Routledge Speculative Architectures after Minoritarian Futurisms (Routledge Research in Architecture)

Speculative Architectures after Minoritarian Futurisms is a work of architectural theory which understands architecture as a practice of speculation analogous to science fiction. While it might seem immediately obvious, especially given the discipline's legacy of fantastical invention and commitment to "the future," this book argues that this hypothetical conjunction offers a highly sophisticated critical perspective on the discipline, arguing that the only way to deal with the complex challenges of the present is through processes of speculation and ethical commitment to imagining futures evinced in minoritarian futurisms. This book reads architecture from the perspective of the recent florescence of futurisms―from Afro-futurism to xeno-feminism―with an attention to how they produce a different image of architecture. In understanding architecture as speculative practice, the book also suggests understanding the architect by analogy to the author of science fiction. Learning from queer and feminist perspectives, this method of "science fictioning" refuses to take the terms now defining the discipline as totalising and immutable and investigates the unique subjectivities, positions, and responsibilities that might be imagined as the architect-to-come. This book will be of interest to researchers and students of architectural theory, science fiction studies, design futures, and global futurisms.