Twelve and after

A summary
Along with various texts in GRA, it started to become clearer to me a theoretical frame, in order to deal with the (under formation and already here) Planning/Design in an era of preemption & virtuousness -- and how to avoid it. Now, with this collection of short texts, I'm intending to give some elements of the Preemptive & Virtuous Planning/Design (PVP/D) and focus on its ideological context, which seems to be rather a techno-epistemo-theological (faith-based) one.

A kind of preliminary terminology maybe is needed here. "Preemption" is not, only and anymore, about avoiding undesirable effects of a procedure (by the formal "prevention"). It is about foreclosing or precluding of expected effects, through a process of procedure's securization. But preemption is not enough for the conduct of the diagram and its virtuality -- it is adrift, for example, of managerial complications and accidents. In order preemption to be simultaneously "just" and indisputable, it is need a determination of the whole operation, i.e. a pre-determination of a (transcendental) moral order. So, preemption and virtuousness are considered inseparable one from the other, and PVP/D get its full power.

Subsequently, we may notice some very indicative shifts, let's say:

a. from the old "good" architecture to the brand new "virtuous" design, or from the once architect's personal "ethos" to design's "ethics",
b. from (social-political) practice to (religious-dogmatic) "action",
c. from virtual to virtuous,
d. from the epistemological criterion of falsifiability (fundamental for epistemology) to the salvatory principle of "fulfillment" (a kind of techno-epistemo-religious fundamentalism) -- and so on.

Finally, the Big Project is considered here on the fond of the wider theoretical discussion about bio-politics -- and about the bio-political condition in the current historic coincidence of hyper-capitalist and post-democratic, globally networked "civil" society.

by George Koutoupis, Architect

p.s.
There is a first attempt for an introduction to the "PVP/D -- and how to avoid it", in English, co-written by Vana Tentokali and me, for the International Conference Architecture and Ideology (Beograd, Srbija, Sept12) at this link.