(Biological) Life: The Pedagogy of an Architectural Concept

This paper analyses the techniques and technologies mobilized under the imprimatur of biological life in architectural production beyond their manifestations as (bio)mimetic processes. The arguments do not take ‘life’ as a priori to architectural thinking, but as immanent to each enactment of technique or application of technology within the biological paradigm. Using the work of Roger Caillois on pyschasthenia as the collapse of space between an organism and its milieu, the analysis avoids elevating biological life to a transcendent concept. Biological life in architecture instigates the pragmatic concern for whether a philosophical or scientific concept works, or matters, regardless of whether it fits within an ontology or metaphysics. Thus, architectural production using biological life subscribes to a Deleuzo-Guattarian “pedagogy of a concept” – the creation of perceptual and affective habits that are self-jeopardising and highly idiosyncratic to ensure further concept formation.