July 1, 2022
Anthropotechnology: Sloterdijk on Environmental Design and the Foamworlds of Co-Isolation
Mugerauer, Robert. (2016). Anthropotechnology: Sloterdijk on Environmental Design and the Foamworlds of Co-Isolation. Architecture And Culture, 4(2), 227 – 248.
Abstract
The paper has two primary goals. The first is to reexamine the dynamics of cultural change by applying the innovative interpretations of German theorist and cultural historian Peter Sloterdijk, who contends that the ways we traditionally have made and understood our built environment are grossly inadequate in our contemporary media-saturated, war-weary, biotechnological world. The second is to show how such a reinterpretation of space, architecture, and culture could help us to learn to design better and act by way of an anthropotechnology (Sloterdijk's word) that is simultaneously developmental and threatening - that might enable us to find an orientation in a world of complexity, and thus more positively shape our lives and future world. Sloterdijk's intriguing concepts - spheres of immunization (bubbles, globes, foams), co-isolation, dyads, tensegrity - hold great promise for the next pulse of architectural, planning, and construction theory.
Keywords
Peter Sloterdijk; Anthropotechnology; Spheres Of Immunization (bubbles, Globes, Foams); Co-isolation; Housing
