Arquitecturas del devenir. Aproximaciones a la performatividad del espacio: Comentarios al libro de Fernando Quesada

The book Arquitecturas del devenir is a compilation of texts by Fernando Quesada that share two explicit goals. The first one is to put forward the concepts of "Becoming" and, more specifically, "Performativity", as possible tools to rethink architecture’s capabilities for the determination of life and the transformation of reality. The second one is to incorporate a series of discourses, external to architecture, in order to "sharpen its capacities." A commitment to disciplinary openness that leads Quesada to incorporate a rich repertoire of ideas and characters, often rarely visited, and which allows him to address a wide rang of architectural themes from new and enriching perspectives. There are two additional issues that add interest and consistency to this intense anthology. On the one hand, a general spirit that could be defined as "Presocratic" and involves the valuation of indeterminacy, contingency and the intermediate and impure categories. Performativity is thus extended to the very form of the discourse through a series of texts whose ultimate sense remains, somehow, suspended and open, pending on the subjectivity of the reader. On the other hand, a clear antagonism toward the biopolitical techniques, the processes meant to design our subjectivities, and the world folded upon itself by globalized capitalism. A resistant attitude that involves a hidden, or at least not explicit, agenda: the will to regain the emancipatory and political dimension of architecture and the urgent need to formulate new utopias. Utopias meant to be provisional, contingent, playful and, if possible, open.