At 753 pages, The Sage Handbook of Architectural Theory is in size
and ambition a weighty book. The book’s editors, C. Greig Crysler, Stephen
Cairns and Hilde Heynen, describe their pedagogical intent as to seek out
alternative lines within architectural theory, ‘to scrutinize, extend and in
some cases rehearse the major debates over the last decades’ (p. 24). To
achieve this end the Handbook departs radically from what readers
have come to expect from a collection of essays on architectural theory. The reader
does not confront yet another sampling of editor-curated texts that implicitly or
explicitly demarcate centers about which the peripheries of practice and theory
align. Nor does the Handbook merely extend the assumptions of
existing paradigms with polite additions from novel philosophical
(extra-disciplinary) sources or by dutifully acknowledging the most current issues
effecting architectural practice. In other words, the Handbook does
more than present a reshuffled deck or reorganized priorities; rather, this
collection of originally authored essays was conceived and is structured in a way
that puts ‘the critical sensitivities, the pluralist sensibility, the
self-reflexivity and speculative ambitions that post-structuralism inculcated in the
discipline into contact with a wider set of world conditions’ (p. 6). The
originality of the editors’ ambition is realized through the book’s
contents in tandem with its organization, both of which enlist the reader as user in
order to think differently about architectural theory now. As a result the
Handbook offers an intense scholarly experience in its
comprehensiveness, its variety of voices and its formal organization.
The Handbook has two introductions and is organized into eight
thematically focused chapter sections. Each chapter section, identified by three
keywords, such as ‘Power/Difference/Embodiment’ or
‘Nation/World/Spectacle’, is prefaced by a substantive introduction,
includes three essays and is bookended by a state of the literature bibliography. An
originally researched project essay with a one-word title, such as
‘Culture’, ‘Citizenship’, ‘Landscape’, or
‘Heritage’, stands between the end of one chapter section and beginning
of the next. This adds up to forty originally authored essays. The first
introduction to the Handbook is a tour de force in
which editors Crysler, Cairns and Heynen argue their purpose and situate the
challenges they confronted in pursuing a ‘cross-cultural and
interdisciplinary’ approach to contemporary architectural theory. In a second
introduction, aptly titled ‘Reading the Handbook’, the editors follow up
dutiful summaries of the eight thematic chapter sections with four examples of
alternative reading itineraries. They employ the words ‘itinerary’ and
‘activate’ to describe how a user might pursue a topic-driven or
theoretically motivated alternate route through the book (p. 27). For example, the
suggested reading itinerary for sustainability should, according to the editors,
activate competing definitions, as the term appears in different ways throughout the
collection. They propose an itinerary that includes chapters from the
‘Nature/Ecology/Sustainability’ section along with essays found in
thematic areas such as ‘Science/Technology/Virtuality’, in
‘City/Metropolis/Territory’ and the project chapter on consumption that
sits between the ‘Aesthetics/Pleasure/Excess’ and
‘Nation/World/Spectacle’ sections. The itineraries encourage the reader
to take an active role in exploring the potential for a theoretical problem and, as
a consequence, to enlarge their understanding of contemporary theory through
unexpected connections made across the contents of the
Handbook.
The most challenging aspect of the Handbook is not assessing what is
included or excluded, the privileging of this or that debate, as might be the case
more typical for anthologies of architectural theory. Although from this short
description the anthology may seem overly complicated, perhaps over-wrought, the
editors took a risk, experimented and have delivered a much-needed resource that
upends the status quo. Among their achievements is a view of theory that attends to
global shifts in architectural practice. This view remains committed to the medium
for architecture theory as architecture and its intellectual and material
environments. The collection includes essays written by scholars well established in
their area of expertise as well as emerging scholars researching in areas where
architectural theory has yet to find solid ground. Certainly some of these essays
will stand the test of time better than others. And as to be expected of a
collection of essays speaking to the present state of theory, the quality of
research varies in depth and polish. If there is a theoretical coherence to be
detected among the essays, it lays with a relational perspective, with reference to
the social context of architecture and, in specific places, to Bruno Latour.
Certainly, the thematic bibliographies will be a lasting contribution. The editors
envision the Handbook with a long-term goal in mind, writing that,
‘it will make a contribution to the longer, slower and oscillating history of
architectural theory’ (p. 5). The editors should be congratulated as the
Handbook makes a significant contribution, importantly by
opening architectural theory into new directions.