Beth Lord and Peg Rawes will be presenting Equal by Design to the Philosophy of Education group at University College London on 13 March, 2019. The film screening will be followed by short papers and discussion.
Category Archives: Housing
Peg Rawes contributes to BBC Radio 4’s Living Room
Peg Rawes is a contributor to an episode of the BBC Radio 4 programme Living Room, speaking about the Parker Morris report, “Homes for Today and Tomorrow” (1961). The programme asks how past efforts to improve housing space standards can shed light on the present crisis. Listen here.
Spinoza’s Philosophy of Ratio
We are delighted to announce the publication of Spinoza’s Philosophy of Ratio, edited by Beth Lord and published by Edinburgh University Press. The book brings together essays on Spinoza, ratio, architecture, and wellbeing from the Equalities of Wellbeing project.
30% Discount on book purchases available until 31 Dec. 2018: Lord_Worldwide Flyer
Readers will learn from this book that a philosophy of ratio is not to be conflated with a rationalist philosophy. The authors draw on the three senses of ratio – reason, relation and proportion – to explore their interdependence and, crucially, the emergent and constructed conatus towards equality and wellbeing. This valuable book demonstrates that empiricism and rationalism need not be opposed. – Andrej Radman, Delft University of Technology
This volume represents an important collective re-thinking of Spinoza’s key concept of ratio. Along with new interpretations of his treatment of the relations between reason and emotion, it offers fascinating insights into the relevance of his philosophy for understanding contemporary issues in relation to artistic practice, architecture and the built environment.- Genevieve Lloyd, Emeritus Professor in Philosophy, University of New South Wales
From his geometrical method to his geometrical examples; from his doctrine of reason to his explanation of bodies in motion; and from his account of the affects to his understanding of social relations, ratio is of prime importance in Spinoza’s philosophy.
These essays explore the surprisingly varied dimensions of this unacknowledged keystone of Spinoza’s thought. They take you from Spinoza’s geometrical diagrams to his concepts of mind, body, the emotions, and the cosmos. It shows how Spinoza’s thinking about ratio influences the concept of proportion in Gulliver’s Travels, the differential ontology of Deleuze, egalitarian design for wellbeing, and the notion of an affective architecture.
Contents:
Introduction, Beth Lord
Spinoza’s Ontology Geometrically Illustrated: A Reading of Ethics IIP8S, Valtteri Viljanen
Reason and Body in Spinoza’s Metaphysics, Michael LeBuffe
Ratio and Activity: Spinoza’s Biologizing of the Mind in an Aristotelian Key, Heidi M. Ravven
Harmony in Spinoza and His Critics, Timothy Yenter
Ratio as the basis of Spinoza’s concept of equality, Beth Lord
Proportion as a barometer of the affective life in Spinoza, Simon B. Duffy
Spinoza, Heterarchical Ontology and Affective Architecture, Gökhan Kodalak
Dissimilarity: Spinoza’s ethical ratios and housing welfare, Peg Rawes
The greater part: How intuition forms better worlds, Stefan White
Slownesses and Speeds, Latitudes and Longitudes: In the Vicinity of Beatitude, Hélène Frichot
The Eyes of the Mind: Proportion in Spinoza, Swift, Ibn Tufayl, Anthony Uhlmann
For more information and to order, please visit the EUP website. To get a 30% Discount, use the information on this flyer: Lord_Worldwide Flyer
Housing: how architects can design for wellbeing and equality. Event at The Building Centre
6 December 2017, 6:30 PM
The Building Centre
This event, chaired by Peg Rawes and featuring architects who contributed to project film Equal by Design, is part of the Making Wellbeing: from Birth to Death exhibition at The Building Centre, curated by The Built Environment Trust.
Tickets and further information available here.
Solutions to the housing crisis are political and complex with change needed at policy level as well as across the building industry. However, debates often exclude the role of the architect. This event will explore how architects can be actively involved in addressing issues of inequality and disparities of wellbeing in the built environment through housing design and provision.
Architects Peter Barber, Alex Ely and Sarah Wigglesworth will talk about their approaches to human-centred design and concerns for wellbeing. The speakers will shed light on the positive agency an architect can have and will consider what must be addressed for such approaches to have a stronger influence on housing provision and wider architectural practice.
The individual presentations will be followed by a chaired panel discussion and audience Q+A.
Speakers:
– Peter Barber, director of Peter Barber Architects
– Alex Ely, principal of Mæ Architects
– Sarah Wigglesworth, director of Sarah Wigglesworth Architects
Chair: Peg Rawes, co-author of Equal By Design and senior lecturer at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London
Tickets and further information available here.
Making Wellbeing exhibition at The Building Centre #makingwellbeing
Exhibition run now extended to 26 January
We are excited to announce the Making Wellbeing exhibition, opening on 9 October at The Building Centre in London. Project film Equal by Design is featured in the exhibition.
Making Wellbeing: from birth to death
9 October – 26 January 2018
The Building Centre, Store Street, London
Making Wellbeing is an exhibition and related programme that assembles key themes, recent explorations and interventions in the built environment that impact wellbeing at all stages of life, from birth to death.
In 2017, wellbeing is a benchmark that drives everything from government policy to classroom spaces, from the interior arrangement of offices to the design of buildings for care at the end-of-life.
But the term itself is a contested notion with many facets. Through a selection of major international architectural projects, new smart city technologies, research by ethnographers and academics, and even an interactive sleep pod, the exhibition gathers voices and knowledge from across the spectrum to offer insights and open up debate.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a major event series and will be the key theme for the second issue of BE:, the journal of The Built Environment Trust.
https://www.buildingcentre.co.uk/exhibitions/making-wellbeing
Curated by The Built Environment Trust
Spinoza and Aesthetics conference
SPINOZA & AESTHETICS/SPACE
Friday April 21, 2017
INTRODUCTION | JB Shank | University of Minnesota 11:00 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.
WORKSHOP I | Arun Saldanha | University of Minnesota: Spinoza’s Geography of Bodies: Global Capitalism and the Responsibility to Revolt
Respondents| Harshit Rathi + Joseph Bermas-Dawes 11:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.
LUNCH BREAK 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.
WORKSHOP II | Peg Rawes| University College London: Dissimilarity: Spinoza’s Ethical Ratios and Housing Welfare. Respondents| Anjali Ganapathy + Austin Young 2:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.
COFFEE BREAK 3:30 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.
WORKSHOP III | Susan Ruddick| University of Toronto: A/Synchronic Earth: Spinoza and the Spatial Aesthetic of the Anthropocene. Respondents| Kai Bosworth + Lindsey Weber 4:00 p.m. – 5:30 p.m.
135 Nicholson Hall | University of Minnesota
For information: Cesare Casarino: casarino@umn.edu, Anjali Ganapathy: ganap002@umn.edu
Co-sponsored by the Consortium for the Study of the Premodern World; the Department of…
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New publication: Housing Biopolitics and Care
In April 2017, Peg Rawes’ paper ‘Housing Biopolitics and Care’ is due to be published in A. Radman and H. Sohn (eds), Critical and Clinical Cartographies: Architecture, Robotics, Medicine, Philosophy (Edinburgh University Press).
Peg Rawes’ upcoming events
On 20 March 2017, Peg will be giving an invited talk on the film and project: ‘Housing Biopolitics and Care’ for the Architecture Space and Society Centre, Department of Art History, Birkbeck, University of London.
On 19 April 2017, she will give an invited talk to the Department of Architecture, University of Ames, Ames, Ohio, US, and on 21 April, an invited Keynote at the University of Minnesota.
Peg Rawes’ recent events
On 19 November 2016, Peg presented a co-authored conference paper with Dr Doug Spencer (Westminster) on ‘Material and Rational Feminisms’ at Architecture & Feminisms: Ecologies/Economies/Technologies, AHRA (Architectural Humanities Research Association) 2016, KTH Stockholm. The audience was international and included around 50 academics, students, and architectural professionals.
On 9 January 2017, she gave an invited talk on the film at London Architecture School to 35 postgraduate students and academics.
On 19 January 2017, she gave an invited talk on the film to Architectural Interdisciplinary Studies, UCL, to around 25 students and academics.
On 14 February 2017, Peg participated in ‘The House that Philosophy Built’, a panel organized by The Forum (LSE) to a public audience of around 75. The talk is now available on the Forum’s Blog at: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/theforum/the-house-that-philosophy-built/.
The House that Philosophy Built
14 February, 6:30-8:30 PM, London
Readers might be interested in this free event next week, featuring Peg Rawes.
Speakers
Juliet Haysom, Artist and Tutor, The Architectural Association, London
Kristen Kreider, Professor of Fine Art, Goldsmiths College, University of London
Peg Rawes, Professor in Architecture and Philosophy, University College London
Chair
Shahidha Bari, Lecturer in Romanticism in the Department of English, Queen Mary, University of London and Forum for European Philosophy Fellow
This panel will consider the ways in which philosophers have engaged with architecture and explores how architects have thought philosophically about their own work. Are there are philosophical ideals at the heart of civic building projects and social housing programmes? What are the principles of good design and how could a three dimensional space represent an idea? Is the primary purpose of a building aesthetic, social or moral? Do we judge a building on the beauty of its structure, the practicality of its form or the human interaction it enables? And how should we imagine the skyline of the future?
Full details: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/theforum/forthcomingevents/the-house-that-philosophy-built/
