Abstract

Understanding ecology as “a widely-drawn category that encompasses objects and ideas, organic species and their habitats, inseparably linked together”,1 ecology clearly involves architecture on countless levels, by far exceeding the parameters of sustainable building technology that dominate conceptions of this field. Primarily addressing the ‘mental ecology’ of architecture – that is, how architecture is thought and constructed within the discipline – this article furthers an understanding of how occupancy has the power to undo central architectural concepts. Such an undoing is seen as a prerequisite for what Félix Guattari has denoted ecosophy – the ethico-political articulation between the three, interconnected ecological registers: that of the environment, of social relations and the realm of ideas. Considered within an ecological intellectual framework, notions of resistance, spatial appropriation and indeterminacy in architecture are seen to evolve as steps along the way in the urgent task of re-writing architecture’s ontology. It points towards an architecture of shifts and additions, of re-uses and re-inventions; an architecture that generously permits a variety of uses and a continuous production of meaning.

How to Cite:

Gabrielsson, C., (2011) “Squatting My Mind – Towards an Architectural Ecosophy”, field: 4(1), 163–188.