The Ethics of a Potential Urbanism Critical encounters between Giorgio Agamben and architecture Design and the Built Environment Series

The Ethics of a Potential Urbanism explores the possible and potential relevance of Giorgio Agamben?s political thoughts and writings for the theory and the practice of architecture and urban design. It sketches out the potentiality of Agamben?s politics, which can affect change in current architectural and design discourses. The book investigates the possibility of an inoperative architecture, as an ethical shift for a different practice, just a little bit different, but able to deactivate the sociospatial dispositive and mobilize a new theory and a new project for the urban now to come. This particular reading from Agamben?s oeuvre suggests a destituent mode of both thinking and practicing of architecture and urbanism that could possibly redeem them from their social emptiness, cultural irrelevance, economic reductionism and proto-avant-garde extravagance, contributing to a renewed critical ?encounter? with architecture?s aesthetic-political function.

1. Introduction: An Architecture Inseparable from its Form, Part I: Agamben’s Burning House, 2. Paradigmatic Spaces: Agamben Spaces, Architecture and Arts, 3. Literal and Artistic Potential Common Grounds, 4. The Taking Place of Possible Inoperative Encounters, Part II: Giorgio Agamben’s Oeuvre, 5. Earlier Works: The Man Without Contents, Stanzas and Language and History, 6. The Coming Politics and Potentialities: The Coming Community, 7. The Homo Sacer project since its inception to Stasis, Part III: Towards an Inoperative Architecture, 8. Paradigms and Dispositifs, 9. Profanation, 10. Potentialities, 11. Inoperativity, 12. Use, 13. Abandoning the Project: The Possibility for a Whatever Architecture

Camillo Boano is an architect and urbanist. He is Senior Lecturer at The Bartlett Development Planning Unit, University College of London (UCL), where he directs the MSc in Building and Urban Design in Development. He is also co-director of the UCL Urban Laboratory.