What the study found
The article finds that architectural laboratories can act as hybrid practices that bring architects back into relation with material agency, meaning the active role of matter in making and design. It distinguishes between extractive laboratories, which isolate material properties for general use, and laboratories of entanglement, which support situated material relations among human and nonhuman actors.
Why the authors say this matters
The authors conclude that this offers a way for architectural knowledge production to resist reductionism while staying materially grounded. They suggest that laboratory-based practice can challenge extraction-based paradigms in architecture by linking knowledge production with experimentation about human-material relations.
What the researchers tested
The article uses critical historical analysis and contemporary case studies, including Frederick Kiesler's mid-20th-century Design Correlation Laboratory and François Roche's New Territories practice. It also draws on new materialist theory, planetary design pedagogy, and laboratory studies to build its argument.
What worked and what didn't
The article argues that laboratories can either perpetuate architecture's abstracted relationship with matter or disrupt it. It says laboratories of entanglement work by acknowledging distributed agency, using speculative methods that allow material unpredictability, developing representations that make material agency visible, and producing project-specific codes rather than universal standards.
What to keep in mind
The abstract does not provide detailed empirical limitations or formal constraints beyond the historical and case-based scope of the article. The summary available here is limited to the article's stated argument and examples.
Key points
- The article distinguishes extractive laboratories from laboratories of entanglement.
- It argues that architectural laboratories can reconnect architects with material agency.
- The study uses historical analysis and contemporary case studies as its evidence base.
- It links architectural practice to human and nonhuman distributed agency.
- The authors frame laboratories as sites of both epistemic extraction and ontological experimentation.
Disclosure
- Research title:
- Architectural laboratories can reconnect practice with material agency
- Authors:
- Derya Uzal, Aslıhan Şenel
- Institutions:
- Istanbul Technical University, Istanbul Technical University
- Publication date:
- 2026-03-11
- OpenAlex record:
- View
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