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Diagrams as instruments for conceiving and negotiating space and cities

This narrative is retrospective and reflective as well as projective. The thesis of a PhD by publication does not inherently align with a principal proposition. The building, books, chapters and articles collected in this PhD have been shaped by interaction with varied professional, academic and cultural environments and milieus. Professional contexts that have triggered research questions and enriched research methodologies range from architectural practice to scholarly research and collaborative field research undertaken internationally; cultural milieus include Germany, Switzerland, the UK, and, recently, countries of the Global South. The work was not produced with a singular destination in sight; rather, it proceeds along a set of distinct, but interdependent vectors, through changes in direction, displaced vantage points, and transposition between corporeal, architectural and urban scales. This narrative juxtaposes, confronts and discusses the work collected in the portfolio, but does not seek to unify through imposing a singular thesis. The portfolio comprises of a building project, introductory essays to three edited books, three book chapters and nine journal articles, designed and built, written and published over a period of eighteen years from 1998 to 2016. The narrative reconstructs successive questions about diagrams that led to the building project, books, and articles, and the contexts which prompted the questions and frame the work. Rather than aligned to a linear narration, the work is presented along four parallel but interrelated paths of enquiry (Sections A, B, C, D) in which one output led to another, sometimes directly, at other times over detours and longer intervals. The work is introduced through four themes that cut across those paths. While framing and consolidating a retrospective view, the narrative of this PhD also exposes previously unrecognized resonances. New meaning arises from juxtaposition, grouping, contextualising and ordering of outputs and trajectories. In this sense, the retrospective view becomes prospective and projective.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:762432
Date January 2018
CreatorsLueder, Christoph
PublisherKingston University
Source SetsEthos UK
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeElectronic Thesis or Dissertation
Sourcehttp://eprints.kingston.ac.uk/42585/

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