Terroir: Instruments reframes architecture not as the production of objects but as the orchestration of relationships — between people and place, choreography and wonder, the physical and the psycho-spatial.
About This Book
Where much architectural discourse fixates on the material qualities of the built object, Instruments turns its attention elsewhere: to the less visible, equally consequential ways architecture mediates our connection to place. The first in a series dedicated to the Sydney, Hobart, and Copenhagen practice TERROIR, this volume examines a single design strategy — the instrument — as a disciplinary counter to architecture's increasing reduction to image. Drawing on philosophy, sociology, and design theory, the book asks what it means to work with tools that resist the single-frame logic of contemporary visual culture. Essential reading for architects and theorists concerned with place-making, phenomenology, and the ethics of spatial practice.
Key Features
- 196 pages of essays, interviews, and design research exploring choreography, wonder, and place
- Essays by Slavoj Žižek (Slovenian philosopher and sociologist) and David A Garcia (founding director of MAP Architects, Copenhagen); interview between philosopher and architectural writer Andrew Benjamin and TERROIR founding director Gerard Reinmuth
- First publication in an ongoing series dedicated to the work of TERROIR
- Published by Uro Publications, 2019
What You'll Discover
- How TERROIR's origins in Tasmania — shaped by the landscape and the political tensions of a society divided along environmental lines — inform a practice-wide approach to architecture and place
- The concept of the "instrument" as a disciplinary counter to the Instagram age, where architecture risks being reduced from object to image
- A sustained argument for shifting architecture's focus from typological object-making to the formation and reformation of relationships between people and the spaces they inhabit
- The role of choreography and psycho-spatial wonder as legitimate and underexamined architectural strategies
About the Author
Andrew Benjamin is a philosopher and architectural writer whose work spans continental philosophy and design theory. He appears in this volume in conversation with TERROIR founding director Gerard Reinmuth. Additional contributors include Slavoj Žižek and David A Garcia, founding director of MAP Architects in Copenhagen.
Specifications
- Format: Softcover
- Pages: 196
- Dimensions: 178 x 254 mm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9780994396679
- Publisher: Uro Publications
- Publication Date: 2019
Perfect For: Architects and designers engaged with place-making theory, students of architectural phenomenology, and readers interested in how philosophy intersects with spatial practice