This thesis proposes a radical material design philosophy that embodies the 21st century agendas implicit in our ecological crisis. It identifies a new technological platform to underpin forms of making that do not damage the potency of our world but enhance it. By asserting the lively nature of matter and the technological character of the natural world, described as Millennial Nature, the material realm is given a voice through process philosophy and the language of chemistry to forge lively, complex bodies, which are recognized as new forms of architecture. Spatial programs that shape fertile metabolic networks and post natural fabrics produce such ‘vibrant architectures’. Key to my research is the establishment of a new technological platform in the operationalization of ‘assemblages’, which are active groupings of lively bodies that are applied in a series of prototypes and projects. These are developed experimentally using lively chemistries in the laboratory, field and speculatively through project work such as, ‘Vibrant Venice’, which proposes to grow an artificial limestone reef underneath the foundations of the city. My research suggests that the theory and practice of vibrant architecture enables architects to codesign in partnership with human and non-human collectives and to produce buildings that enhance biotic environments through the construction of post natural landscapes. While the concepts and technologies are at their earliest stages of development, the realization of vibrant architecture could completely change our ideas about sustainability, which is no longer recognized as a better form of industrialization, but is transformed into an ecological platform for human development that augments the liveliness of our planet, rather than diminishes it.

This thesis investigates the art and architecture scene in post-war Vienna to ask how this can inform our understanding of architectural Postmodernism. It specifically focuses on the various outputs of the Austrian artist and architect, Hans Hollein, and on his appropriation as a Postmodernist. The study’s background in post-war Austria belongs within a context of re-education initiatives by the Allied forces, especially from the USA. But within an Austrian culture still steeped in Catholicism, American practices like abstract expressionism, action painting and art happenings were transformed unrecognisably. One such outcome, Viennese Aktionism, directly affected thinking about architecture through the ‘performance environments’ that were created. In Vienna, the circles of radical art and architecture were not distinct, and Hollein’s claim that ‘Everything is Architecture’ was symptomatic of this intermixing of practices. Austria's proximity to the Iron Curtain, and its post-war history of four-power occupation gave a heightened sense of menace that emerged strongly in Viennese art. Seen as a collective entity, Hollein’s works across architecture, art, writing, exhibition design and publishing require a more diverse, complex and nuanced account of architectural Postmodernism than that offered by critics at the time. Here Hollein's outputs are viewed not as individual projects for appropriation by architectural critics according to their various agendas, but as a symptomatic of Austria's attempts to come to terms with its Nazi past and to establish a post-war identity. While Hollein's concerns with the obsolescence of built architecture and its replacement by mass media corresponded in certain respects with those of Postmodernism, in other respects they were rooted in the sometimes violent, abusive and self-destructive practices of the Austrian avant-garde and its attitudes towards politics, religion, technology, infrastructure, advertisements and sex. If these are to be included within the postmodern canon, then the criteria of Postmodernism require substantial revision.

In this thesis I have explored some of the ways in which the contexts of epistemology, ethics and designing architecture are each concerned with undecidable questions (that is, with those questions that have no right answers). Drawing on design research, second‐order cybernetics and radical constructivism, I have understood this undecidability to follow in each case from our being part of the situation in which we are acting. This idea is primarily epistemological (being part of the world we observe, we cannot verify the relationship between our understanding and the world beyond our experience as it is impossible to observe the latter) but can also be interpreted spatially and ethically. From this starting point I have developed connections between questions in architecture, epistemology and ethics in two parallel investigations. In the first, I have proposed a connection between design and ethics where design is understood as an activity in which ethical questioning is implicit. Rather than the usual application of ethical theory to practice, I have instead proposed that design can inform ethical thinking, both in the context of designing architecture and also more generally, through (1) the ways designers approach what Rittel (1972) called “wicked problems” (which, I argue, have the same structure as ethical dilemmas) and (2) the implicit consideration of others in design’s core methodology. In parallel to this I have explored the spatial sense of the idea that we are part of the world through a series of design investigations comprising projects set in everyday situations and other speculative drawings. Through these I have proposed reformulating the architectural theme of place, which is usually associated with phenomenology, in constructivist terms as the spatiality of observing our own observing and so as where the self‐reference of epistemology (that we cannot experience the world beyond our experience) becomes manifest.

This thesis explores the role of archival research in the design process, and especially in relation to the notion of multiple interpretations. The argument further establishes that architectural design can be informed by an innovative working method of archival research that is precise and exploits the potential afforded by multiple interpretations which are apparent and latent in archives. Here, archival research highlights specific issues concerning site studies, the role of authorship, the process of conservation in relation to use, as well as control over the presentation of the subject matter, and consequently demonstrates the significance of these issues to architectural design. The consideration and compilation of these issues form the main body of the thesis which simultaneously works as an archive. The interest in multiple interpretations is also explored in conjunction with the notion of allegory. This method develops Peter Bürger’s theory on ‘nonorganic’ works of art, which includes a study of Walter Benjamin’s analysis of Baroque allegory. Allegory in a nonorganic work of art emphasises a discursive and critical practice that enables multiple and contrasting ideas in the work to be made apparent. The thesis proposition explores an allegorical and nonorganic reconstruction of a sixteenth-century portrait of Queen Elizabeth I, currently displayed at the National Portrait Gallery in London. While the Tudor portrait originally used didactic allegory to yield different readings radiating from, and referring to, one source, exploring it as a nonorganic work further allows participation to such an extent that the interpretation of the portrait may only be completed by the response of the recipient. This method, thus, changes the tenor of the artwork, giving it contingent meaning specific to the recipient’s contexts. The proposed design project also goes further in that it exploits the dialectical qualities of modern allegory to address specific issues raised by archival research on the portrait. Significantly, the arguments for multiple interpretations is consistent with the differentiated, nuanced and embedded meanings residing within the portrait, which are raised in the process of archival research, and constitutes a method which may also be used to inform architectural design. Specific issues raised in this process include new ways to explore the architectural site, considerations with regard to questioning and defining the role of the architect, attention to the process and effects of building conservation, and lastly, the integration of design ideas with the presentation of the architectural project. The thesis proposes and demonstrates that engaging with multiple interpretations of context and meaning can create new, richer and more complex experiences in architectural production and discourse.

This thesis proposes that since 1990 a significant part of contemporary Argentine literature, art and architecture has been characterized by an identifiable quality: spatial lyricism. This new quality manifests in the spatial the aesthetic values that identify the lyric principle, normally related to sound and the verbal. The aim is to define ‘lyrical space’, and to show that space-making processes that validate introspective approaches in literature and visual arts can lead to the emergence of new form and content in architectural space, giving relevance to subjective experience and to the affective response induced in the user. Framed in neo-baroque aesthetics, the evidence puts experience, emotion, memory and identity as the critical material for the construction of space, inducing an ‘exceptional’ state of mind in the user/reader/spectator that recaptures the subjective dimension of seventeenth-century Baroque. A selection of short stories by Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortázar, several novellas by César Aira, and a lyrical essay by Alejandra Pizarnik, are read in relation to the visual work of Guillermo Kuitca, Fabián Marcaccio, Lucio Fontana, Leandro Erlich, Dino Bruzzone, Tomás Saraceno and my own. The investigation explores the literary principles on lyricism, linking Hegel’s Aesthetics to post-structuralist thinking, and the category of the figural. To support the analysis further, interviews conducted by myself and by others are also used. Several aspects are unique about the project. The literary is located in the spatial, while the material is located between the spatial and the self. This collision of reading literary work centred on the construction of space, with the reading of spatial qualities in the visual and the verbal in terms of their aesthetic affective response—the emotional effect it arouses—has not been attempted before. The aesthetic affinities that emerge from the interdisciplinary analysis are also new.

This thesis examines the role of building morphology and street networks in shaping street activity and transformations in the historical built form. The core inquiry applies a configurational analysis to the street, viewing it as a complex entity which interfaces with both buildings and the urban street network. The research is founded on the identification of two theoretical and methodological gaps in the canon of urban design: how generic building morphology properties relate to street liveability; and, how urban diversity emerges as the result of diachronic processes. The thesis looks at architecture beyond function, geometry and aesthetics, focusing on the urban street as a generator for social contact. Building on space syntax theory, it seeks to advance the concept of the ‘virtual community’, proposing that encounter and co-presence patterns are the product of both city-wide connections and local building morphology. In order to study building-street relations in terms of the virtual community the thesis has developed a series of specialised techniques to describe and analyse the synchronic and diachronic aspects of space. The thesis is innovative in integrating space syntax and Conzenian methods to better examine the micromorphology of the street interface configurationally and typologically, capturing the changing nature of built form and building use over time. This methodology is applied to the study of two contrasting urban areas: Islington, London and West Village, Manhattan. Both possess similar building morphologies that have sustained street liveability and diversity over centuries. The results show how urban change and diversity are affected by diachronic processes working with the synchronic structure of the everyday city. The thesis asserts that urban configuration and built form together play an essential role in shaping the character of the ‘virtual community’ as well as the potential for street life itself.

This thesis is about the urban morphology of American cities. Many see American cities as a radical departure in town planning history due to their planned nature based on geometrical division of the land, but other cities in the world also began as planned towns with geometric layouts so the American city is not unique. Space syntax studies analyzing deformed grid layouts of organic cities show they also have an intrinsic geometry underlying their apparent disorder, and a well-defined spatial pattern governing powerful links between layout and urban function. Why did the regular grid come so pervasively to characterize American urbanism? Is the spatial pattern underlying the apparent order of American cities really so different? Using Marshall’s (2005) distinction between composition and configuration, the study reviews the literature about regular grid planning in the United States and elsewhere in the world and surveys formal composition in a historical record of American town plans. The study analyzes spatial configuration in historical and contemporary American settlements using space syntax, finding that formal composition and spatial configuration in the American city does represent a radical departure. Namely, configuration enables American cities to overcome their expansive metric scale in the horizontal dimension through widespread use of the regular grid. However, American cities are subject to the same processes linking layout and urban function during growth as in other types of cities around the world. The thesis concludes Americans were predisposed to regularity in town planning from the very beginning for practical, cultural, and socioeconomic reasons, making the regular grid a characteristic feature of American cities even as design preferences changed during the post-war period. Because of this, a distinctive spatial structure emerges from amalgamating towards and fragmenting from conceptual order during urban growth in American cities even as it converges on the ortho-radial grid.

This thesis investigates the location of economic patterns in urban form through an empirical study of Cardiff, UK. It focuses on two central questions: First, whether and how the location of economic activity is affected by the spatial configuration of the built environment – the physical pattern of streets and buildings, and the connectivity of the spaces that result from their placement. Is there a systematic relationship between these two kinds of order? Second, what systematic patterns and how are they articulated at the local architectural scale – how it is shaped and designed? It is suggested that understanding the locational logic of activities in urban form will not only improve theories on urban economy and urban morphology, but also contribute to a new set of complementary tools and strategies for designing urban environments. A novel combination of ‘Space Syntax’ and urban economic techniques are used here to analyse the case study data on land use distribution, rent values of different kinds, real estate properties and housing tax valuations. Through a series of street accessibility metrics, which are hypothesised to affect the location of socio-economic activities, the thesis applies these methods across city scales as follows: first, the research uses a ‘bid rent’ approach to investigate how different land uses compete for a location, by analysing distance from an urban centre based on the connectivity of streets. This, in turn, informs patterns of centrality – places that can be reached by everyone through the intersection of roads. Second, it examines patterns of residential tax values, distinguishing between purely domestic and mixed-use types. Third, it analyses the architectural adaptability of mixed-use buildings and their dependency on urban location. The results confirm that economic activity in Cardiff is significantly affected by the street network configuration. The street configuration shows that its topology, its metric dimensions and angular change between streets are factors that identify use-mix profiles throughout the city in relation to rent price. Residential tax value is strongly related to the street layout, substantiating the link between urban design decisions and the cost of location. Results also show that spatial accessibility at a local design level defines types of mixed-use buildings in relation to the street layout. The findings of this thesis will inform planners and economists, who benefit from an empirically-based consideration of how street and building design affect local land values, and also architects and urban designers, about how spatial configuration affects land use, accessibility and locational decisions, thereby demonstrating how design decisions may also be economic decisions.

This thesis is an exploration of contemporary domesticity and the home in contemporary society, through the visual and textual analysis of three different historical (sets of) images of the home: the dolls' house of Petronella Oortman, painted in 1710 by Jacob Appel, Saint Jerome beside a Pollard Willow by Rembrandt van Rijn, and L'Arbre savant by Ren6 Magritte. The dolls' house of Petronella Oortman, assembled between 1686 and 1711, was a collection of miniature objects displayed in nine boxes that were placed in a cabinet, creating a complete overview of the ideal home as it was developed in the seventeenth-century Netherlands. The etching of Saint Jerome beside a Pollard Willow, 1648, by Rembrandt van Rijn depicts Saint Jerome, one of the church fathers, seated next to a pollard willow. The architect Alison Smithson saw this as an 'allegory of the ideal home'; the result of a symbiotic relation between the Saint and his surroundings; an enclave. The third image, L'Arbre savant, 1926, by Rena Magritte depicts a cabinet, which is conceived, just as the dolls' house¬, "gloinet is, in a rational manner, in a tree trunk, which is formed organically. The image, therefore, displays the nonsensical aspect and the tension that a juxtaposition of two familiar, yet incompatible, objects generates. In fact it is the tension between these objects that could generate the idea of the home. It can also be seen to represent a series of what the architect Kim Dovey calls 'dialectical processes of becoming at home' in his article 'Home and Homelessness', 1985. The resulting design, a miniature Domestic Toolkit, is a collection of miniature objects, images and narratives that explore these 'dialectical processes of becoming at home' that a juxtaposition of the painting of Saint Jerome and the images of the dolls' house of Petronella Oortman generates.

Political, economic, and literary historians have studied the connections between America and Europe in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Less consideration, however, has been given to how transatlantic exchange influenced achitectural culture during this period. This thesis examines select figues within architectural and artistic circles and argues that they effectiely constituted a transatlantic design network: a shared and fluid netork of people, sites, texts and objects that transcended nationalistic concerns. The contours and impact of the Transatlantic Design Network on architectural culture will be traced through a detailed study of Thomas Jeffeson (1743-1826) and Sir John Soane (1753-1837). Although Jeffeson and Soane never met, each man corresponded with Maria Hadfield Coswy (1760-1838), an artist, designer, and educator, for over four decades. Jeffeson and Soane exchanged letters and material objects with Cosway, such as drawings, books, artifacts, and personal contacts, through which they cultivated a set of shared aesthetic and social concerns. They were united by a love of picturesque landscapes, valued tradition and technological innovation in architecture, and were keenly interested in learned institutions. Offering a ereading of Monticello and Soane’s Museum through the lens of the network, this thesis counters the view of Soane and Jeffeson as autonomous innovators. Their house-museums tested how architecture could be more than an armature for displaying collections: buildings could act as the ultimate artifact, reflectie of the architects’ careful study of precedents, knowledge of contemporary archaeological and scientific discveries, and dedication to a design process that lasted more than forty years. By placing the landscapes, architecture, and collections of Monticello and Soane’s Museum in conversation, this thesis argues that Jeffeson, Soane, Cosway, and others contributed to and benefitted fom a transatlantic network of exchange that forged a distinct architectural culture linking the Early Republic of America and the Second British Empire.