This paper is based on our contribution to the recent ACSA Fall conference posing the question of the autonomous and the contingent object. ¹ We argue that this problem should begin by examining the theoretical paradigms underlying the opposition between the two concepts. In this paper we argue that it is a binary that falls within a list of other philosophical binary-problems. As Bill Hillier explains, “it is no surprise that philosophers have been fascinated by architecture, since architecture is an actual-world application of philosophy. But if architecture had an overarching theory that addresses these binaries it would be as though it had solved all problems in philosophy at once.” ² The aim in architecture is to see them not as formulas or problems to be solved, but as research questions, opening up possibilities, whether we are in a theoretical or design mode.

Our suggestion is that the autonomous and the contingent object carry the deeper question of who authors a work, a philosophical problem that takes its most intensified form in the Renaissance. Is knowledge and architectural authorship provided from outside or is it actively invented from within? More analytically, this question translates to: what is the source of the architect’s design ideas? What is the origin and what is the structure of the architect’s knowledge? How does authorship work? Who is the author of a work?

In the first part of the paper we explore these questions by looking at the logical paradoxes inherent in the autonomous-contingent question, and attempt to provide a reconciliation between the two opposing concepts by examining three artifacts: Venice and two authored works which Venice gave rise to: Calvino’s Invisible Cities, and Le Corbusier’s Venice Hospital. The second part of the paper brings the Venice project and a design studio in the context of the “Spatial Design, Architecture, Cities” MSc i course (The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL) as a way of addressing the autonomous-contingent problem. We argue that the autonomous and the contingent object carry the deeper question of “who authors a work,” a philosophical problem that takes intensified form in the Renaissance with the emergence of the Albertian model of design.

Having discussed the subject-object problem and the way in which it ties theories of design to theories of knowledge, we move to the humanistic idea of modern authorship. We suggest that this idea forms a variation on these themes, subjecting architecture to another crucial dualism, which establishes two things: first, the superior status of architectural design to that of building craft and more generally to inherited, collective, non-authored and tacit systems of spatial production; second, the superior status of the design original to that of variances to which the original might be subjected otherwise. For Mario Carpo, with Alberti, the design of the building became the original, and the building its identical copy.⁶ Design might have a fluid state but for Alberti, when revisions stop, they should stop for good and forever. Our argument is that the Albertian model has deeper and wider repercussions than this. It sets the superior status of architectural design to buildings and cities as found, because they are mosaics of accidents, adaptations, adjustments, additions, subtractions, revisions and other errors, most significantly by not having an author.

But we know, even if we don’t know why or how, that architecture and found architectures, such as buildings, building assemblages, urban, sub-urban, peri-urban, landscape or infrastructural contexts, are not separate from each other. In Hillier’s view, "we are bound up by the clear logic of various designs, but we also depend on exactly the absence of this. We delight in architecture produced by minds, but also in architectures, which are produced not by the ordering capacities of human minds, but emerge from the accumulation of unrelated acts of building spread over years." ⁷

The problem of designed and emergent architectures entails the danger of another duality, with the binaries in the last architecture Biennale in mind. Rem Koolhaas’ 2014 Biennale exhibition (The Elements) posed architecture as assemblage of elements based on market forces that mindlessly operate over and above architectural intention. This view also marked his approach in his book Delirious New York reading the city as self-organizing grid that maximizes programmatic potential. ⁸ Focusing on how architecture is produced on a systemic scale, The Elements suggests that we need to understand architecture as assemblage. Assemblages are bottom up and blind to the eventual outcome of design. In contrast, the Albertian model of architecture is top-down, clear in its intention but blind to evolutionary process. Koolhaas’ exhibition drew attention to the gap between buildings that are architecturally conceived and those that are dispersed to multiple points of production. From the interaction of planning codes with urban plots and infrastructures to informal urbanization there is a growing gap between the artistic aspirations of architects and the systemic operation of architecture as it happens on the ground.

In the 1970s Manfredo Tafuri claimed that capitalism stripped architecture of its ideological purpose. Today the split between the architectural avant-garde, land values and profit has turned architecture to “form without utopia.” ⁹ But if architecture has social significance, how can we address the separation between mindful buildings and mindless production?

The squares also facilitated water collection through cisterns and channels. The continuous network of through routes indicates that bridges were built so as to link the squares with each other producing a network of multiple interconnecting centralities. Another key characteristic of the squares is that they belong to a combinatorial syntax of elements: (square-church-cistern-canal-bridge-stepped access), leading to the emergence of a recognisable order devoid of preconception.

Moving to the analysis of the Hospital (Fig. 2), the analysis of the building using the same method shows that an analogical relationship between the building and the network structure of Venice is at work based on a modular scheme, and on networks of routes (which Le Corbusier called calle in an analogy with Venice’s streets) intersecting in the square areas at the centre of the Unité de battise (described by Le Corbusier as campiello in reference to the squares of Venice). In response to the question of the source of architectural form, this is a clear case in which the architect has retrieved the non-designed architecture of Venice (an urban system) and creatively embedded it in a new designed reality (a complex building). The source of the Hospital’s form is neither inside nor outside the creative faculties of the designer, neither autonomous not contingent, but in the interaction between the mind and the world whose logic it retrieves and innovatively changes to produce new patterns.

All three artefacts are modular. All three consist of local-scale rules that produce modular and combinatorial patterns at the larger scale, casting light on the emergent and generative logic of bottom-up architectures. The morphological affinities between the three works bring along two main ideas: one is “relatedness,” that is, that architecture is about elements simultaneously entering into relationships with other elements, which our minds read and translate creatively; the second is that there are alternative and intersecting types of authorship that interact and influence one another, as the diagram in Figure 4 illustrates. Taking Venice as the main subject of the illustration, the horizontal axis plots variance of artefacts based on whether they are built or un-built (or virtual), while the vertical axis locates variations of designed and non-designed (or found) artefacts. The three squares in the diagram capture differentiation of scale to include buildings, building complexes and cities.

Having established the theoretical premise of the discussion we move to the example of a design studio that explores how this model can inform design practice.The studio travelled to Rio de Janeiro to explore an educational approach in the context of the long history of informal settlements in the city. Located in Rocinha, one of Rio de Janeiro’s informal settlements, the studio had the general purpose of overcoming polarizations between the “designed” and the “found,” the “built” and the “unbuilt,” the analysis of found architectures and the design of new structures. ¹⁶ Drawing from Venice as an example of a city that grew out of a collection of semi-autonomous communities, the specific purpose of the design was to understandthe ways in which communities have in an autonomous and resourceful way created their own settlements.

The pedagogical approach was based on the observation that when designing in many different parts of the world the Albertian model of architecture needs new theories, new tools and substantial revisions. Based on thetheoretical idea of multiple authorships, the model proposed was based on the following revisions:

- The idea of negotiation between diverse types of authors, from architects, users and social groups to socio-spatial infrastructures.

The idea of the interaction between found architectures and designed architectures discovering patterns in built structures through analysis, and creating new patterns through design propositions.

- The idea of avoiding linguistic models which tend to convert fuzzy problems about the city into simple definitions, failing to capture complexity. For example, by comparing urban space to the human body, certain elements of the city have been considered as pathological. As a result, they were either ignored or considered to be in need of replacement.

- The idea of generating knowledge about the city through the non-discursive techniques of mapping and drawing (using space syntax analysis, GIS mapping and field work).

- The idea of enriching the knowledge generated by these non-discursive techniques with discursive methods based on theories and critical discussions.

- The idea that in organically grown systems (such as informal settlements) individual agency ‘thinks’ and acts locally, but collective action produces larger structures over time.

- The idea that there are design outcomes that accommodate adaptation as time-based process.

- The idea that in order to re-imagine the city creatively we need to understand the relationship between transformations that work bottom-up in a systemic way and the creative mind that acts top-down in a designedly fashion.

Instead of producing fixed outcomes such as buildings, or configuring open spaces by physical means, students developed designs that worked as social, economic and environmental infrastructures. These ranged from appropriating the cable car to service the residents of Rocinha (Figs. 5, 6), to devising waste management networks to reduce environmental risks and boost the cultural identity of the community (Figs. 7, 8); from do-it-yourself water infrastructure (Fig. 9) to inventing the hybrid typology of football - housing in order to improve safety and housing conditions (Fig. 10). This hybrid typology consists of two types that are found in the settlement, in the sense of urban voids where children play football and houses that oversee these fields serving a supervisory role. Here the new typology is invented out of two found ones in a mindful process. The combination of analytical and design explorations was based on the interaction between the two kinds of knowledge avoiding any hierarchical bias in their relationship. On the contrary,analytical and design ideas were intertwined through feedback loops linking mappings that generate various kinds of evidence with intuitive desires. Analysis and design propositions were each altered by outcomes that emerged from both sides in the design process. Street network analysis or volumetric analysis for example, was adapted to investigate properties that were not previously explored, such as the steepness of streets affecting senior residents in Rocinha and transportation. Similarly, design ideas were adjusted to knowledge emerging from street network analysis as a way to interrogate design intentions, and identify the most advantageous urban locations. Moving between analytical knowledge, theoretical speculation, and different models of authorship, students developed design approaches that worked as alternatives to the inherited top-down models of immutable interventions.