Zoom：813 5410 0549
813 5410 0549
This lecture draws upon work I am doing with architecture design students on remapping the Neo-Avant-Garde, through Utopia, toward anarchist spatial practises, informed by Bloch, Adorno, Lefebvre, Colin Ward, and DIY (amongst other sources inside and outside of architecture). The talk charts the trajectory of my thinking on architecture and the city, and teaching in design studios, from architectural neo-avant-gardes, through Utopia, toward anarchist spatial practises. If utopian studies primarily engage in a hermeneutics by which the relative utopianness of cultural expressions is ascertained, inventing anarchist spatial practises pushes beyond interpretation and method, toward action, at once pragmatic, insurgent, and anticipatory but ever informed by critical historical perspectives.
Nathaniel Coleman, PhD (University of Pennsylvania), is Reader in History and Theory of Architecture at Newcastle University, UK. He leads design studios and theory seminars, concentrating on the limits and possibilities of the neo-avant-gardes. He is currently researching anarchist spatial practises as a means of reconstructing architecture as a discipline. His books include Materials and Meaning in Architecture: Essays on the Bodily Experience of Buildings (Bloomsbury, 2020), Lefebvre for Architects (Routledge, 2015), Utopias and Architecture (Routledge, 2005), and as editor, Imagining and Making the World: Reconsidering Architecture and Utopia (Peter Lang, 2011). His most recent publication, a book chapter, is, ‘Rehabilitating Operative Criticism: The Return of Theory against Entrepreneurialism’ (Routledge, 2023).
1. Nathaniel Coleman, Materials and Meaning in Architecture: Essays on the Bodily Experience of Buildings, Bloomsbury, 2020.
2. Nathaniel Coleman, Lefebvre for Architects, Routledge, 2015.
3. Nathaniel Coleman, Utopias and Architecture, Routledge, 2005.
4. Ruth Levitas, Utopia as Method: The Imaginary Reconstitution of Society, Palgrave/Macmillan, 2013.
5. Tom Moylan, Becoming Utopian: The Culture and Politics of Radical Transformation, Bloomsbury, 2022.
6. Lyman Tower Sargent, Utopianism, A Very Short Introduction, Oxford, 2010.
