Francesco Proto - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Uploads

Papers by Francesco Proto

Lo Sguardo - Rivista di Filosofia, 2017

The Journal of Architecture, Nov 1, 2005

Already in the mid-1960s, with the first warnings of juvenile arraignments, an open critique of t... more Already in the mid-1960s, with the first warnings of juvenile arraignments, an open critique of the naive enthusiasm with which the former generation had absorbed the myth of technology and communication came to the fore. So that Archigram members themselves, in proposing a cardboard megastructure for the ARCHIGRAM VII special issue (‘everybody's got their own mega-structure, do it yourself’ they wrote), kept an ironic distance from the modernistic belief in the linear evolution of society (Fig. 1).Nevertheless, the dramatic decrease in the utopian mainstream that had characterised the ‘Year of Megastructures’, as Banham called it (1963), succeeded in producing an unrepeatable architectural gesture for the celebration of individual freedom and social equality. As one of the best-known contemporary icons, the Pompidou Centre was also responsible for turning the modernistic interest in functionality into the de-materialised aspects of urban fetishism. The hyper-objectification of its form and the consequent ‘transparency’ of its content led in fact to a new type of architectural fruition: that in which the ideological perception of the building exceeded the real possibilities suggested by its hyper-flexibility. Thus, the Pompidou also inaugurated a new era for the dogmatic myth of self-empowerment by means of self-learning (auto-didacticism) and mass jouissance.

By building on the homology that Jacques Lacan draws between the mirror-stage (a fundamental aspe... more By building on the homology that Jacques Lacan draws between the mirror-stage (a fundamental aspect of subjective construction) and the optical model (a device with both a concave and plain mirror), this chapter argues that the Western city mainly unfolds as a projection of the prevalent subjective construction over different epochs and that, as such, it ‘mirrors’ back one of the Lacanian clinical structures of the subject (neurotic, pervert and psychotic) in the Lacanian theoretical model of the unconscious. The resource to the post-structuralist historical technique of genealogy, through which such a condition is enucleated, is thus justified not just by the need to account for the predominant ideologies established since the inception of the so-called ‘classic’ age of modernity, but also by the very need to emphasize how the latter directly impacted the subjective construction of the self. The latter is thus universalized and assumed as prevailing on the basis of an emerging, homogenizing and all-encompassing visual culture: the image, into which most architecture comes to be translated becomes the axiom that makes for certain principles to be postulated and disseminated

Architectural Design, 2009

Architecture and Culture, Oct 1, 2020

This article challenges current psychoanalytical thought according to which the three Lacanian cl... more This article challenges current psychoanalytical thought according to which the three Lacanian clinics of the neurotic, pervert and psychotic coexist in any given era, and suggests instead that identifiable environmental conditions are key to the surfacing of a specific and dominant construction of the self. In the case of the pervert, the narcissistic wounds inflicted by science and technology, as well as an increasingly hostile lifestyle dictated by the Industrial Revolution, become key factors that delineate a form of subjectivity in urgent need of overcoming internal splits. The modernist grid, which both the artistic avant-garde and the pioneers of modern architecture address during the first half of the twentieth century as the panacea for a corrupted world, is here discussed in terms of a subject whose imaginary worldview is determined by the vantage point offered by visual-machines, such as geometric grids, as applied to the production of a sanitized and overcontrolled urban environment. Both the mechanisms and outcomes of this interpretation of the evolution of Western city design are part of the original research question that this article addresses.

Architectural Design, 2009

Routledge eBooks, Dec 6, 2019

Cycle of Seminars led by philosopher & professor Mario Perniol

It is generally understood that the issue of transgression came to the fore, in its socio-politic... more It is generally understood that the issue of transgression came to the fore, in its socio-political implications, over the students’ revolutions of the 1960s, when the state, the patriarchal authority per excellence in contemporary society, was challenged by and large. To the same extent, it is often ignored that a greater transgression was taking place centuries before, and by dint of a new-born discipline: architecture – an earthquake in western culture that shook the roots of philosophy’s foundational discourse. By interpolating contemporary philosophy, psychoanalysis and visual culture, this paper will trace a genealogy of Western narcissism as embodied, launched, materialized and brought to the fore by the emergence of architecture as a discipline whose ‘original sin’ is fully experienced only in post-modern times. Architecture’s primary aim is here identified with nothing less than the challenge to the architect of the universe, God himself. What was implied, was again religious belief as grounded on the supernatural father of human mankind. Starting from the implications embedded within the aesthetic and philosophical conundrum set by the institution of architecture, the latter will be addressed as the transgressive discipline par excellence, one paving the way not only for the divine nature of man, but also for the successive artificialization of the environment. The result will be the development of typological features mirroring desire in a post-oedipal society. In this respect, the paper will investigate not just a number of psychoanalytical concepts (the mirror stage, the name-of-the-Father, the paternal horde, etc); but also philosophical principles such as simulation and symbolic exchange, an interpolation whose methodological approach will support the decoding of the symbolic understanding of transgression and its consequences. In conclusion, the essay will focus on the development of western architecture as leading to the free-plan, the highest expression of conquered liberty (political, social and religious) and for this very reason as the mirror of the western modern ontological legacy. That is, that Lacanian “Che vuoi?” (“what do you want?”), that poses the reason for transgressing boundaries.

Arq-architectural Research Quarterly, Sep 1, 2021

Lo Sguardo - Rivista di Filosofia, 2017

The Journal of Architecture, Nov 1, 2005

Already in the mid-1960s, with the first warnings of juvenile arraignments, an open critique of t... more Already in the mid-1960s, with the first warnings of juvenile arraignments, an open critique of the naive enthusiasm with which the former generation had absorbed the myth of technology and communication came to the fore. So that Archigram members themselves, in proposing a cardboard megastructure for the ARCHIGRAM VII special issue (‘everybody's got their own mega-structure, do it yourself’ they wrote), kept an ironic distance from the modernistic belief in the linear evolution of society (Fig. 1).Nevertheless, the dramatic decrease in the utopian mainstream that had characterised the ‘Year of Megastructures’, as Banham called it (1963), succeeded in producing an unrepeatable architectural gesture for the celebration of individual freedom and social equality. As one of the best-known contemporary icons, the Pompidou Centre was also responsible for turning the modernistic interest in functionality into the de-materialised aspects of urban fetishism. The hyper-objectification of its form and the consequent ‘transparency’ of its content led in fact to a new type of architectural fruition: that in which the ideological perception of the building exceeded the real possibilities suggested by its hyper-flexibility. Thus, the Pompidou also inaugurated a new era for the dogmatic myth of self-empowerment by means of self-learning (auto-didacticism) and mass jouissance.

By building on the homology that Jacques Lacan draws between the mirror-stage (a fundamental aspe... more By building on the homology that Jacques Lacan draws between the mirror-stage (a fundamental aspect of subjective construction) and the optical model (a device with both a concave and plain mirror), this chapter argues that the Western city mainly unfolds as a projection of the prevalent subjective construction over different epochs and that, as such, it ‘mirrors’ back one of the Lacanian clinical structures of the subject (neurotic, pervert and psychotic) in the Lacanian theoretical model of the unconscious. The resource to the post-structuralist historical technique of genealogy, through which such a condition is enucleated, is thus justified not just by the need to account for the predominant ideologies established since the inception of the so-called ‘classic’ age of modernity, but also by the very need to emphasize how the latter directly impacted the subjective construction of the self. The latter is thus universalized and assumed as prevailing on the basis of an emerging, homogenizing and all-encompassing visual culture: the image, into which most architecture comes to be translated becomes the axiom that makes for certain principles to be postulated and disseminated

Architectural Design, 2009

Architecture and Culture, Oct 1, 2020

This article challenges current psychoanalytical thought according to which the three Lacanian cl... more This article challenges current psychoanalytical thought according to which the three Lacanian clinics of the neurotic, pervert and psychotic coexist in any given era, and suggests instead that identifiable environmental conditions are key to the surfacing of a specific and dominant construction of the self. In the case of the pervert, the narcissistic wounds inflicted by science and technology, as well as an increasingly hostile lifestyle dictated by the Industrial Revolution, become key factors that delineate a form of subjectivity in urgent need of overcoming internal splits. The modernist grid, which both the artistic avant-garde and the pioneers of modern architecture address during the first half of the twentieth century as the panacea for a corrupted world, is here discussed in terms of a subject whose imaginary worldview is determined by the vantage point offered by visual-machines, such as geometric grids, as applied to the production of a sanitized and overcontrolled urban environment. Both the mechanisms and outcomes of this interpretation of the evolution of Western city design are part of the original research question that this article addresses.

Architectural Design, 2009

Routledge eBooks, Dec 6, 2019

Cycle of Seminars led by philosopher & professor Mario Perniol

It is generally understood that the issue of transgression came to the fore, in its socio-politic... more It is generally understood that the issue of transgression came to the fore, in its socio-political implications, over the students’ revolutions of the 1960s, when the state, the patriarchal authority per excellence in contemporary society, was challenged by and large. To the same extent, it is often ignored that a greater transgression was taking place centuries before, and by dint of a new-born discipline: architecture – an earthquake in western culture that shook the roots of philosophy’s foundational discourse. By interpolating contemporary philosophy, psychoanalysis and visual culture, this paper will trace a genealogy of Western narcissism as embodied, launched, materialized and brought to the fore by the emergence of architecture as a discipline whose ‘original sin’ is fully experienced only in post-modern times. Architecture’s primary aim is here identified with nothing less than the challenge to the architect of the universe, God himself. What was implied, was again religious belief as grounded on the supernatural father of human mankind. Starting from the implications embedded within the aesthetic and philosophical conundrum set by the institution of architecture, the latter will be addressed as the transgressive discipline par excellence, one paving the way not only for the divine nature of man, but also for the successive artificialization of the environment. The result will be the development of typological features mirroring desire in a post-oedipal society. In this respect, the paper will investigate not just a number of psychoanalytical concepts (the mirror stage, the name-of-the-Father, the paternal horde, etc); but also philosophical principles such as simulation and symbolic exchange, an interpolation whose methodological approach will support the decoding of the symbolic understanding of transgression and its consequences. In conclusion, the essay will focus on the development of western architecture as leading to the free-plan, the highest expression of conquered liberty (political, social and religious) and for this very reason as the mirror of the western modern ontological legacy. That is, that Lacanian “Che vuoi?” (“what do you want?”), that poses the reason for transgressing boundaries.

Arq-architectural Research Quarterly, Sep 1, 2021