Athens: Notes on Urban Immanence

Focusing on the city of Athens, this book examines architecture as something that produces culture and ideology -- rather than the opposite. Therefore, this book aims to complement architectural and urban theories that are based only on historical overviews or typological assumptions; to do so it boldly opens architectural discourse to philosophy, affect theory, social and cognitive sciences.

By examining Athens after its denomination as Greek capital in 1834, the moments, actors and transformations that assist the individuation of the Athenian urban ecologies are problematised. Opting for theoretical speculations, the readers will witness architecture as a collective equipment that produces modes of life that can either enhance or diminish our collective potentials. As such, the ambition of the book is to provide the theoretical and methodological groundings for thorough extrapolations on how new collectivities can be produced.

Readers of this book will be exposed to a transdisciplinary approach that identifies and addresses shared problems and concerns regarding the production of contemporary urban environments. The book will also explore theoretical innovations that can inform and trigger new ways of speculative thinking and offers a non-reductionist account of the development of Athens from the perspective of multiple architectural technicities. This book will be of interest to researchers and students of architecture, architectural theory, architectural history and philosophy.

Stavros Kousoulas is assistant professor of Architecture Philosophy and Theory, and research leader of the Department of Architecture at the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment in TU Delft. He studied architecture at the National Technical University of Athens and at TU Delft, and received his PhD cum laude from IUAV Venice. He is the executive editor of Footprint Delft Architecture Theory Journal. He is the author of the monograph Architectural Technicities (Routledge, 2022) and the edited volumes Architectures of Life and Death (RLI, 2021), Design Commons (Springer, 2022), The Space of Technicity (TUD Open, 2024) and Noetics without a Mind (TUD Open, 2024).