ON ARCHITECTURE
— PHILOSOPHY OF
ARCHITECTURE
10th International Conference and Exhibition
Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Gallery of Science and Technology
Belgrade, Serbia
Petar Bojanić, KEYNOTER
Petar Bojanić, Professor of Philosophy, studied at the University of Belgrade and at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (Paris). Petar was director of the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory (IFDT) at the University of Belgrade (2010-2020). He directs the Center for Ethics, Law and Applied Philosophy (CELAP) in Belgrade and the Center for Advanced Studies – South East Europe (CAS) at the University of Rijeka.
What is a Conject(ure)?
Abstract
The second half of the twentieth century has seen dramatic changes in the training of architects: the appearance of myriad new concepts and conceptions and a sudden expansion of architectural curricula in schools of architecture. Architects and students of architecture are now expected to write, meticulously explain and justify what they do and are doing, publish academic texts about their activities, analyze the work of other architects, produce complicated and extensive doctoral theses. All this has created in architecture an overt need for theory or philosophy, which can be termed the turn to theory or philosophy in architecture. The task of the philosopher is threefold: to awaken the philosopher in the architect (or perhaps recognize the architect-philosopher), who will then be better capable to thematize their own or joint work with other architects; with other architects, to produce, construct, and deconstruct a system (a register, order, protocol) of concepts that will in the future be authentically architectonic, such as opening the possibility of an eminently architectural language or terminology; finally, to discipline or institutionalize architecture (“to be an architect is to be a social fact”), to assist in the essential project of autonomy of the architect and architecture.
The task of the architect is to always guard the distance, that is, the conjunction AND (&; \cdot; ˄) between architecture and philosophy as the interval of the third or third space that gives birth to novelty. Further, their task is to examine the geometry of connections and relations, which means to bind the two fields, to reprogram the AND, to be the coordinator between the two – to preserve the uncertainty of the coordinating conjunction.
Short Biography
Petar Bojanić, Professor of Philosophy, studied at the University of Belgrade and at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (Paris), where he received his master 1997. In 2003, he received his PhD from the University of Paris X. Bojanić was director of the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory (IFDT) at the University of Belgrade (2010-2020). He directs the Center for Ethics, Law and Applied Philosophy (CELAP) in Belgrade and the Center for Advanced Studies – South East Europe (CAS) at the University of Rijeka. He has held numerous fellowships and visiting professorships, including at the Society for Humanities at Cornell University, the Centre for Modern Thought at the University of Aberdeen, the Institute of Advanced Studies at the University of Bologna and Torino, the Institute for Advanced Studies in Bonn, etc. Bojanić’s research is focused on the political philosophy, philosophy of law, architecture, phenomenology, social ontology, theory of institutions and Jewish political tradition. His book Violence and Messianism has been translated in seven languages. This year is published his book In-Statuere. Figures of Institutional Building (Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main, 2022) and new edition of Peter Eisenman. In Dialogue with Architects and Philosophers (eds. P. Bojanic & V. Djokic, Mimesis International, Milano, 2018).