In the manifold spectrum of how tacit knowledge is part of the functioning and proceeding of architecture, this contribution aims to investigate its embeddedness in architects’ design processes by reflecting on the codes they employ.

The term ‘code’ is used in various disciplinary fields, in each of which it takes on a different meaning: in philology, a manuscript book; in law, a collection of regulations; in computer science, a set of strings (or symbols); in cryptography, a method for making a message intelligible; in semiotics, a field more akin to the interest of this research, a set of signs.

Although in the philosophy of language the definition of code still sees different interpretations, it is a widely-shared opinion ¹ See, for example, Roland Barthes, Elements of Semiology, trans. Annette Lavers and Colin Smith (New York: Hill & Wang, 1964);  Umberto Eco, A Theory of Semiotics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1976). that ‘the idea of code is affirmed to support the existence of a rule’ ² Eco, A Theory of Semiotics, 261. – or a norm suggested by experience or established by convention – serving to communicate such a rule. Yet, the difficulty in defining a code lies in the fact that most of the time, we are dealing with rules – abstract entities – which are primarily implicit. It is, therefore, not by chance that ‘the notion of code implies that of convention, [i.e.,] of social agreement’ ³ Ibid., 260. within a community.

From this perspective, for creative processes, rules can be seen as those implicit principles guiding the production within communities, such as a practice or movement, positioning them in the context in which they operate. Conceiving values as the ultimate objectives pursued through design, principles are rules, or the fundamental truths or theories that serve as the basis for a system of belief or behaviour, guiding actions and decisions. Codes are, therefore, the mode in which values and principles materialise.

In the field of art, to give but a few examples among many possible others, the Futurist movement translated its values, an interpretation of the industrial society at the beginning of twentieth century – the fascination for speed, technology, and ultimately the machine – into artworks attempting to simulate motion. The Arte Povera, introduced in Italy during the upheaval of the late 1960s, crystallised the rejection of cultural values associated with an organised and technologically advanced society by resorting to common materials such as earth, rocks, clothing, paper, and rope to make artworks. Similarly, Pop-Art epitomised the principles of mass society and the commodity-driven postwar era by employing a language borrowed from mass media, therefore often using commonplace objects as subject matter or as part of the work.

Time and time again in modern architecture, the shift of values was combined with a variation of principles and codes.Although initially a small community within a larger pool of beaux-art practitioners, their architecture has been able to interpret a new zeitgeist ⁴ Glenn Alexander Magee, The Hegel Dictionary (London: A & C Black, 2010), 262. by implementing in their buildings emerging construction technologies, challenging tradition in terms of style, and ultimately embracing a new lifestyle. Otto Wagner’s claim for functionalism ⁵ ‘Only that which is practical can be beautiful’. Quoted in August Sarnitz, Otto Wagner (Cologne: Taschen, 2018), 10. and Adolf Loos’s rejection of ornament embody early attempts to formalise the implicit principles of modern practice.

While Wagner and Loos articulated new principles for modern architecture, the publications of Le Corbusier seem to focus additionally on codes. In Five Points of Modern Architecture, ⁶ Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture, trans. Frederick Etchells (London: J. Rodker, 1931; New York: Dover Publications, 1985). an attempt to draft an alternative to the classical canon, the author translates into form and product a set of values he intends to express in his practice and, by extension, in his conception of modern architecture. Although Le Corbusier explicitly names his own codes, it is nonetheless interesting to note how others, like Colin Rowe in The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa, ⁷ Colin Rowe, “The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa: Palladio and Le Corbusier compared,” The Architectural Review (March 31, 1947), 101–04. point to the existence of implicit codes in Le Corbusier’s own practice, even denying his desire to break with the past by finding similarities with classical architecture.

Whether implicit or explicit, codes are cultural products, ⁸ Roland Barthes, S/Z , trans. Richard Miller (New York: Hill and Wang, 1974). or common ‘goods’ that are preserved, maintained, and developed by a plurality of design practitioners, craftsmen, and the like. ⁹ Dominic Power and Allen J. Scott, Cultural Industries and the Production of Culture (London: Routledge, 2004). Nevertheless, codification processes are conditioned by the context in which they take place, either propelling a change, or reiterating tradition as a means to address historical continuity. For example, the renewed sensibility for tradition, history, and ornament ¹⁰ See, for example, the decade-long magazine, San Rocco, founded in 2009 with the intention of dealing primarily with the history of architecture in the belief that there can be no genuine progress without a solid foundation; Make New History, the 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial curated by Mark Lee and Sharon Johnston; What is Ornament?, a section of the 2019 Lisbon Architecture Triennial curated by Ambra Fabi and Giovanni Piovene. that has characterised the 2010s in architecture can be seen as a counterreaction to iconicity – the search for spectacle and novelty – and the generic ¹¹ Rem Koolhaas, The Generic City (New York: The Monacelli Press, 1995). – the lack of identity and connection with the local context – which instead distinguished the turn of the millennium.

As confirmed by an extensive literature, ¹² See, among others, Stan Allen and Diana Agrest, Practice: Architecture, Technique and Representation (New York: Routledge, 2000); Petra Čeferin and Cvetka Požar, Architectural Epicentres: Inventing Architecture, Intervening in Reality (Ljubljana: Architecture Museum of Ljubljana, 2008); Donna Haraway, “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial. Perspectives,” Feminist Studies 14 (1988): 575–99; Courteny Foote, John Gatip, and Jil Raleigh, “Transdiciplinarity + Architectural Practice,” INFLECTION 3 (2016); John Law, “STS as Method” (Unpublished paper, The Open University, June 24, 2015); Albena Yaneva, Mapping Controversies in Architecture (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012). there is a high interdependence between codification processes, technological advancement, and economic conjuncture, shaping the zeitgeist. The modern architecture movement employed innovative, yet already existing, construction technologies – particularly concerning the use of metal, glass, and reinforced concrete – which induced the possibility of a stylistic renewal interpreting a new set of values.

In line with the idea that codes are entities that change over time, the latest economic crisis, followed by a multiplicity of other disruptions, ¹³ Adam Tooze, “Chartbook #130 Defining Polycrisis – from Crisis Pictures to the Crisis Matrix,” Chartbook, June 24, 2022, https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-130-defining-polycrisis. denotes a questioning of the very nature and ethics of building itself as characterising value. Contrary to the beginning of the twentieth century, the current lack of drastic change in constructive and material technologies highlights a disciplinary shift based on different principles embracing a critical attitude towards construction. Stemming from the assumption that every new edifice requires material extraction from the Earth – which not only destroys habitats but also produces a vast amount of CO2 – it has become of primary importance for a growing number of practitioners to consider the role that design plays in terms of ‘environmental degradation, social injustice, and climate crisis’. ¹⁴ Lev Bratishenko and Charlotte Malterre-Barthes, “How to: Do No Harm,” CCA, July 2022, https://www.cca.qc.ca/en/85366/how-to-do-no-harm. Formal–aesthetic issues move to the background, and instead the design and construction process, as well as acting with care, are valued. ¹⁵ Angelika Fitz and Elke Krasny, Critical Care: Architecture and Urbanism for a Broken Planet (Boston, MA: MIT Press, 2022).

In other words, we are witnessing a crucial transformation of a growing number of practitioners’ value sets that, at the same time, are unfolding new principles and codes, orienting practice towards a renewed interpretation of the contemporary.

Although implicit, the codes are manifest in discourse and language, as well as in the built environment. There is a shift from an idea of style that for a long time architects such as Adolf Loos, Le Corbusier, and Mies van der Rohe ¹⁶ Beatriz Colomina, Manifesto Architecture: The Ghost of Mies (London: Sternberg Press, 2014). expressed in the form of manifestos, to agendas, or the expression of a political stance of a practice, where the pursued values often transcend disciplinary boundaries and traditional concerns.

This is leading to a progressive and necessary openness to transdisciplinarity as a response to problems that transcend the architect’s role. For example, some are concerned about climate emergencies without being scientists, as Philippe Rahm’s office agenda entitled ‘Towards a Meteorological Architecture’ ¹⁷ Philippe Rahm, “Towards a Meteorological Architecture,” December 12, 2022, http://www.philipperahm.com/data/rahm-office.pdf. implies. Others address social injustices without being sociologists, as Forensic Architecture’s practice based on the investigation of human rights violations, or Adrian Lahoud’s 2019 Sharjah Biennial, which questioned the fundamental rights of the future generations, suggest. Finally, some are openly concerned about financial instabilities without being economists, as exemplified by Jack Self’s Real Estates ¹⁸ Jack Self, Real Estates (London: Bedford Press, 2014). publication, which explores property and ownership in neoliberal debt economies.

This represents a change in the work and the figure of the architect, who ‘is recast as a creative mediator, bridging between different forms of knowledge, seeking clarity amongst complexity, bringing together disparate communities, building and combining emotional power with pragmatic potential’. ¹⁹ Harriet Harriss, Rory Hyde, and Roberta Marcaccio, introduction to Architects After Architecture: Alternative Pathways for Practice, ed. Harriss, Hyde, and Marcaccio (London: Routledge, 2021), 9.

Such a change moves along the trajectories traced by earlier theorists and architects who, subverting the exclusive hold over architectural knowledge, redefined the canon by opening up productive new territories for the expansion of the discipline. The collection of essays, Architects After Architecture, ²⁰ Ibid., 16–22. describes several precedents in time, including Reyner Banham who, in Four Ecologies, ²¹ Reyner Banham, Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1971), 22. aimed to connect architecture to larger forces of landscape, ecology, and culture; Cedric Price who, by saying that ‘the quality of air conditioning is more important than the shape of a building’, went beyond form to technological systems, asking far more questions than giving answers; ²² Cedric Price, quoted in Harriss, Hyde, and Marcaccio, introduction to Architects After Architecture, 18. Frank Duffy who, in Architectural Knowledge (1997) defined architecture as ‘an inherently, idea-hungry, project-based, solution-oriented discipline, open-ended and systemic, capable of connecting anything with anything’; ²³ Francis Duffy, Architectural Knowledge (London: Routledge,1997), xiv. and, finally, Rem Koolhaas who, by founding the thinktank, AMO, aimed at liberating architecture from the obligation to build, conceiving architectural knowledge as a way of looking at the world inherently linked to other disciplines. ²⁴ Jon Goodbun and David Cunningham, “Interview: Rem Koolhaas and Reinier de Graaf,” Radical Philosophy 154 (March/April 2009): 35–47.

In this mutated context, the very idea of code expands beyond a mere stylistic crystallisation of a set of implicit principles and values towards codified processes embracing complexity, transdisciplinarity, and multiplicity. Contemporary codes seem to embed the uncertainty that characterises contemporary practice, which is confronted with challenges for which a coherent set of values and principles has not yet been outlined. Codes are therefore expressions of an attitude, ²⁵ Alice Rawsthorn, Design as an Attitude (Zurich: JRP | Ringier, 2018). or an attempt to translate into practice an agenda which responds to the current challenges of the discipline.

The Codes of an Architectural Practice and its Community

Architecture, by its nature, operates at the intersection of different domains of knowledge. On the one hand, the design is a response to complex sets of requirements from various fields; on the other, architecture is a layered discipline in which many professional profiles – even from very diverse fields – can co-exist. When it comes to practice, the design process can vary greatly depending on the cultural background of the architect. Education, professional networking, and overall personal experience have a significant impact upon how one works and communicates, on the lexicon, on references, as well as on the overall sense of aesthetics. All these variables certainly determine the design approach, the cultural interest in terms of background and trajectory of development (viz. the type of projects one undertakes), and ultimately the codes of a type of practice.

In choosing a particular design approach, by associating themselves with a particular community, values, principles, and codes, architects position themselves within a field of practitioners: similarities determine proximity among different practices and, ultimately, the definition of a community of practice which reflects in collaborations, whether professional or academic, as well as participating in occasions of encounters such as perennial exhibitions and mutual acknowledgments.

When the underlying values and principles are similar – for instance, when practitioners share educational and training backgrounds, experiences of collaborative projects, as well as common references and even interests acquired from having worked together – they often result in mutually held codes in architectural practice, establishing communities of practice. In other words, once again we could say that codes exist by reason of a community of practice. However, in a single historical period, several communities of practice co-exist, thus implying the presence of several systems of codes.

In design practice, codes are transmitted between various actors through vectors such as drawings, sketches, texts, models, etc. In this sense, if the vectors represent the tools, or the communicative materials used for transmission itself, the codes are those characters – whether in the form of recurring patterns or aesthetic choices, technical solutions, vocabulary, etc. – that define the specificity of a practice. They are described as the DNA of an office, ²⁶ And not just of its principal, as Rem Koolhaas argues: see Anna Winston, “Zaha Hadid Architects should follow example of McQueen, says Rem Koolhaas,” Dezeen, May 14, 2006, https://www.dezeen.com/2016/05/14/zaha-hadid-architects-should-follow-example-of-mcqueen-says-rem-koolhaas/. which reverberates in the discourse of its community. The implicit set of values and principles, or the rules which crystallise in the epitomic codes of a practice – and, therefore, in the use of idiosyncratic vectors – emerge in tacit yet evident forms.

It is the boldness ²⁷ Albena Yaneva, Made by the Office for Metropolitan Architecture: An Ethnography of Design (Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 2009), 86; Christina Pazzanese, “Koolhaas Sees Architecture as Timid,” Harvard Gazette, October 6, 2016, https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2016/10/koolhaas-on-the-politics-of-architecture/; Oliver Wainwright, “Rem Koolhaas’s De Rotterdam: Cut and Paste Architecture,” The Guardian, November 18, 2013, https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/nov/18/rem-koolhaas-de-rotterdam-building. of OMA (Office for Metropolitan Architecture) that translates into excessive and provocative statements, large books with grainy full-bleed images, buildings with regular geometric shapes whose massing comes from blue foam models, and a direct and straightforward language, almost journalistic. ²⁸ Yaneva, Made by the Office for Metropolitan Architecture. Lacaton & Vassal’s architecture emerges through rough economic materials of the immediate context and innovative technical solutions, and their particular code can be characterised as anti-heroism, ordinariness, and pragmatism. ²⁹ Juan Herreros, “Nothing Exceptional. Seven Approaches Reconsidered in the Work of Lacaton & Vassal,” El Croquis 177/178 (2017): .   Finally, Dogma’s rigor – an expression of political rejection of iconic architecture, understood to be a product of neoliberalism – results in academic-scientific texts, clear black/white wireframe 2D drawings, and simple, rational, and symmetrical architectures. ³⁰ Alejandro Zaera-Polo, “Well Into the 21st Century: The Architectures of Post-Capitalism,” El Croquis 187 (2016): 252–88.

These are, of course, simplifications, yet it is indicative that time and time again these characteristic codes appear in a specific choice for particular vectors. Verbal and written communication is limited by definition, since the values behind it are implicit or even unconscious. No matter how deep a practice may be observed from the outside, for an accurate understanding of its codes it is necessary to unravel the implicit principles that guide its agenda and working method.

Codification Processes, or Multiple Level of Codes in Architecture

Semiotics, understood as ‘the study of signs and symbols, and their meaning and use’, ³¹ Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “Semiotics,” accessed August 31, 2023, https://www.oed.com/dictionary/semiotic_adj?tab=meaning_and_use. can offer an interpretative frame to uncover codes in architectural practice. The assumptions, or rather the hypotheses, outlined below are, in fact, informed by semiotics. In this sense, codes, in order to be communicated, are transmitted through a language that is not only verbal, ³² Nigel Cross, Designerly Ways of Knowing: Design Discipline Versus Design Science (New York: Basic Books, 1984). but capable of adapting to the context within which it is shared.

Jargon, ³³ ‘Words or expressions that are used by a particular profession or group of people, and are difficult for others to understand’: Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “Jargon,” accessed August 31, 2023, https://www.oed.com/dictionary/jargon_n1?tab=meaning_and_use. understood as the most intimate kind of communication, plays an important role in the transmission of codes in architecture culture. It serves to communicate what Nigel Cross calls embodied knowledge, ³⁴ Cross, Designerly Ways of Knowing. made up of the office’s own past experiences, design solutions, a specific vocabulary, established references, etc. Jargon evolves and enriches over time, both in response to new endeavours a practice undertakes and because of the contribution of new members who, in turn, bring and share their own backgrounds and know-how. It is a transmission based on codification processes conveyed through tacit forms of knowledge emerging in everyday practice, which constitutes the backbone of the idiosyncratic way of designing of an office.

Such jargon can be either in the form of specific language – as in the common expression of Superdutch, ‘make it bold!’ exclaimed to encourage daring and acting out of the box – or in referring to the firm’s past projects. Indeed, during the design process, it is common practice to refer to one’s projects, each incorporating a precise idea, aesthetic, materialisation, approach, etc. In this sense, just mentioning a title avoids any additional explanation necessary for internal understanding. A similar tendency is to refer to projects of others which, whether old or contemporary, belong to a practice’s common ground, ensuring immediate understanding.

On another level, when these idiosyncratic codes need to be transmitted externally, the language seems to adapt to the context and audience. In the case of interaction with practices and practitioners who share a similar project culture, collective tacit knowledge, ³⁵ Harry Collins, Tacit & Explicit Knowledge (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 119–27. or a shared implicit knowledge, helps to understand the jargon of the practice. Within a milieu – or a group with similar cultural positioning and interests within a larger community of practice – it is possible to establish a long-lasting collaboration that can span from working together on project, in academia or even in more ambitious intellectual endeavours such as founding a magazine.

On the other hand, on those occasions where mixed design cultures encounter one another, the language necessarily tends to be simplified. Continuing with the linguistic metaphor, it is as if the jargon needs to adapt to a standard language. ³⁶ From Jack Croft Richards and Richard W. Schmidt, Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics (London: Pearson Education Limited, 2010): ‘a language variety that has undergone substantial codification of grammar and usage’. One can think of any Venice Biennial curatorial statement which, given the size and, therefore, the participation of practices belonging to different communities, is always rather vague and general, leaving freedom of interpretation.

Finally, the transmission of codes to outsiders to the discipline – i.e., builders, clients, non-architectural press, the general public, etc. – would require a further simplification in order to be understood. In these cases, communication occurs almost by slogans to convey the message most effectively without going into the depths of the issues. As illustration, it is enough to think of the tone used in articles concerning architecture and design in generalist newspapers.

Studying the way that codes function in architectural culture comes with a set of methodological challenges. On the one hand, public occasions offer one way to observe the role that codes play in a broader field. Among public occasions, exhibitions especially are considered the most effective because, given the heterogeneity of content and formats, they demand synthesis and clarity. On these occasions, codes are deciphered: through the recurrence of concepts and keywords expressed in a concise yet straightforward manner; in the use of representation as a means to convey a positioning within the discipline; and in the employment of specific materials and formats as a political choice.
On the other hand, the more intimate use of codes in architectural culture requires a method of close observation and ethnographic study. Looking in real-time and without any mediation at direct sources – such as communication materials produced by the office itself (drawings, models, text), discussions between the different members of the firm and/or external interlocutors, and the final outputs (whether architectural artifacts, installations, texts, etc.) – is considered essential in order to reveal how the implicit values of a practice are transferred into form through a collective process mediated by multiple actors. Simultaneously, how the same information is communicated externally, including at exhibitions, must also be examined.

That said, the different types of code naturally depend on each other. Coding processes are necessarily conditioned by the context in which they occur, where a mix of agents – both human and non-human ³⁷ Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor–Network–Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). – influence and consolidate the tacit knowledge inherent to a practice. Hence, although capable of changing over time, such knowledge relies on the specific assemblage of codes characterising an office. At the same time, a code is the contribution that each firm provides in shaping its community of practice, whose shared knowledge unfolds through exchanges and encounters.

More precisely, it could be said that tacit knowledge exists at two levels: first, within an office, serving as basic unit for the establishment of a community of practice; second, within a milieu, acting as an extended community of practice based on a shared tacit knowledge that encompasses multiple offices, extending to closer external collaborators such as engineers, craftsmen, etc.

From this perspective, it can be assumed that the very concept of a community of practice is ‘elastic’, able to stretch among individuals with different degrees of understanding of a shared tacit knowledge. In this sense, it does not delineate a group in a fixed manner; on the contrary, it can represent different sets of individuals sharing a similar degree of tacit knowledge. The community of practice can thus be at the scale of the firm, of a firm extended to its external collaborators, or of a group of firms. What characterises the implicit dimension of such shared tacit knowledge is the immediacy in exchanges among individuals. Codes serve as a means to ‘imply’, avoiding oral or written language, yet expressing concepts and nuances which are often difficult to verbalise with accuracy.

Existing at multiple levels of communication, from practice to general debate, codes manifest in different forms, from verbal to visual. Due to their instrumental nature, they are the most visible side of tacit knowledge, serving as an entry point to access the implicit dimension of the principles and values they stand for.

The study of codes, in this sense, if referring to contemporary practice, can be a useful tool at different levels: for practitioners, in providing insights for a conscious use of tacit knowledge during the design process and in its communication outside the practice per se; for architectural critics, in offering an uncharted knowledge, a theoretical framework, and different categories of interpretation of the architectural production; and for pedagogy, in opening up a reflection on architecture terminology that highlights the emergence of a new set of concepts, notions, and vocabulary.

Precisely because codes are constantly evolving, their study may never be concluded. While the past ones represent keys to interpret the story, and present codes operational tools, it would be interesting to closely observe them in the making to draft possible futures for the architectural discipline.

Bibliography

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1. See, for example, Roland Barthes, Elements of Semiology, trans. Annette Lavers and Colin Smith (New York: Hill & Wang, 1964);  Umberto Eco, A Theory of Semiotics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1976).
2. Eco, A Theory of Semiotics, 261.
3. Ibid., 260.
4. Glenn Alexander Magee, The Hegel Dictionary (London: A & C Black, 2010), 262.
5. ‘Only that which is practical can be beautiful’. Quoted in August Sarnitz, Otto Wagner (Cologne: Taschen, 2018), 10.
6. Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture, trans. Frederick Etchells (London: J. Rodker, 1931; New York: Dover Publications, 1985).
7. Colin Rowe, “The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa: Palladio and Le Corbusier compared,” The Architectural Review (March 31, 1947), 101–04.
8. Roland Barthes, S/Z , trans. Richard Miller (New York: Hill and Wang, 1974).
9. Dominic Power and Allen J. Scott, Cultural Industries and the Production of Culture (London: Routledge, 2004).
10. See, for example, the decade-long magazine, San Rocco, founded in 2009 with the intention of dealing primarily with the history of architecture in the belief that there can be no genuine progress without a solid foundation; Make New History, the 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial curated by Mark Lee and Sharon Johnston; What is Ornament?, a section of the 2019 Lisbon Architecture Triennial curated by Ambra Fabi and Giovanni Piovene.
11. Rem Koolhaas, The Generic City (New York: The Monacelli Press, 1995).
12. See, among others, Stan Allen and Diana Agrest, Practice: Architecture, Technique and Representation (New York: Routledge, 2000); Petra Čeferin and Cvetka Požar, Architectural Epicentres: Inventing Architecture, Intervening in Reality (Ljubljana: Architecture Museum of Ljubljana, 2008); Donna Haraway, “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial. Perspectives,” Feminist Studies 14 (1988): 575–99; Courteny Foote, John Gatip, and Jil Raleigh, “Transdiciplinarity + Architectural Practice,” INFLECTION 3 (2016); John Law, “STS as Method” (Unpublished paper, The Open University, June 24, 2015); Albena Yaneva, Mapping Controversies in Architecture (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012).
13. Adam Tooze, “Chartbook #130 Defining Polycrisis – from Crisis Pictures to the Crisis Matrix,” Chartbook, June 24, 2022, https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-130-defining-polycrisis.
14. Lev Bratishenko and Charlotte Malterre-Barthes, “How to: Do No Harm,” CCA, July 2022, https://www.cca.qc.ca/en/85366/how-to-do-no-harm.
15. Angelika Fitz and Elke Krasny, Critical Care: Architecture and Urbanism for a Broken Planet (Boston, MA: MIT Press, 2022).
16. Beatriz Colomina, Manifesto Architecture: The Ghost of Mies (London: Sternberg Press, 2014).
17. Philippe Rahm, “Towards a Meteorological Architecture,” December 12, 2022, http://www.philipperahm.com/data/rahm-office.pdf.
18. Jack Self, Real Estates (London: Bedford Press, 2014).
19. Harriet Harriss, Rory Hyde, and Roberta Marcaccio, introduction to Architects After Architecture: Alternative Pathways for Practice, ed. Harriss, Hyde, and Marcaccio (London: Routledge, 2021), 9.
20. Ibid., 16–22.
21. Reyner Banham, Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1971), 22.
22. Cedric Price, quoted in Harriss, Hyde, and Marcaccio, introduction to Architects After Architecture, 18.
23. Francis Duffy, Architectural Knowledge (London: Routledge,1997), xiv.
24. Jon Goodbun and David Cunningham, “Interview: Rem Koolhaas and Reinier de Graaf,” Radical Philosophy 154 (March/April 2009): 35–47.
25. Alice Rawsthorn, Design as an Attitude (Zurich: JRP | Ringier, 2018).
26. And not just of its principal, as Rem Koolhaas argues: see Anna Winston, “Zaha Hadid Architects should follow example of McQueen, says Rem Koolhaas,” Dezeen, May 14, 2006, https://www.dezeen.com/2016/05/14/zaha-hadid-architects-should-follow-example-of-mcqueen-says-rem-koolhaas/.
27. Albena Yaneva, Made by the Office for Metropolitan Architecture: An Ethnography of Design (Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 2009), 86; Christina Pazzanese, “Koolhaas Sees Architecture as Timid,” Harvard Gazette, October 6, 2016, https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2016/10/koolhaas-on-the-politics-of-architecture/; Oliver Wainwright, “Rem Koolhaas’s De Rotterdam: Cut and Paste Architecture,” The Guardian, November 18, 2013, https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/nov/18/rem-koolhaas-de-rotterdam-building.
28. Yaneva, Made by the Office for Metropolitan Architecture.
29. Juan Herreros, “Nothing Exceptional. Seven Approaches Reconsidered in the Work of Lacaton & Vassal,” El Croquis 177/178 (2017): .
30. Alejandro Zaera-Polo, “Well Into the 21st Century: The Architectures of Post-Capitalism,” El Croquis 187 (2016): 252–88.
31. Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “Semiotics,” accessed August 31, 2023, https://www.oed.com/dictionary/semiotic_adj?tab=meaning_and_use.
32. Nigel Cross, Designerly Ways of Knowing: Design Discipline Versus Design Science (New York: Basic Books, 1984).
33. ‘Words or expressions that are used by a particular profession or group of people, and are difficult for others to understand’: Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “Jargon,” accessed August 31, 2023, https://www.oed.com/dictionary/jargon_n1?tab=meaning_and_use.
34. Cross, Designerly Ways of Knowing.
35. Harry Collins, Tacit & Explicit Knowledge (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 119–27.
36. From Jack Croft Richards and Richard W. Schmidt, Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics (London: Pearson Education Limited, 2010): ‘a language variety that has undergone substantial codification of grammar and usage’.
37. Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor–Network–Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).