dewey, Didier Anzieu and Architecture Possibility,” in Architecture and Empathy, ed. Philip Tidwell (Espoo: Tapio Wirkkala-Rut Bryk Foundation, 2015), 44. There is potential in architecture for integrating emotion and imagination, too, opening up new ways in which humans and nonhumans can design a more empathetic world. Theatre and Body (2010) by Colette Conroy deals with the relationship between body and theatre in relation to physical and conceptual understanding. She argues that in theatre the struggle is to represent the soul without using human form, positing that to point to a body is to point at a ‘complex system, not an object’. ¹¹ Colette Conroy, Theatre and The Body (London: Red Globe Press, 2009), 16.

Figure 3.1: My Mother’s back, 1996, Elinor Carucci Source: Elinor Carucci’s private archive. US Credit: Elinor Carucci.

Transferred to architecture, I use the notion of the ‘complex system’, by which I mean the ‘whole’ of the architectural project. Returning to the example of drawing by hand that Pallasmaa uses to describe the interrelation between body and mind, the participatory potential is seen not in the act of drawing by hand per se, but in the ‘eye–hand–mind fusion’ of the process, i.e., in the joining of ‘perception, action of the hand and thought’. ¹² Pallasmaa, The Thinking Hand, 82. He discusses the flow between ‘external and internal, material and mental’ by referring to the act of painting, which is not only represented in an object, but ‘is the object’. ¹³ Ibid. That is, the fusion of what is seen, understood/associated, and rendered visible/tangible in recreating the lived world, where there is a fine line between perceiving, being perceived, and reflecting while perceiving. Conroy notes that imagination and perception still take place in the visible body of the actor. Theatre is a place where bodies can be experienced and reflected on, where bodies can be seen as cultural texts, and the potential in theatre is to read them ‘as an act of communication’ in a social context. ¹⁴ Conroy, Theatre and The Body, 41. Spectators are used to analysing the body and its action: ‘the ability to read dynamics of concealment and revelation, identity and disguise into human behaviour is a basic human social skill’. ¹⁵ Ibid., 75. In contrast, Pallasmaa argues that ideas must be tested by the designer’s own mind and body, which excludes users and includes only the architect’s subjective view. ¹⁶ Pallasmaa, The Thinking Hand, 135. Theatre, on the other hand, includes the audience’s views/perceptions, and plays in particular on and with their feelings, in other words using the body as a communicator and acknowledging material as a performer. According to Erin Hurley, theatres’ entire existence is based on their nature as places where feelings are evoked. Hurley’s Theatre and Feeling (2010) looks at theatrical feeling as a research object to help students of performance studies to understand theatre’s emotional effects, defining four in total: affect, emotions, mood, and sensations. All of these cross boundaries from the inside to the outside of the body and form a coherent rationale for what Pallasmaa fails to describe: the ability of emotional labour to contribute to social work, i.e., how humans perceive and understand themselves and their values is reflected in feelings.

In his chapter, ‘Body, Self and Mind’, Pallasmaa points out that one needs to acknowledge the body as a site, which in turn requires a high degree of self-reflection and less objective problem-solving. But what is subjectivity? What is a body? Thanks to the queer movement that has been developing since the 1990s, we are being challenged to question more and more the definition of the human body as such. The discussed complexity of the inside and the outside that goes along with this shows that we are still moving in an unknown territory. This blind spot allows for diverse perspectives, and helps to open space for new insights. Whereas Pallasmaa argues that human beings live in a world of possibilities defined by the mental faculties of imagination, Hurley refers to the connection of body and mind, where acting trains the body and theatre viewers understand the interconnections between body and mind in what they see. One could argue that architecture also does this through drawing, modelling, or other bodily activities in practice, but what is missing is a clearly identified bridge between body and mind, which in my view can be emotions or feelings. In architecture there is no tool that engages, not to mention expands, emotions, which is the opposite of what happens in theatre. There spectators can not only observe, but also experience an ‘expanded, more expressive, and nuanced range of feeling imaginatively and viscerally with the aid of another person or agency’. ¹⁷ Erin Hurley, Theatre and Feeling (London: Red Globe Press, 2010), 77. Although Pallasmaa highlights the great potential of imagination when he states, ‘the ability to imagine and daydream is surely the most human and essential of our mental capabilities. Perhaps, after all, we are humans not because of our hands or intelligence, but thanks to our capacity for imagination’, ¹⁸ Pallasmaa, The Thinking Hand, 133. he overlooks the potential of a feedback loop of imagination generated by affects and emotions between different actors/actions, which theatre not only knows very well, but also uses to train the body sustainably. ¹⁹ Conroy, Theatre and The Body. 70.

To tap into this intermediary zone of subjective investment and attachment to the realities of the development process, architecture needs a discourse for imagination and empathy, which includes alternative perspectives on how to make use of the body in relation to material. In architecture, my colleagues and I have learned to work with visual perspectives on a grand scale, but we remain at a loss when it comes to actively engaging our body in the design process. In some architecture schools, first-year students are asked to think about their bodies in the context of form, function, and material. At the Bauhaus University Weimar, for instance, the preliminary course (inspired by Johannes Itten’s ideas from 1919) suggests that first-year students do a public group performance in the city centre of Weimar to reflect on the historic Bauhaus stage and its spirit of experimentation. But what happens to this approach in the following years of architectural education, especially afterwards in the ‘real world’? Why did I learn to experiment in the first year, but at the same time was told that things work differently outside university? Why are there no tools to maintain curiosity and to include the human body and its imaginative potential in this ‘complex system’ that we call architectural process? I argue that to give literal meaning to materials, we need to be able to make sense.

Material Dramaturgy

To respond to Pallasmaa’s argument that ‘the prevailing values of culture tend to discourage fantasy, suppress the senses, and petrify the boundary between the world and the self’, I propose to use artistic education as a means of cultivating ‘imagination and empathy’, and in this essay advocate a method of ‘material dramaturgy’. ²⁰ Pallasmaa, The Thinking Hand, 20. Material dramaturgy underlines being with material and spending time with it before, for instance, covering a floor with wood, even though the computer program says that it looks beautiful. Inspired by Cathy Turner’s book, Dramaturgy and Architecture (2015), I posit the term ‘material dramaturgy’ in relation to architecture when discussing similarities between dramaturgy, material, and architecture. ²¹ In addition to Cathy Turner’s book, Dramaturgy and Architecture: Theatre, Utopia and the Built Environment (London: Macmillan, 2015), see Ramona Mosse and Anna Street, “To Be Like Water: Material Dramaturgies in Posthumanist Performance,” Journal of Contemporary Drama in English 10, no. 1 (2022): 116–32. Their article investigates a material (water) and its ‘dramaturgical functions as matter, medium, and metaphor to sketch performance alternatives that highlight nonhuman forms of agency’. While Turner looks at narrative in relation to space, I explore narration as a guide to describe what is, or is not, understood about material in architecture. This method is used to describe how material is perceived and, in a next step, narrate what is understood, which is an accepted definition of dramaturgy: something is experienced/perceived in a subjective way and then described/narrated (reading/interpretation). It would be interesting to explore whether, if architects had access to drama lectures, or as Turner suggests, ‘dramaturgy [was] part of the conceptual and aesthetic development of architecture’, they would think and speak differently about space and material. ²² Turner, Dramaturgy and Architecture, 13.

Dramaturgy has been understood to embrace a concept of language and communication – of ‘text’ – in a way that goes beyond words to include gesture, relational situation, physical expression, etc. Text is usually in a written/spoken language, but here, I think of text in a broader sense, as a metaphor of weaving: ‘the word text, before referring to a written or spoken, printed or manuscripted text, meant “a weaving together”. In this sense, there is no performance which does not have a “text”. That which concerns the text (the weave) of the performance can be defined as “dramaturgy”, that is, drama-ergon, the “work of the actions” in the performance’. ²³ Eugenio Barba and Nicola Savarese, “Dramaturgy,” in A Dictionary of Theatre Anthropology: The Secret Art of the Performer, trans. Richard Fowler (New York: Routledge, 1991), 68. Nowadays, the focus of a dramaturge in theatre – broadly speaking, someone who deals with questions of text and acting – is mainly on how to convert their interpretation of the story. Theirs are the first eyes that see the production develop towards a public, while knowing what goes on inside. Important for this text is also the applicability of the materiality of the human body (voice, gesture) as dealt with in theatre-making to tell a story in architecture. My enquiry suggests using the performative potential of material in particular to describe those understandings of material that are not necessarily situated in language, in words, but in sensing. Telling a story here consequently also means adding something personal, through one’s own body (gesture, mimic, movement, etc.).

Pallasmaa argues that the inside and outside of the body emerge primarily when the designed object or building is being made. It is not often that an architect actually makes the object themself; for a building, the necessary labour also includes the physical work on a construction site – such as carrying and making material, building walls, laying electricity cables, etc. – which often leads to problems in translating ideas and intentions in the making process with the many craftspeople and other actors involved. There is an unspoken understanding that presupposes a basis of shared knowledge and ambition to carry out ‘his/her work’. ²⁴ Pallasmaa, The Thinking Hand, 135. Underlying this is the issue of authority in architectural agency, which, according to Pallasmaa, is closely related to notions of authorship. This text problematises his view and instead considers each person’s role in an inter-relational network. The issue of translation in relation to the object envisioned through drawings, models, etc. is at one remove from mediation outside the office; other elements, such as written annotations or codified drawing practices (such as working drawings), are also crucial components within the office and challenge diverse interpretations of collective knowledge, requiring soft skills that identify misunderstandings. In theatre, a distinction tends to be made between translation – through script, choreography, costumes, scenography, etc. – and the issue of authorship and relational networks. In theatre, there is also a different understanding of authenticity than in architecture, due to the fact that the work can be reproduced independently by means of stage direction and script; another form of authorship lies here with the actors who contribute to the performance – literal actors, but also set designers, etc. – who together produce new realities through their interpretations. ²⁵ Stan Allen, Practice: Architecture, Technique and Representation (New York: Routledge, 2009), 45. In both cases, it is not a question of loss that happens in translating, but shedding light on what is not lost. ²⁶ Harry Collins, Tacit and Explicit Knowledge (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 10. I am talking about trust, which Pallasmaa does not mention, and which is a very important component that contributes to each actor not only developing their skills and undergoing personal growth, but also enjoying the potential to grow beyond themself, which in return can lead to an empathetic object or building. In the performing arts, interrelations between people – conditioned in particular by the ‘safe space’ of rehearsals with the team, crucial in each production to detach/free everyone from themself – produce, at best, trust, a condition that is also important for architectural production.

The volume Performance and Participation (2017), edited by Anna Harpin and Helen Nicholson, is concerned with the political relationship between performance and participation, and acknowledges that such terms are fraught with paradox in theatrical events. In fact, the term ‘participation’ is not used consistently in cultural and political vocabularies. In performance, participation is not necessarily a means, for ‘dramaturgical strategies carry specific political means or social imperatives’, nor can participation be equated with empowerment. ²⁷ Harpin and Nicholson, “Performance and Participation,” 3. There is a need to acknowledge different kinds of authorship within the process of developing and performing a play. This could lead to a shift in perception, with participation understood in various ways. The integration of human and non-human actors explores the practice of participation and thus explores the notions of agency, autonomy, and authority. The distinction between action/activity and assemblage can be drawn from the use of pronouns such as ‘I’, ‘we’, ‘you’, and ‘them’ in relation to the labels ‘human’ and ‘non-human’, which do not allow for collaboration/involvement and thus naturally exclude more-than-human relationalities. ²⁸ Ibid., 11–12. This shift from a (two-dimensional) collage to an (three-dimensional) assemblage could not only help provide insight in different modes of participation, but also create new narratives about participation in the feedback loop – of learning not about, but with, the environment.

As described earlier, knowing my own boundaries is a desired aim. If I now consider participation as being part of an assemblage rather than an activity, it becomes apparent that it is more than crucial to know how and to what extent material is also to participate with me. I argue that material has the ability to expose boundaries and to (de)code territories when evoking emotions in me. Considering material as a way of not only transgressing, but also recoding, my individual boundaries, leads back to Harpin and Nicholson’s implication of redefining authorship. In architecture, this could mean that architects are aware of the power of material and the impact on decision-making in different constellations through conscious engagement with materials. This could happen, for example, during model-making with model-makers, during model or sample presentations within the team or to the client, or when communities are involved in the production of building materials. A useful example of the latter is the collaborative process of selection of architectural ceramics in the Granby workshop in Liverpool facilitated by Assemble studios. ²⁹ See Assemble, “Granby Workshop 2015,” n.d., https://assemblestudio.co.uk/projects/granby-workshop (accessed March 1, 2023). A tactile way of engaging with objects/materials could offer the potential for sensory participation within the architectural design process – stepping back from the decision-making guided by rationality to give space to emotional and affective responses. In the performing arts, practitioners and researchers have developed tools to consider communicative practices such as looking, feeling, and listening that provide insights into how bodies give verbal and non-verbal signals. ³⁰ Holly Eva Ryan and Matthew Flinders, “From Senseless to Sensory Democracy: Insights from Applied and Participatory Theatre,” Politics 38, no. 2 (2018): 143. If architecture were to incorporate multisensory experiences into the design process, it would need to move away from rational/senseless actors and introduce emotion/subjectivity as factors worth acknowledging. The concept of ‘material dramaturgy’ could critically reveal unseen labour as well as unheard voices, and facilitate a connection to our surroundings: ‘viewing theatre in terms of the tectonic might remind us that while it is sometimes text-ile, it is always technical and tactile, since it is centred on the tangible materiality of performing bodies and/or objects’. ³¹ Juliet Rufford, Theatre and Architecture (London: Macmillan, 2015), 71. We could benefit from more exploration of the body, emotion, and the subjective as powerful agents in the construction of narrative and how this relies on material translation and the understanding of material.

Conclusion

What the entanglement of constructing imagination boils down to is a conscious coming together of a group of people, first inside, then outside the architectural studio, who communicate with each other verbally, where the non-verbal takes place on an implicit level. In the world of blueprints and other common phases of architectural projects, the visual is brought to the forefront of the conversation simply because the architect has learned to read and speak visually, but the client often has not. There are several layers in which communication also flows the other way, full of imaginary elements that take the time to respond to materials – such as a specific material being cold, or bending more than expected. Material acts here as a mediator, not as a representative, between the inside and outside of the body, of the architectural studio, of the client, the sub-consultants, and whoever else may be involved, and becomes a clear contributor in decision-making. Taking this into account explicitly could offer new ways of communicating and sharing what architects already know. Material has the capacity to bring feelings and emotions into the conversation, where many are so attracted by the way material looks, for instance, that they no longer check its function and correct application. There is a hierarchy of knowledge within the architectural studio because emotions are not trusted, which is what this text aims to highlight and open up. It is about the small stories that have to be trusted and the question of who takes the risk. My proposition is that a model, for instance, has the potential to be the kind of ‘safe space’ that theatre has during rehearsals, which allows feelings and emotions to be revealed in our communication, through material engagement.

Overall, I have discussed the inner and outer world of human and more-than-humans and the issue of the lack of a common language to describe where they encounter and affect each other. Coming back to the initially introduced concern of sharing needs and empathy in relation to architects’ boundaries, this essay suggests two areas of research worthy of attention. On the one hand, performance studies, which explores how emotional effects are charged, leads to the question of how creative architectural practice can engage with imagination and its associated actions in the way Pallasmaa refers to. On the other hand, there is the question of emotional effects, the presence of the body and material as a kind of scaffolding around which questions of ‘audience’ and ‘participation’ can play out. By highlighting the issue of bridging body and mind, this text suggests pushing boundaries by engaging with material and taking into account affect theory. The trust that comes from engaging with material, its affect, and emotions is of great importance for architectural practice and clearly deserves more attention. Concepts such as ‘complex systems’ can help redefine the architectural project as a whole. Whereas the proposed concept of ‘material dramaturgy’ is seen as a sustainable approach that encourages awareness of the imagination, senses, and emotions of humans and materials, both concepts enable greater levels of perception that incorporate subtle resonances in the design process.

Bibliography

Adamson, Glenn. Fewer, Better Things: The Hidden Wisdom of Objects. New York: Bloomsbury, 2018.
Adamson, Glenn. Thinking Through Craft. London: Bloomsbury, 2013.
Ahmed, Sara. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014.
Ahmed, Sara. “Happy Objects.” In The Affect Theory Reader, edited by Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth, 29–51. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010.
Allen, Stan. Practice: Architecture, Technique and Representation. New York: Routledge, 2009.
Barba, Eugenio, and Nicola Savarese. “Dramaturgy.” In A Dictionary of Theatre Anthropology: The Secret Art of the Performer, translated by Richard Fowler, 66–71. New York: Routledge, 1991.
Bauer, Petra, and Sofia Wiberg. “Rehearsals – On the Politics of Listening.” In Art and the F World: Reflections on the Browning of Europe, edited by Maria Lind, 267–86. Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2014.
Collins, Harry. Tacit and Explicit Knowledge. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010.
Conroy, Colette. Theatre and The Body. London: Red Globe Press, 2009.
Fischer-Lichte, Erika. Ästhetik des Performativen. Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2004.
Hale, Jonathan. Merleau-Ponty for Architects. Oxfordshire: Routledge, 2016.
Harpin, Anna, and Helen Nicholson, eds. Performance and Participation: Practices, Audiences, Politics. London: Palgrave, 2017.
Hill, Jonathan. “The immaterial and the material: An architectural dialogue in Time.” In Materiality and Architecture, edited by Sandra Loschke, 129–47. London: Routledge, 2016.
Hill, Jonathan. A Landscape of Architecture, History and Fiction. London: Routledge, 2015.
Hurley, Erin. Theatre and Feeling. London: Red Globe Press, 2010.
Ingold, Tim. Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture. London: Routledge, 2013.
Ingold, Tim. “Materials against Materiality.” Archaeological Dialogues 14 (2007): 1–16.
Lacey, Katey. Listening Publics: The Politics and Experience of Listening in the Media Age. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013.
Lasater, Judith Hanson, and Ike K. Lasater. What We Say Matters: Practicing Nonviolent Communication. Boulder, CO: Rodmell Press, 2009.
Lehmann, Ann-Sophie. “Material Literacy.” Bauhaus Magazin 9 (2017): 20–27.
Lehmann, Ann-Sophie. “Objektstunden: Vom Materialwissen zur Materialbildung.” In Materialität. Herausforderungen Für die Sozial- und Kulturwissenschaften, edited by Herbert Kalthoff, Torsten Cress and Tobias Röhl, 171–93. Paderborn: Fink Verlag, 2015.
Mediastika, Christina E. “Understanding empathic architecture.” Journal of Architecture and Urbanism 40, no. 1 (2016): 1.
Mosse, Ramona, and Anna Street. “To Be Like Water: Material Dramaturgies in Posthumanist Performance.” Journal of Contemporary Drama in English 10, no. 1 (2022): 116–32.
Pallasmaa, Juhani. The Thinking Hand: Existential and Embodied Wisdom in Architecture. Chichester: Wiley, 2009.
Polanyi, Michael. The Tacit Dimension. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967.
Robinson, Sarah. “Boundaries of Skin: John Dewey, Didier Anzieu and Architecture Possibility.” In Architecture and Empathy, edited by Philip Tidwell, 42–63. Espoo: Tapio Wirkkala-Rut Bryk Foundation, 2015.
Rufford, Juliet. Theatre and Architecture. London: Macmillan, 2015.
Ryan, Holly Eva and Matthew Flinders. “From Senseless to Sensory Democracy: Insights from Applied and Participatory Theatre.” Politics 38, no. 2 (2018): 133–47.
Schön, Donald A. The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. New York: Basic Books, 1983.
Turner, Cathy. Dramaturgy and Architecture: Theatre, Utopia and the Built Environment. London: Macmillan, 2015.
Yaneva, Albena. Five Ways to Make Architecture Political: An Introduction to the Politics of Design Practice. London: Bloomsbury, 2017.
Yaneva, Albena. Made by the Office for Metropolitan Architecture: An Ethnography of Design. Rotterdam: 010 Publisher, 2009.
Yaneva, Albena. “Missed Magic: Models and the Contagious Togetherness of Making Architecture.” e-flux architecture(September 13, 2022). https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/on-models/489649/missed-magic-models-and-the-contagious-togetherness-of-making-architecture/.