Book Discussion: Dispositional Intelligence in Architecture
Date: April 1, 2025
Time: 11:00 am - 12:30 pm
Location:
Bears Den, Student Activity Center, Long Island campus
Lecture: Dispositional Intelligence in Architecture
Dispositional Intelligence in Architecture proposes a contemporary theory of spatial organization in architecture through original research into a particular kind of hybrid design work, one that is inherently architectural yet grounded in diverse modalities of scientific thinking.
Three important yet overlooked bodies of work are examined here: those of the Italian architect and artist Vittorio Giorgini (1926–2010), the Israeli architect, engineer, and geometer Michaël Burt (b. 1937), and Sri-Lankan-born, London-based engineer and theorist Cecil Balmond (b. 1943).
By combining granular historical analysis of these bodies of work with advanced theoretical investigation, this volume expands the distinct dispositional possibilities of architectural space on the basis of the deep scientization of design that unfolded across the West over the second half of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first. In so doing, it extends the boundaries of architectural thinking and contributes not only a new mode of thought to the history of architecture, but also novel critical and design frameworks to today’s discourse and practice culture.
Introduction
Dongsei Kim
Associate Professor and Department Chair
School of Architecture and Design
Moderation
Marta Caldeira
Assistant Professor
School of Architecture and Design
Speaker
José Aragüez
Ph.D., Yale Univerity
José Aragüez is a licensed practicing architect, writer, and educator holding a Ph.D. from Princeton University. He teaches at Yale and at the Architectural Institute of Paris, and runs José Aragüez Architects, a Paris-based office that maintains substantial connections with New York and Spain.
Aragüez has lectured extensively across Europe and North America—including most of the top schools—in addition to the Middle East and Japan.
His six-year project, involving the publication of The Building (Lars Müller Pub., 2016), is widely regarded in international circles as one of the most significant contributions to architectural discourse in the 2010s. His writings have also appeared in Domus, e-flux, Flat Out, The Routledge Companion to Criticality in Art, Architecture and Design (Routledge, 2018), Radical Pedagogies (MIT Press, 2022), and TECNOSCAPE: The Architecture of Engineers (Fondazione MAXXI, 2022), among other media. Prior to Dispositional Intelligence in Architecture, his second book, titled Spatial Infrastructure, was published by Actar in fall 2022.