This image shows our design proposal for Urban Confluence Silicon Valley project (San Jose, California) and it is an example of our contribution to the development of anthropologically-based architecture that we call metaxography. The research on metaxography in architecture originates on one hand from the interplay between architecture and anthropology during the ongoing ontographic turnaround. On the other hand, it reviews some of the canonical metabolist and post-modernist architectural writings from the 1960’s to 90’s. This development takes a step towards the study of relationships in architecture as inherent in the writings of Alexander et al., Kurokawa, Maki, Rossi, Rowe – Koetter and Venturi. The project is pragmatist and involves multidisciplinary perspectives to architecture and its importance lays in:

– rereading many of the classic 20th century architectural writings from a perspective of architectural relationships
– expanding the ontographic method from anthropology to the study of relationships in architecture
– employing relationship-centred design methodologies from other fields to architecture
– laying new theoretical basis for relationship-based computational architecture.

Through this ongoing endeavour we participate actively in the discussion on object-oriented ontologies and adaptive reuse in architecture, developing new kind of development potential for architecture based on an understanding of overlapping systems and collage rather than traditional stiff compositions.

Link to further information
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/356918168_Metaxographic_architecture