Architecture Exchange

Bringing Graham Harman's philosophy into direct confrontation with contemporary architectural theory in new and creative ways, this book provides a dialogue between Harman and six of the world's leading architectural thinkers, including Lorens Holm and Patrick Lynch.

Harman's object-oriented philosophy is one that sees the universe as a carnival of equal "objects" with no hierarchy between humans and nonhumans. In his model, unicorns, triangles, bicycles, neutrons, and humans are all things with enduring essences that outlast their partial transformations. It is a strikingly democratic vision of the universe that knocks humans off their ontological pedestal as arbiters of what is real. It also radically challenges the very precepts of architectural theory, the structure of which remains stubbornly human-centred as it seeks to give form to the human place at the centre of the cosmos.

In Object-Oriented Architecture each thinker develops the implications of Harman's philosophy for the future of architecture by entering into a direct exchange with the philosopher and his thinking, both questioning him and questioning with him.