Making into thing - anthropo-eccene design: on the craft of emergence

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This chapter presents reflections on the specific propensity, power and perspective of the current profusion of designed artifacts in the broadest sense, objects, things, buildings, machines, infrastructures, technologies, materials and so on – material, sensible and symbolic artefacts; all the entities that may go into design as a produce of some sort of purposive action: what Ezio Manzini has termed an “artificial environment”. In particular it is interested in how such an environment stands forward as a critical mass, as featured in debates on the anthropocene. The chapter suggests to considers a proto-topology emergent in situations, interactions and relationalities of an artificial environment that meshes critically with human cohabitation. In order to open the discussion, the chapter traces the issue of proto-topology back to the issues of ’making into thing’, or “reification” (from ‘res’: thing, in Latin), from the 19th century to the second half of the 20th century as a longue durée. The result, it is submitted, makes up a framework for thinking design anew. The chapter suggests three modalities of proto-topology – in situations, interactions and relationalities – and concludes by coining the notion ‘anthropo-eccene design´.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationPostphenomenology and Architecture : Human Technology Relations in the Built Environment
EditorsLars Botin, Inger Berling Hyams
Number of pages23
Place of PublicationNew York
PublisherLexington
Publication date2021
EditionHardcover
Pages169-192
Article number8
Chapter8
ISBN (Print)978-1-7936-0943-4
ISBN (Electronic)978-1-7936-0944-1
Publication statusPublished - 2021

ID: 213332244