Classical architecture in the scope of Kantian aesthetics: Between Lyotard and Rancière

Classical architecture's inherent potentiality to constitute the principal architectural expression of western culture since Greek antiquity is due to its dual character: although it comes out from the primordial unity of things expressed by myth and religion in archaic times, it acquires its form of completion in the fifth c. BC, as a symbol of democracy and a harmonic articulation of the world on the ground of philosophical thinking. By placing the avant-guard art in the sphere of the Kantian sublime, Jean-Francois Lyotard focuses on the impossibility of an absolute relation between reason and perception or between thinking and image, in modernity. He considers that in cases where this happens, it gives birth to political monsters. He connects postmodern expressions of classicism in architecture with Freud's "Interpretation of Dreams" and the Kantian beautiful. Jacques Ranciere's approach to a Kantian in basis aesthetic consideration of modernity is opposite to that proposed by Lyotard. Instead of the sublime, Ranciere relates the beautiful with the rupture between thinking and perception . In this respect, fragments of the past can stimulate a creative procedure in the present. This investigation aims to contribute to the dialogue for a renovated approach to the role of classicism in architecture today.

Collective thought-action: On lecture performances, transmedia knowledge and designing possible worlds

The election of Donald Trump has exposed a politics of resentment dividing rural and urban populations, as well as communities and colleges. This division stretches back to Plato's Academy. When Plato threw the poets out of the Republic, he banished practices such as poetry, music, and dance from the realm of true, epistemic knowledge, which he opposed to doxa or common knowledge. Centuries later, this opposition would shape European colonialism's approach to indigenous life worlds, whose "primitive" rituals, myths, and fetishes would confront the "civilized" methods, histories, and objects of Western knowledge. These same oppositions structure ideological critiques of popular culture. However, the emergence of lecture performances, theory rap, and info comics within twenty-first century research universities suggests that traditional knowledge production is under stress inside and outside the academy. Emerging is a transmedia knowledge that engages different audiences by mixing episteme and doxa. At stake here: the role of aesthetics in post-disciplinary societies of control and in resistant modes of collective thought-action. Across both the arts and sciences, scholars worldwide are turning to transmedia knowledge not simply for communication but also for co-creation of research. Here transmedia knowledge can function as civic discourse and as a conduit of a generalized aesthetics.

Buildings speak to us

Starting with a critical view of the general architectural and urban structures of today my paper will present buildings comparable to the body, thus their expression and the meanings they invoke will be presented as a language of form that affect the behavior and psychology of urban residents. Referring to the architectural criticisms of George Bataille, it is argued that the physicality of buildings are valuable insofar as they transcend materiality and lead to symbols and spirituality. Buildings are viewed as presenting different characteristics and attitudes depending on their form. Architecture is also viewed as the product of labour and thus a communal creation that has its roots in the origins of human culture. Each different institution has evolved historically from different senses becoming cultural articulations and resulting in architectures that connect people in enjoyment of shared interests. It is further argued that urban and spatial forms that are confusing as to their boundaries and appertainance can cause confusion and negative reactions. Thus it is important that urban forms' language is positive and clear.

Architecture as a tool for aesthetic and political thought

Despite the usual approach of architecture in terms of conception, design and construction of the built environment in our paper we will argue that architecture can be used as a tool for aesthetic and political thought. To this end we will rely on definitions of architecture emphasising either its aspects of principle (arché) or construction either its relational character. In this regard, architecture will be used as a means for conceptualising and thinking issues at the intersection of the two pivotal notions of political theory - equality and justice. Our main hypothesis will be that in the contemporary aesthetic regime the thought of aesthetics is indissosiable from politics endorsing in that way the main aspects of Jacques Rancière's relevant contributions. In our analysis, we will first show the affinity between the political and aesthetic thought and then elaborate on aspects of architecture such as scale, type, form, diagram, history and hierarchy in order to show the functioning of architecture as a tool of thought. To this end we will provide a solid scheme and definitions of thought drawing from contemporary philosophy. By establishing analogies between the process of thought and the processes of architecture we will eventually attempt to show that architecture can be used in an inverted manner so as to shed light on matters of aesthetic and political theory and practice.

Architecture as a textual phenomenon: Alexander Brodsky's architectural practices of appropriation

This paper analyses architecture created through appropriating existing materials while focusing on strategies of intertextuality. It argues that the meaning of an architectural object does not derive from itself, or its poetic concepts, but rather from its relationship with other architectural objects, other art works as texts, cultural texts, and everyday practices. My aim is to show various theoretical problems of the theory of architecture and art, which as a network of overlapping texts of culture, surround the architectural production of Alexander Brodsky. Here I use different and varied theoretical concepts, selecting two case studies by Brodsky - The Pavilion for Vodka Ceremonies and Rotunda-upon which the paper is based as an interdiscursive study.

Architectural work of Aleksandar Deroko: Beauty of emotional creativity

This paper studies significant and forgotten, but not less important, built and unrealised designs by Serbian architect Aleksandar Deroko. It seeks to achieve a continuous view in dealing with Deroko`s architectural work versus the historical discontinuity of political, territorial-geographic and social circumstances. It is impossible to separate Deroko as an architect from Deroko as a scholar, researcher, historian of architecture and art, an academic professor, painter, artist, writer, chronicler of his time, protector, conservator and historiographer of Serbian cultural heritage. The main aim of this paper is to apply comprehensive research approach within which his work in the field of architectural design will be considered in a complementary and pluralistic way. Deroko's architectural projects examined in their details and altogether represent distillate of Deroko's erudite personality, which casts shadow on relevant questions of Serbian history of architecture placement: How to understand it, observe and examine it, from Yugoslav or Serbian perspective, from the position of continuity or discontinuity, through characteristics of general or particular?

Aleksandar Deroko: Between tradition and modernity

Although numerous writings by professor Aleksandar Deroko raise essential questions about nature, history, and methodology of architecture, he never provided a systematic theory, and his assertions did not belong to any mainstream architectural discourse. However, his romantic visions of remote, medieval monasteries and their origin on one hand, and on the other, the rational and methodical approach to heritage surveying evident in both his early texts and later architectural textbooks, resulted in some very novel theoretical ideas in architecture of the twentieth century. This paper examines the understanding of the tradition and modernity in the work of professor Deroko, investigates reasons behind his duality, explores the way he synthesised his research work with his pedagogical work, and tries to systematise his theoretical ideas.

Introduction of Vernacular Architecture studies at the Faculty of Architecture in Belgrade

The paper examines the work of Aleksandar Deroko at the University of Belgrade's Faculty of Architecture and the inclusion of his rich personal knowledge about the vernacular architecture in the study programme, which he gained from long-term field research. As an assistant professor, he introduced the interpretation of vernacular architecture in the course on Byzantine and Old Serbian Architecture in 1929. After the study programme reform in 1935, a new course - named Old Serbian Architecture - was established, with one semester dedicated to the medieval monumental architecture and the second to rural and urban houses. In 1945/46 academic year, the course was renamed Vernacular Architecture and it incorporated medieval and vernacular architecture of the former Yugoslavia. Practical assignments dealt more with vernacular architecture and, through them the student's discovered the fundamental principles and methods of the vernacular construction. The goal of the studies was for students to comprehend and adopt basic traditional canons of construction and apply them to their own projects of cooperative centers, countryside schools, monasteries, etc. Through illustrations the paper will present, till now unpublished, student projects from the archives of Belgrade's the Faculty of Architecture's office for the architectural heritage of Serbia.

From the Big Mac and Ikea society to the environmental aesthetics, smart cities and storytelling architecture

Our global society is encountering different challenges of the twentyfirst century. Our cities are in the process of constant transformation influenced by urbanisation, globalisation, advanced technologies, environmental and ecological changes, social, political and economic crises. While corporative capitalism has flourished, world population is growing and our cities are sprawling, architecture is reaching almost utopian visions and the boundaries of aesthetics are becoming more and more loose and permeable. Today our contemporary society lives and acts aesthetically. From art, architecture, music, religion, politics, communication, technological gadgets, homes, gardens, clothes, cuisine to sport and life coaching, everything is a subject to aesthetical consideration. Aesthetical consideration of architecture and urbanism in a constantly changing world demands critical and interactive approaches, that will not only deal with theoretical aesthetic opinions, but also the practical ones. Accordingly, this paper seeks to discuss aesthetical problems of contemporary architecture and urban planning from global, environmental, technological and social points of view. Nature is no longer seen as a paradigmatic object of aesthetic experience, but as our unique collective environment upon which we humans depend. Therefore architecture emerges etic and aesthetic approaches in order to reconsider burden of our cities and possible ways of their future development.

Aesthetics of sustainability: Capsule architecture in the city and in nature

Architecture of minimum dwellings has been a hot topic recently. When minimum dwellings are compact, well-equipped, connected to the network, structurally, functionally and visually recognized as one thing, temporary and mobile or transportable, they may be designated as capsule architecture. Temporary by nature, these small dwellings, shelters, redesigned container units, special technological structures, parasites and other manifestations of the capsules concept encompass the logic of technological facilities with a distinct architectural expression. At the same time, it is a manifestation of the rule of sustainable design, sustainable architecture and sustainability in general. In this context, the case of small dwellings shows its difference as opposed to other sustainable architecture approaches and aesthetics. It subverts the generally sustainable approaches with exposed importance of locality within the global forces, usually relying on context - location, local culture and environmental characteristics, etc. The aesthetic regime of temporary, changeable, a-contextual and autonomous architectural structures can be regarded as an aesthetics of otherness, which relates them to the legacy of the Modern movement's existenzminimum experiments, the New Brutalism, radical experiments of the 1960s and other avantgarde and NEO-avantgarde practices of the twentieth century, but firmly placed in the context of individualized, indeterminate, dispersed and ambiguous contemporaneity.