Built upon Love: Architectural Longing after Ethics and Aesthetics

written by Alberto Pérez-Gómez

I will speak about architecture tonight. Architecture, particularly its history and theories is my field. But I will hardly be talking about buildings.  In my understanding, which I will unpack a little later in this talk, architecture is a broad artistic practice that qualifies our collective space of appearance and has, already since the early modern period, become paradigmatic for our own time, particularly through its engagement of language in the form of programs that force the architect, in the best cases, to conspire with others and for others, and often against institutional frameworks.