Books
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Proto F, Baudrillard for Architects, Routledge (2019)
ISBN: 9780415508858 eISBN: 9781315712659
Abstract Marginalized due to the deployment of both a highly specialized jargon and a novel stylistic approach meant to upset established norms and conventions, Baudrillard's thought has suffered from the lack of an accessible, consistent and comprehensive exposition able to make it relevant to diverse contemporary disciplines. As a result, its impact on architecture has always been confined to academia.
By presenting an introductory but in-depth formalization of Baudrillard's interest in architecture and related fields, this book makes intelligible his philosophical premises thus showing, through the prism of architecture, their relevance and persuasiveness today. Key concepts such as the object system, the code, simulation, hyperreality and precession, to name a few, are addressed in the light of the specially reconceptualized key construct of ambience, thus emphasizing how the mutual concerns of architecture, urban studies and cultural studies provide a fertile ground for debate.
Such an approach, which focuses on the contradictions inherent in contemporary society from the vantage point of Baudrillard's original involvement in architectural analysis, philosophy and criticism, is one which students, practitioners and scholars alike from as diverse disciplines as architecture, interior design and urban studies – but also fine art, anthropology, sociology, economics, human geography, social psychology and cultural studies to start with – will benefit from immensely.
Website
Journal articles
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Proto F, 'James Stirling’s post-avant-garde collage: the flatbed picture plane & the pursuit of virtuality'
Journal of Architecture 25 (3) (2022) pp.231-244
ISSN: 1359-1355 eISSN: 1474-0516
Website
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Proto F, 'Abject Objects: Perversion and the Modernist Grid'
Architecture and Culture 8 (3/4) (2020) pp.564-582
ISSN: 2050-7828 eISSN: 2050-7836
Abstract This article challenges current psychoanalytical thought according to which the three Lacanian clinics of the neurotic, pervert and psychotic coexist in any given era, and suggests instead that identifiable environmental conditions are key to the surfacing of a specific and dominant construction of the self. In the case of the pervert, the narcissistic wounds inflicted by science and technology, as well as an increasingly hostile lifestyle dictated by the Industrial Revolution, become key factors that delineate a form of subjectivity in urgent need of overcoming internal splits. The modernist grid, which both the artistic avant-garde and the pioneers of modern architecture address during the first half of the twentieth century as the panacea for a corrupted world, is here discussed in terms of a subject whose imaginary worldview is determined by the vantage point offered by visual-machines, such as geometric grids, as applied to the production of a sanitized and overcontrolled urban environment. Both the mechanisms and outcomes of this interpretation of the evolution of Western city design are part of the original research question that this article addresses.
Website
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Proto F, 'Doubling Baudrillard: An Appreciation of Gerry Coulter’s Writings on Architecture'
International Journal of Baudrillard Studies 15 (1) (2019)
ISSN: 1705-6411
Website
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Proto F, Schiro E, 'The Symbolic Challenge of Architecture'
Lo Sguardo : Rivista di Filosofia 23 (2017) pp.165-174
ISSN: 2036-6558
Abstract In this interview Francesco Proto, an architect, theorist and renown Baudrillard’ scholar, retraces the deep and underestimate relationship between Baudrillard’s theory of simulacra and simulation and the architectural field, also giving an account of his theoretical outlook about using Baudrillard to produce a theory of the contemporary. Moving from a general reconsideration of geometrical perspective as simulacrum, he shows the several crossing between the encoding process of space, simulation and the modern ideology of humanism, also debating the differences between arts and architecture within Baudrillard’s theory, also regarding their respective symbolic and seductive dimension.Website
Book chapters
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Proto F, 'Dopo l'orgia: Il nome-del-padre nella cultura popolare Europea' in Sergio Secondigliano Sacchi (ed.), Multifilter: Mito e Memoria del Padre Nella Canzone, Squilibri (2017)
ISBN: 8885571026
Website
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Proto F, 'Seducing God(s)' in Hendrix JS, Lorens EH (ed.), Architecture and the Unconscious, Routledge (2016)
ISBN: 9781472456472 eISBN: 9781315567693
Website
BOOKS
2006: Mass Identity Architecture: Architecture Writings of Jena Baudrillard, Wiley Classics.
2016: Baudrillard for Architects (‘Thinkers for Architects’ series), Routledge.
ARTICLES
2013: “Fatal Objects: Lacan in Baudrillard, Part 2 (The 3rd Simulation Stage: Post-modernity)”, The International Journal of Baudrillardian Studies, Vol. 10, No. 2.
2013: “The Subject & The City: A genealogy of Western Narcissism”, AHRC -10th International Conference on ‘Transgression’, Bristol.
2012: “Berlusconi & Other Hostages”, The Journal of Baudrillard Studies, Vol. 9, No. 3.
2009: “That Old Thing Called Flexibility: An Interview with Robert Venturi” in “Theoretical Meltdown: New Trends in Art and Architecture”, AD – Architectural Design.
2007: “Italy Between Pragmatism & Theory”, in “Italy: A new Architectural Landscape, AD - Architectural Design.
2006: "The Pompidou Centre, or the Hidden Kernel of Dematerialization”, The Journal of Architecture, Vol. 10, No. 5.
BOOK CHAPTERS
2016: “Seducing God(s): The Ideal City as the Mirror Stage of Western Subjectivity” in Architecture and the Unconscious (John Hendrix and Lorens Holm, eds.), Ashgate.
2011: “Architecture”, The Baudrillard Dictionary. Edinburgh: Yale University Press.
CONFERENCE PROCEDURES
2011: “(In)Visible Cities”, International Symposium on Electronic Arts, Sabanci University, Istanbul.
2010: “On the future of Architecture”; Architecture and Communication conference, University of Lincoln.