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Accepted Paper:

Air apparent: a manifesto on spatial indeterminacy  
Amy Kulper (University of Michigan)

Paper short abstract:

If we embrace the manifesto’s perennial futurological bent and pair it with an emerging tendency in material culture to be thing-centric, how would a manifesto articulate the coming into being of something immaterial, like air?

Paper long abstract:

Preserved in the etymology of the term 'manifesto' is a legal connotation related to the act of entering something into evidence. In his 1978 text Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan architect, Rem Koolhaas, opines, "The fatal weakness of manifestos is their inherent lack of evidence." Koolhaas is alluding to the projective or anticipatory structure of the manifesto - the promise of things to come - and with the idea of the retroactive manifesto, theorizing what is already there (in this case Manhattan) becomes the new mandate. But if we embrace the manifesto's perennial futurological bent and pair it with an emerging tendency in material culture to be thing-centric, how would a manifesto articulate the coming into being of something immaterial, like air?

The discipline of architecture is currently in a frenzied quest for tools, methods and techniques to ensure the generation of unique formal projects. But rather than a tool, technique or method, can the same results be garnered from an immaterial material - air - and a textual format that continuously anticipates the emergence of things - the manifesto? If air is 'impression without presence,' then as a material in the architect's palette can it transcend known outcomes producing architectures of indeterminacy? This manifesto will disprove the old maxim that you can't get something for (or from) nothing.

Panel S33
Manifestos for materials
  Session 1