Pilot projects

Sensing, intuiting, imaging

1In General

Philosopher Gilbert Simondon claimed that sensation is the grasping of a direction and not of an object. For French speakers this makes absolute sense (pun intended): in French, sense literally translates as direction. To make sense implies the capacity to both grasp where something is coming from and where it is going. It is in its directionality that sense becomes political: not in the strict understanding of the term but in approaching the political as any attempt to deal with complexity. Based on such (cosmo)politics, the philosopher Claire Colebrook claims that there is nothing more political than the opposition between reversibility and irreversibility. Time is fundamentally irreversible and all politics depends on this exact feature: while progressive politics acknowledges the irreversibility of time, conservative politics wishes to reverse time to what it once was. 
However, in the current Anthropocenic condition, the irreversibility of time becomes palpable given that the effects of any action cannot be reversed – take, for example, climate change and its myriad consequences. Simply put, we cannot predict and correct, one can only intuit and speculate. As such, speculation becomes a sensitivity enhancer or an intuition booster. Through non-arbitrary ‘what-ifs’ one can begin to sense what ‘could’ come, and do so in a manner that can encompass and embrace the indeterminacy of a radically open and irreversible time. Being sensitive to time stands for being able to sense its indifference to any of our traditional temporal taxonomies – past, present, and future. Speculative time is a time in and of ongoing production, both in its actual dimension (what is being produced) and in its virtual dimension (what could have been produced). It is on this latter part that our speculative design pedagogies will concentrate. How do we sense (collectively and therefore technologically) the effects of our actions? How might we have been otherwise? 

2In Particular

Within the scope of the Architectural Technicities MSc 2 Design Studio in the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, we will incorporate and develop an intensive workshop under the title Sensing-Intuiting-Imaging (SII). The workshop will bring together MSc students, PhD researchers, academic staff and invited guests who embark from different trajectories but focus on a single, shared interest: the production of speculative and intuitive problematisations. These speculations demand both: the formation of new sensibilities, as well as new forms that can express their potential. We shall call these forms ‘images’, but following a non-representational approach that does not equate them with shapes, outlines, or their tracings. On the contrary, we will open images to an untapped affective potential that provides not only an account of ‘what has been’ but can also invent ‘what is to come’.
To do so we will follow Simondon and his ontology of images. Simondon refuses to relate images with human consciousness and intentionality alone, claiming instead that images are external to the thinking subject and are to be seen in connection with the action potential of (living) bodies. Understood as transducers between bodies (that can be interchangeably called subject or object), images establish vital linkages that allow organisms and their environment to form a joint system. This way, Simondon develops a pluralistic account of images in what he calls an imagistic cycle, consisting of four complementary phases with corresponding images: 

• Motor-image:
For Simondon, the first images ‘are not conscious … since they precede perception (the reception of signals coming from the milieu), they are motor, linked to the most simple behaviors through which the living take possession of the milieu and proceed to the first identification of the (living or non-living) objects they encounter.’ Far from being confused with any representational fixation, primitive motor images have no other content than movement itself: they are autokinetic and non-finalised. It is this dimension of motricity and movement that constitutes the first phase of images, what we can call a motor-image. An example of a motor-image would be the act of drinking water.

• Perception-image:
Through and in movement, experience registers its own ‘being experienced’, leading to what Simondon identifies as the second phase of imagistic life, that of perception. The motor capacities exercised by an individual in its environment reveal affordances that in the act of being actualised formulate correspondences and associations between acts, environmental elements, and the individual itself. An example of a perception-image would be the river that affords the act of drinking water.

• Symbolic-image:
As a result of perceiving, images are organised and systematised, allowing the exercise of capacities we associate with consciousness. In other words, through the a praesenti of the activity of movement, the potential of a symbolic a priori (memory, the past), and a symbolic a posteriori (the future one longs for) is produced. An example of a symbolic-image would be the recollection or the anticipation of a river that affords the act of drinking water.

These three phases constitute the life of the image, which belongs to the relationship between the organism and the environment proper: movement, perception, and consciousness. It is at this exact point that Simondon introduces a crucial fourth phase related to invention: 

• Object-image:
If the tensions between movement, perception, and the conscious systematisation of both cannot be resolved through bodily dispositions alone, then the need arises for a heterogeneous transducer. This transducer is the invented and technologically produced object-image. Object-images have the capacity to resolve disparate tensions between different orders of magnitude, effectively restoring the continuity of activity that has been interrupted. In doing so, object-images restore movement (albeit differentiated), and in doing so, they are bootstrapping the imagistic cycle once again (albeit differentiated). A transductive object-image thus alters motricity and leads to novel perceptions, leading to eventually differentiated symbolic systematisations of past and future values. An example of an object-image is the glass that is invented to automatise the act of drinking water by using our bare hands. 

The four phases of the imagistic cycle highlight that images and imagination should not be conflated with visual representations or, even worse, with the act of an individual alone and its supposed psychic or intellectual capacities. What makes the ontology of images so appealing to Simondon is their transductive in-betweenness: both objective and subjective, abstract and specific, of the world and of the self. In simple terms, images do not belong to the individual and imagination is not a solipsistic act. Neither do they belong to an environment as an isolated container. Images, imaging and imagining are in and of the relation between organism and environment. They solidify, modify, and transduce their relation in ways that propel the individuation of both the organism and the environment precisely because they belong to neither. The SII cycle is thus not circular but spiral-shape:

spiral

Spiralling of the Simondonian Image Cycle, by the authors, 2024

3In Detail

The workshop takes place before the last part of the studio, in early June. It is preceded by a theoretical first part and a genealogical part that takes place immediately after the student field trip. In the theoretical first part, the students work individually to develop a problem that guides them for the rest of the studio and informs the setting up of student groups. Groups are formed based on problematic affinities, securing what we consider the first prerequisite in the production of any collective: sharing a common problem (that has not been imposed). The groups are assigned different urban areas or conditions that correspond to their common problem. The whole studio then goes on a field trip where on-site research, interviews and seminars take place. Upon their return, the students attempt to identify the singular points and moments that are open to intuitive speculations by developing a thorough genealogical approach. Upon the conclusion of this genealogical part, the second part of the studio in the form of SII begins.
SII is spread over two weeks and consists of five intense workshop days: the first day serves as an introduction to Simondon’s imagistic cycle, where a series of lectures qualify and explain its four phases in detail. Each of the four remaining workshop days focuses on a specific image: from motor-image to perception-image to symbolic-image, concluding with the object-image. Each of these days will be divided into two parts: the morning is dedicated to production (following detailed instructions offered by the workshop tutors) and the afternoon is reserved for the student groups to present their work. In addition, each day is expected to build upon the work of the previous days, following the individuation of an imagistic cycle. The workshop concludes with the presentation of object-images by the student groups. All student work, throughout the workshop, in all different image phases and in all different formats (sketches, diagrams, videos, choreographies, sonic elements and so on) is presented and developed on a single A1-size sheet. 
Below is a detailed overview of the workshop schedule per day.

4Day 1. Introduction on Simondon’s imagistic cycle 

Simondon’s imagistic cycle is thoroughly introduced through lectures and discussions. The four phases of images are laid out, with a discussion of their philosophical and theoretical background, their broader implications, their potential and their radical differences from traditional approaches, and their relation to architecture thinking and doing.

5Day 2. Motor-images and flows 

We examine motor-images as the primary movement of flows. The students speculate on which kinds of flows are involved in both their theoretical problem and in the urban conditions of their assigned area. The output of this day is a diagram expressing the movement of the relevant group-specific flow(s). The diagram can be hand drawn, digital or a combination of both, but in any case, non-representational.

illustration-of-a-thousand-plateaus-chapter-1-paragraph-6-ngui-2012-any-point-of-a

Diagrams for Deleuze and Guattari's A Thousand Plateaus by Marc Ngui, 2012

6Day 3. Perception-images and the context of flows 

We examine perception-images as the registering of flows and their assignment to a specific place and time. The students speculate on where and when the flows are registered in their area. The output of this day is a map that points out and captures the spatiotemporal specificities of flows. The map has no scale constraints and does not necessarily need to be a traditional urban map; the façade or the section of a building is as good a map as any.

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Map of Naples, Richter, 1886

7Day 4. Symbolic-images and the cognition of flows 

We examine symbolic-images as the resingularisation of flows. The students speculate on how flows are taken away from their specific context, expressed in their most singular aspects and are eventually opened to a potential anywhere and a potential anyone. The output of this day is an encyclopaedic notational drawing that expresses what is singular in a flow regardless of context. 

shin-egashira-bed-machine-window-1992

Bed Machine by Shin Egashira, 1992

8Day 5. Object-images and the invention of flows 

We examine object-images as flow inventors. The students speculate on how novel flows are invented when the captured, contextualised and eventually resingularised flows transduce from one domain to another. To achieve this, the groups exchange their problems among themselves as expressed in their symbolic-images. The output of this day is fundamentally open and not to be determined in advance. 

istockphoto-1399431932-612x612
Project for Sensing, intuiting, imaging

Centro Storico, Benedetta Rizzo, Christopher Piderit, Leonardo Pisoni, Sofia Ghigliani, Jessica Bailey

While in the Neapolitan context disorder represents a large part of the city’s need for indeterminacy, it does not mean a lack of structure, but rather an overlapping of heterogeneous structures forming an unregulated and temporary balance. With a volcano on the horizon and many others underground, and a tight economic situation, the habitat of the Neapolitans presents itself as highly unstable, leading citizens to take on a day-by-day living approach. Amidst this chaos in their habitat, it is in the habitus that Neapolitans create their own stability. The rituals, the beliefs, the blood of San Gennaro, Maradona, the black cat, the stairs, the hat on the bed, the spiders, the horns, the left breast and the left testicle; these are all elements that instead codify Naples’ daily life. It is within this shift of values and hierarchy that we start noticing a total reinterpretation of the tool-monument spectrum.

With the study of monuments and tools, we were able to speculate on the duality of material arrangements, or rather architecture, through the concept of membranes and thresholds. We recognised in the monument a material with a thick membrane, highly differentiated from its context and inhabitants, to the point where the boundary surrounding it marks a clear and strong separation. The tool, instead, has a much thinner and blurred membrane, not as clearly definable when abstracted from the action surrounding it. A hammer, as an object of hammering, could start from the hand of the user, the arm, the shoulder or even the back. Similarly, it could end in the nail being punched through the surface, or in the surface hosting itself.

The distinction between monuments and tools is not something completely binary however, and in contexts like the Neapolitan one, the two elements constantly undergo a continuous reinterpretation. Monuments are highly toolified: a church is used for selling, a statue is used to sit upon or to hang signs. Habitus in this case are stabilised by using and abusing the habitat. Tools are also monumentalized, such as Maradona or the blood of San Gennaro. These are examples of habits that become sable in and of themselves, so much so, that they become monuments. 

The concepts of monumentalization of tools and instrumentalization of monuments are also deeply intertwined with the concept of sacredness: monumentalization of tools sacralises habits and patterns, while toolification of monuments desacralises habitats and spaces. This dichotomy is fundamental to our understanding of identity and of its ambiguous character. Its genealogy lies precisely in the process of translation between the two. The genealogy of entropy can be traced back to the process of revolt against the imposed order, such as the defined use, meaning and affordances of a space, involving multiple actors in this effort of destabilisation and re-identification.

The question we pose, therefore, to the Centro Storico is the following:

How is its architecture inhabited by Neapolitans? We believe that by looking for the “how” we can succeed in arriving at the understanding of its meta-stable identity.

To download a PDF of the full project description please click here.

Project for Sensing, intuiting, imaging

Porto, Jean Rojanavilaivudh, Mees van Rhijn, Miguel Borst, Koen de Nie, Qiyu Chen

The flows that weave and move throughout the port and Naples are various. The roots of all flows can be traced back into a simple trinity. Not one of singular points, but a trinity of overlapping and intersecting circles. This trinity defines the port and is at the same time a very general understanding of the site. It consists of the Sea, People and Technology and can be traced back to our genealogy research.

Underneath and overarching all of these flows is a more fundamental system of motor flows that we define as flows of belief and flows of control. Upon an initial introspection the flows of both belief and control seem to be two separated systems. Flows of belief appear to be a personal system of flows. A system that is driven by personal intentions and can thus also be changed along one’s own belief. Because of this view we experience a duality between systems of control and systems of belief. We feel that we control what we believe but do not control what controls us. Those systems of control remain exterior to personal forms of agency, of modes of influence. 

However this denies the duality and reciprocality of the two systems. Flows of belief and flows of control can never be separated. Control is not merely imposed and belief is not inherently a personal construct. The flows of both belief and control are entangled together. It is unclear where flows of control and flows of belief come together, how they fuse and move into the other form. What is clear however is that they are part of this constant feedback loop, feeding off and into each other. 

To address the predicament that is part of Neapolitan life is thus not only addressing an exterior form of control. It is not an almighty form of oppressive and restrictive structure, intangible and unchangeable. That what controls is only able to do so because of at the very least a slight belief vested in that control. To disrupt this controlling and restricting system is thus to also disrupt the beliefs vested in it. An incoming flow towards the Neapolitan system of control and belief arrives like a ship at the port. It is the different interactions that classify how different flows reach or fail to become a part of that system. 

Simondon’s object image is an interesting point of breaking, a point where a motor-perception-symbol loop is broken and space for hybrid forms that challenge and redefine relationships and identities emerges. Harawayian thought intersects with these ideas, positing cyborg entities, holobionts and chthonic ones, all inherently monstrous and illegitimate, challenging traditional notions of identity and repair. Cyborgs emphasise regeneration over reproduction, they embody resistance and recoupling in ways that transcend conventional frameworks. Her chthonic ones ‘make and unmake’, without sticking to a set ideology other than making and unmaking. Our object image is the ultimate breaking-machine, the disruptive and provocative agent of the Cybersiren. A queering, body fluid machine that disrupts normative boundaries and embraces fluidity and transformation, with the goal of breaking overcoded situations of authority, aiming to open up the dynamic of belief and control.

To download a PDF of the full project description please click here.

Project for Sensing, intuiting, imaging

Quartieri Spagnoli, Cristina Ruiz Rodríguez, Daria Pietruczynik, Marie-Luise Schlesinger, Merel van Casteren, Remolly Yin

The machines produce an intensity, determined by the distance between them. María Puig de la Bellacasa in “Matters of Care” describes productive care as “the right distance” between the carer and the cared for. One can therefore presume that the ‘right’ care is about adequately modulating intensity, as transcendence comes from the modulation of intensities created by the distance between, for example, drives of life and death. The modulation of intensity produces various potentials or spaces of possibilities where singularities emerge. Shrines, regardless of their context, consist of four “universal” elements. These components are: a deity, a ritual (or a set of rituals), objects, which serve as mediums, and a self (individual or collective).

Between Neapolitan Heaven and Hell, layers of historical sediments have formed. These sediments are plateaus in which Heaven and Hell mix in varying proportions. In strictly geological terms, the multiple eruptions of Vesuvius, Campi Flegrei and Ischia transported millions of tons of molten rock from the Earth’s core into the sky and subsequently onto the Earth’s surface. The material ejected from the volcano covers the soil, as do remnants of past versions of the city of Naples. Layered in between these are gravesites like vertical connections in the built-up sediment.

While the flows are directed towards the vertical and the geological sedimentations towards the horizontal, the accumulation of desiring machines create a dense network of belief disregarding the spatio-temporal flows, inherent to Quarter Spagnoli.

The different flows feeding into the machines similarly contribute to re-assembling, after they have broken down and affect the redirection of belief. While we previously referred to flows as context-specific these can be stripped down to become universal, such as community, creation, matter, time and blood. While these flows can be referred to as a continuous movement, drives represent forces. The shared drives between these desiring machines can be applied universally to any form of belief and can be classified into redemption, belonging, healing and devotion.

The virtual shrine inherently transforms aspects of the desire machine. The distance between projector and surface for projecting on creates something political, as more than one party is now involved to negotiate the installation. The requirement of energy implies a second political framework of negotiations and involved parties, blurring the question of authority. Similar to the topic of care and transcendence, the distance between these points also can be seen as the emergence of a third point out of the interaction with the two; the zone in-between. Connecting these observations back to the topic of authority, the higher point is in control of what is being projected, while the lower-level authority provides the surface.

To download a PDF of the full project description please click here.

Project for Sensing, intuiting, imaging

Santa Lucia, Amina Gaye Moroso, Jan Kwaśnik, Kira Zeinstra, Kirmina Rezk, Merijn Oldenburger

The relation between comfort and discomfort creates incentive to act. However, the focus lies not in the comfort of uncomfortability itself but the action it provokes. When statues or buildings are re-paired or re-related, new becoming is created. The object image in this case is the flow of “ownership” being shifted through actions of appropriation like: tickering, painting over, covering, vandalising etc.


Repairing or re-relating a ‘fountain’ is a form of re-territorialising it. A ‘fountain, statue, place of significance, place of relevance’ is a way of territorializing space, of conveying one's ideas. So, when the person disagrees, one can try to re-relate the ‘monument’ by re-territorializing it to one's beliefs, so it will be coded by this person. Coding is making a thing like a plague on a statue, so that everyone reads and interprets the statue the same thing. It can be done by what someone can call an act

of ‘vandalism’, pouring paint over statues or putting stickers around the city.


Rhizome of points of intensities that connect with each other by the flow of becoming of each other and of itself. When it involutes completely, cuts off all the becomings it becomes fixed and dies. When it opens to all the becomings it loses itself and dies too. Re-pairing involves restoring or re-establishing a broken or disrupted connection, often returning to a previous state. Re-relating involves forming new connections or reconfiguring existing ones in different ways, creating new relationships or frameworks.


Everything that exists is inherently imperfect, always in need of repair. We can use the concept of the object's image to inspire new projects focused on restoration. Rhythm and code, represented by a barcode sticker, can serve two purposes: 1) initiate action and 2) create and highlight the need for repair.


Mirroring involves perceiving and recording what is presented before it. A scanner uses a mirror to extend its reach. Therefore, we aim to use motor images captured in the mirror as subjects for scanning. By applying stickers to behaviours that define a fountain, we suggest that these elements (objects, animals, people, buildings, statues, and more) require attention and repair by various actors.

To download a PDF of the full project description please click here.

Project for Sensing, intuiting, imaging

Chiaia, Tim Karman, Eltjo Ockeloen, Luca Piantanida, Giulia Ravanini, Lin Shu, Eline de Winter

By trying to find the essential forces that guide the human experience, we were faced with the challenge of taking a step back and stripping away all that is consequential. The concept of the MoTo was born of this discussion: a new sub-level to the motor image in which (mo)vement and (to)uch are understood as the cern of our human experience and without which there wouldn’t be a continuous rhythm of experiences.From the light that travels and reaches the retina, allowing us to see, to our feet resting on earth, which is translating around its own axis: movement and touch precede and proceed experience. Tracing back to philosophical discussions on the subject, Aristotle noted that “The soul of animals is characterised by two faculties, (a) the faculty of discrimination which is the work of thought and sense, and (b) the faculty of originating local movement.”

On the next step, while discussing Perception Images, we turned to the memories of our time exploring Naples’ Chiaia, resulting in the assemblage of a diagram based on the striated character of the neighbourhood. The ground of Chiaia is seen as the line that created affordances which guided our experiences in the area of the seafront. Different geometrical shapes represent the group and how we had to adapt to and interact with those affordances through movement and touch.As we reflected on Symbolic Images, we recognized that understanding their essence is like simplifying a mathematical equation. By subtracting to the essential, we expanded the concept of the MoTo as a relation between the characteristics of two touching bodies: the touched and the touching in constant oscillation and creation of flows.

Our feeling of comfort in a certain situation is directly related to those characteristics of the touching/touched bodies, and is the inverse of our desire for change. For instance, while walking on Chiaia's seafront sidewalk it was unbearably hot under the sun, leading to a big desire for change. In order to cool down, the group went swimming in the sea and, as the cool water refreshed the skin, a greater feeling of comfort was created leading to a situation with a lower desire for change. This sequence of movements translated into an equation creates a sum which we call rhythm of movement.At last, when the Object Image came into play there was a crossover with the problem of the Centro Storico group. The group brought into discussion the question of the Balconcino and how Napolitans personalize public spaces turning them into extensions of their private homes. We found a parallel with the stones in Chiaia’s oceanfront, as the few “beachgoers” occupy rocky surfaces with towels, sunglasses and their bodies looking for a personal space of leisure.

By speculating how novel flows can be brought into this hostile landscape, we imagined the bean-bag as a new character to be introduced and distributed through the rocky profile of the shoreline. With its malleability, the bean bag can adapt to any surface and maintains a sense of personal space of the beachgoers while also creating a new way of touching and moving through Chiaia’s waterfront. The Object Image comes full circle with the earlier concept of the MoTo, which was later further developed into a Novel Individuation for Chiaia on the final part of the course.

To download a PDF of the full project description please click here.