This study investigates the possible relevance between Giorgio Agamben’s thought and the theory and practice of architecture and design in general. The main objective is, firstly, to engage the discourse between Agamben’s erudite oeuvre and the praxis or poiesis of architecture. Secondly, it seeks to highlight the most substantial potentials that his work holds, for the conception of spatiality today. At the same time, through this debating process, it aims to propose a way of studying similar encounters between philosophy and politics, through a toolset consisting of elements like the glossary, the archive and the visual essay.
What is really out of this research range is to exhaust or direct somehow this debate. On the contrary it questions the whole project itself, inviting the reader to participate towards an aporia without providing a clear answer. This is also the way the author chooses to face the increasingly emerging problematic around the contemporary nature of architecture and its political dimension, as he seeks to reclaim this much-too-early abandoned critique. Nevertheless this project is far from constituting a complete or straightforward solution to this problematic, and thus wanders in a sphere of stochastic archaeology.
The research is divided into three parts that correspond to three different phases. The first consists of a glossary of five main agambenian terms, which juxtaposes their linguistic interpretation with their visual. Then, an archive follows, that traces in detail the direct references that Agamben has made in relation to architectural or design context. The third and last chapter is where the conjunction of architecture projects and theory occurred. Of course, the level of creativity and experimentation in this last part involves the risk of non-interweaving concepts, which is something that does not prove their initial engagement unnecessary.