Lexicon

Abject
Accretion
Actant
Aeration
Aerobic
Algae-boosted
Animal
Anthropomorphism
Anti-Continuous Construction
Apocalypse
Aquaculture
Aquanaut
Ark
Artificial Intelligence
Autopoiesis
Assemblages
Asymmetry
Atrophy
Attraction
Autarchy
Automata
Automation
Autosymbiosis
Bambassador
Bathyscaphe
Bioconurbation
Biomedia
Bionics
Biosphere
Biotechnique
By-product
Capacity
Actant
Coisolation
Composting
Conservative Surgery
Consumer Envelope
Consumption
Continuous Construction
Conurbation
Correalism
Cultural_Memory
Cybernetics
Cybertecture
Cyborg
Dispositif
Diving Saucer
Dross
Earthship
Ecocatastrophe
Effluvium
Egosphere
End-use
Entanglement
Eutopia
Feedback
Foam
Folk
Gadget
Garbage House
Green Cyborg
Heuristic
Hoard
Holism
Homogenization of Desire
Hostile
Human Affect
Hybridized Folk
Hydroponic
Hyper-Materialism
Information Economy
Inner Space
Interama
Intra-Uterine
Maque
Megalopolis
Min-use
Mobility
Monorail
Multi-Hinge
Non-Design
Oceanaut
Oppositional Consciousness
Organic
Ouroboros
Panarchy
Parasite
Perceived Continuation
Permanence
Place
Prototype
Post-Animal
Reclamation
RI: Data Farms
RI: Garbage and Animals
RI:Shipbreaking
RI: Toxic Sublime
Sampling
Scale
Sensing Structure
Simulacrum
Simulation
Soft Energy
Spaceship Earth
Submersible
Superwindow
Symbiosis
Synthetic Environment
Technocratic
Technological Heredity
Technological Sublime
Telechirics
The Sublime
Thermal Panel
Actant
Thing-Power
Thinking Machines
Tool
Toxic Withdrawal
Turbulence
UV-Transparent Film
Vibrant Matter
Waste
Work

Dispositif

Dispositif is a term used by the French intellectual Michel Foucault, generally to refer to the various institutional, physical, and administrative mechanisms and knowledge structures which enhance and maintain the exercise of power within the social body. Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon is one of the strongest architectural representations of such a mechanism, so much so that it transcends the human ideals it was based upon. The building can no more be perceived as a neutral object of function, rather it is an alien body of control imposed by us on ourselves. In Foucault’s words the Panopticon is “mechanism of power reduced to its ideal form”. The failure of the Biosphere II1 can also be associated to such phenomenon. In an attempt to create an idealized environment of self sustained equilibrium and growth the system ate into the minds of the occupants as an oppressive cage of isolation from the rest of the world. This created social unrest and a deterioration of physical and mental well being, symptoms one would commonly associate to the term “Sick building syndrome”2. However, What such a term lacks in its most common usage is the perspective to look beyond the scientific and mechanical implications of such building effects and delve deeper into the social outlooks that bred such environments.

1 Janette Kim and Erik Carver, “Crisis in Crisis: Biosphere 2’s Contested Ecologies,” Volume, Bootleg Edition Urban China (February 2009), pp.29-33.
2 Peter Carolin, Patrick Hannay, Lynne Jackson (The Editors), “Sick Buildings or Moaning Minnies” in the Architect’s Journal, Vol.2 (London: The Architectural Press, October 1985), pp.19-20.