Dialectics of Appropriation

Definition

The dialectics of appropriation is Graeme Brooker's name (2018) for the set of dualities — old/new, in/out, space/place — that give interior architecture "its unique verbal and visual language." The concept is constructed against two rival terms. Against dichotomy: "dialectical conflict, the dichotomy of one idea superseding another, and thus rendering itself obsolete, is a redundant notion in this context" — the dualities never resolve into a supersession, and "when something is fully codified, it is completed. It could be argued that in the processes of the completion of an element such as a building or space, something is lost." Against doubleness (Rice's Two-fold Room, Teyssot's oscillating house): "Rather than doubled, I would suggest the dialectic is a useful device as it is intrinsic to interior architecture because traditional notions of dialectical variance, the dichotomy of one idea superseding another, are an unnecessary diversion." What remains is neither resolution nor doubling but counterpoint: "The dialectics of appropriation are spatial counterpoints, elements, and ideas; processes that are joined, stitched, or forced together in order to form a composite. This is a construct that affords interior architecture a number of fundamental attributes namely a dynamic resonance due to the forces of resistant and unfamiliar elements being incorporated together."

The concept is the spatial form of Brooker's larger claim that interior architecture's "slippery" status is "a unique and fundamental feature of the subject": the ambiguity that manifests "principally as an issue of semantics, and then as an intrinsic and essential spatial ambiguity" is the composite construct itself — "a history, a theory, a space that is built from a number of differing ideas, objects, edifices, and other appropriated elements." See interior-architecture and appropriation.

The Three Dualities

Old/new — "The combination of both new and old elements is a familiar trope in the formation of interior architecture." Hegewald and Mitra: "The meeting of opposites, for example the modern and the traditional, is not always a scene for peaceful accommodation. Dualities are sometimes overcome through converging affinities, leading to the creation of novel and hybrid forms." "The resonances created between the deliberate placement of something contemporary against – or within – an element of differing chronology, will always create a very particular spatial dialectic." Built case: FRAC Nord-Pas de Calais, Dunkerque (Lacaton and Vassal) — the existing Halle building "doubled" to create a new exhibition and event space.
In/out — "A threshold, such as the one between an interior and an exterior, creates a significant rupture in a continuous or possibly seamless spatial condition." Malnar and Vodvarka: "One of the most fundamental divisions in design is that of interior from exterior, volume from mass. As the interior and exterior are perceptually separate, sustaining coherence between them is a difficult task." Built case: Red Bull Academy, Madrid (Langarita-Navarro) — "The threshold between interior and exterior was obscured when the old warehouse was reoccupied with a series of rooms in which to make music." See inside-outside-dialectic and threshold-to-gradient.
Space/place — via Alistair Bonnet: "Space sounds modern in a way that place doesn't: it evokes mobility and the absence of restrictions; it promises empty landscapes filled with promise. When confronted with the filled-in busyness and oddity of place, the reaction of modern society has been to straighten and rationalize, to prioritize connections and erase obstacles, to overcome place with space." Brooker: "These processes of conversion ensure that the dialectic of space and place becomes constructed through changes in use as well as the processes of decay, obsoletion, and reoccupation, and then the same again." Compare de Certeau's formula — "space is a practiced place" (practiced-place).

Key Thinkers

Graeme Brooker — the concept's formulator (2018): the slipperiness inversion, the composite construct, the dialectic-against-dichotomy-and-doubleness distinction, and the three dualities with their built cases.
Markus Berger — the companion theorist (Reader ch. 40): where Brooker names the dialectics, Berger supplies the process that produces them — appropriation as "self-conscious, rebellious, and creative in disposition" — and the composite's temporal figure, the palimpsest. The two chapters form the Reader's appropriation pair: Berger's author-theory meets Brooker's ontology and semantics.
Julia A.B. Hegewald & Subrata K. Mitra (named in the source, not yet paged — see log) — Reuse: The Art and Politics of Integration and Anxiety (2012): the definitions of reuse (deliberate, selective, disruptive; "does not imitate and replicate") and the meeting-of-opposites duality ("The meeting of opposites… is not always a scene for peaceful accommodation. Dualities are sometimes overcome through converging affinities, leading to the creation of novel and hybrid forms").
Michael Guggenheim (named in the source, not yet paged — see log) — "Formless Discourse" (2011): the sociological dominance in change of use and the failure of classification, from which Brooker's "uncodifiability as opportunity" answer derives (see change-of-use).
Michel de Certeau — the space/place duality's other formulation: place vs. space resolved as "space is a practiced place" — the formula Brooker's third duality keeps unresolved in the cycle of "decay, obsoletion, and reoccupation."

Appropriation — the primary process: the dialectics describe what appropriation's counterpointed elements form; the frisson ("a dynamic force that stimulates new value") is the composite's dynamic resonance.
Change of Use — the process-concept (Guggenheim) whose classificatory failure produces the uncodifiability that the dialectics theorize positively.
Interior Architecture — the discipline defined by the composite: "the dialectics of appropriation forms the basis of the composite construct of interior architecture."
Adaptive Reuse — the practice whose "basis of all aspects" claim grounds the concept; the interior-architectural sensibility ("a predilection for the extant and a profound curiosity for working with what is already there").
The Dialectics of Outside and Inside — the in/out duality's home page: Bachelard's value-play, Webb's double membership, and now Brooker's threshold-as-rupture join the same division's accounts.
Typology — the classificatory order ("building type, style, structural method, regional origin, name of architect, or materials used") that change of use defeats.
Spolia — the violence-of-the-cut lineage (Kinney): the ancient form of the old/new counterpoint.
Obsolescence — the cycle term: "changes in use as well as the processes of decay, obsoletion, and reoccupation, and then the same again."
Practiced Place — the space/place pair's de Certeau formulation.
Readymade — the recombined-object lineage: the displaced element whose recontextualization provokes the frisson, generalized by the composite construct (see appropriation).

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

The dialectics of appropriation (Brooker 2018) — the defining source: the slipperiness inversion; the composite construct ("a history, a theory, a space that is built from a number of differing ideas, objects, edifices, and other appropriated elements"); Hegewald and Mitra's reuse definitions; Kinney's violence and power ("the violence of the cut"; "the direction of the appropriation in relation to perceived distributions of power"); Guggenheim's sociological dominance ("the building is now largely defined by its uses") and unclassifiability; the uncodifiability thesis ("when something is fully codified, it is completed"); Bonnet's space/place ("Space sounds modern in a way that place doesn't"); the three dualities with FRAC Dunkerque and Red Bull Academy as built cases; the interior-architectural sensibility ("a predilection for the extant and a profound curiosity for working with what is already there").
source-notes/marinic-2018-why-this-why-now

Open Questions

Brooker distinguishes his dialectic from Hegelian supersession and from Rice/Teyssot's doubleness — but is "counterpoint" a stable third term, or does the composite oscillate between the two descriptions depending on whether the counterpoint is observed in use (doubled) or in design (dialectical)?
If "it is the role of the interior architect to direct and manipulate this distribution of forces" (on appropriation's political charge), who audits the direction of the forces? The chapter names the violence ("the violence of the cut") without a criterion for when counterpoint becomes injury.
The chapter's built cases are cultural institutions (an exhibition space; a music academy) — do the dialectics of appropriation describe interior architecture everywhere, or does the composite construct flatter precisely the reuse projects most likely to be celebrated?
Can the uncodifiable discipline still be taught? If "when something is fully codified, it is completed," every curriculum that transmits the dialectics (including this chapter) risks codifying the slipperiness it celebrates — the pedagogical version of Guggenheim's formless discourse problem.