Horror Vacui Vol.1: Instability

Over the 2023–24 academic year we contributed to Horror Vacui Vol. 1: Instability, a course and collective publication developed by the TRANS: Observatorio de Prácticas Transdisciplinares en Arquitectura research group within the MPAA15 programme at ETSAM Madrid, alongside students, professors and fellow LINA Fellows. The course took instability as its subject: not as a condition to be resolved, but as a genuine opportunity—potentially creative rather than limiting. Its editors describe a projective methodology defining a new expanded materiality to be inhabited, and possible transfers between architecture, art, industry and open-source culture. Our contribution ran across four threads.

Exploring instability

The notion of stability in our daily economy and mental states is deeply influenced by the modernist canon, which once promised progress and stability for all. However, the failures of modernist dreams have led to inevitable disillusionment. Today we confront numerous instabilities—wars, violence, migration, climate crises, inequality, pollution, and resource exploitation. Our problem-solving methods, inherited from twentieth-century designers and architects and aligned with existing power structures, may be too weak and easily corrupted, serving those in power. Recognising the limitations of modern stability allows for new connections to the world and alternative design methodologies, resulting in diverse narratives beyond the confines of modernism. In the current crisis, instead of relying on familiar problem-solving approaches, we should ask new questions, embrace uncertain post-activism, slow down, and remain with the risk. It is worth investigating how design can amplify subaltern voices, telling stories of seemingly modest phenomena, humble agents, or minor actors of our time.

Relational ontology

The ontological divisions inherent in modernity—culture and nature, male and female, mind and body, reason and sense, individual and collective, among many others—have led to a profound sense of disconnection between humanity and the non-human world. Addressing this crisis requires a re-evaluation of the relation between human subjectivity, the symbolic, and ontology, in order to fill cultural gaps with new imaginings and meanings.

Exploring politics within the feminine offers essential insights to transcend binary and hierarchical frameworks. Within this sphere, which remains largely unexplored, traits traditionally associated with the masculine—rationality, problem-solving, progress—are juxtaposed with qualities such as instability, precarity, vulnerability and risk, which can be understood as feminine. These terms are used not as gender identities but as relational and ontological concepts signifying modes of the human psyche within the Symbolic order. Rethinking the architect’s role as a culturally constructed subject opens new possibilities for addressing contemporary challenges and manifold power dynamics.

Following humble agents

The method of following humble agents offers an approach for engaging with the environment, living beings and objects. It moves away from viewing architecture as a self-contained system that solves complex issues monotheistically, embracing instead a flexible, fluid and imaginative framework adaptable to various challenges and needs.

Another crucial facet is the practice of collecting, organising and assembling research material into tangible forms—assemblage, collage, montage, atlas. This involves engaging with spaces curiously and structuring found materials into constellations to discern complex affinities. By integrating archival and site-specific materials, the method allows for multidimensional and multitemporal reassemblies, reimagining the past for future narratives.

(Un)learning architecture

The concluding text asks what narratives architectural practice can convey in turbulent times, and what responsibilities we hold as spatial practitioners. It is published in full in Reflections.