Ardeth #06 (I - Spring 2020)

Book excerpt: Incorporating contingency into our fundamental thinking about architecture contradicts the way we theorize, practice, and historicize the field. Accidents happen, yet architects rarely let chance play a role in their visions. How contingency play a role in architectural design and thinking? How designers incorporate change in their practice? The forward-facing nature of contingency scholarship, if we give it a name, may embed possible worlds that are more just, more compassionate, and more aware of the inequalities that accompany the uneven distribution of the most vital resource i our times: space. This issue began with the aim of exploring contingency thinking, and is completed from within contingent times, when nothing seems certain and contingency is less a lens than the air we breathe.