Occupying Architecture Between the Architect and the User

"Occupying Architecture" explores the relationship between the architect, the user and architecture, revealing that architecture is not just a building, but that it is the relation between an object and its occupant.

This collection discusses how and why architectural production and discourse ignores the user, and focuses on what is absent from present debates and practice. This book proposes a complete reworking of the relations between design and experience to transform practices of the architect, and ways of seeing and using architecture.

Occupying Architecture focuses on the importance of the user of architecture. It emphasises the cross-currents between design, theory and use, and the need for a wider cross-cultural approach to architecture. Beginning with the architect, the book proceeds to explore models for architectural practice that actively engage the issue of use, and concludes with examination of the user. The authors draw on illustrations and examples from London, Las Vegas, Barcelona and Bruges to discuss how and why architecture ignores the user. The apparant contradictions between the 'producer' and the 'product' of architecture are highlighted before the activities of the architect and the actions of the user are explored.This book illustrates that architecture is not just a building: it is the relation between an object and its occupant.

Introduction. Building an Architect. Curriculum Vitae. The Architect's Cultural Capital: Educational Practices and Financial Investments. Response Ability Architecture of the Impure Community. Contaminating Contemplation. Space Within. Art and Architecture, Shared Ground. The Illegal Architect. The Landscape of Luxury. The Knowing and Subverting Reader. Body Architecture: Skateboarding and the Creation of Super-Architectural Space. Striking Home: The Telematic Assault on Identity. Doing it, (Un)Doing it, (Over)Doing it Yourself: Rhetoric's of Architectural Abuse.