Objecthood

Definition

Objecthood is the degree to which something is an object — a condition Erdman derives from Michael Fried's "Art and Objecthood" (1967) and makes architecture's measure of the whole: "When discussing the architectural whole, we are effectively talking about degrees of 'objecthood.' Traditionally, architects consider objects as fully integrated entities; interior and exterior, structure and skin, and so on." The concept is explicitly graded — wholes and fragments alike hold objecthood by degree — and explicitly perceptual. Erdman's note 10 fixes the derivation and the boundary: Fried's objecthood is "a predominately perceptual and sensual idea within the practices and aesthetics of art – something more directly aligned to architecture and its potential praxes when compared with Graham Harmon's Triple O, Meillasoux, and philosophical discussions of Kant's object of knowledge… Fried's discussion of objecthood is explicitly more experiential and architectural."

The concept's architectural work is to decouple objecthood from integration. The tradition treats the object as "fully integrated"; Erdman's alteration demonstrates otherwise — an intervention that is "fragmentary and episodic" can "maintain a degree of objecthood," and a "multiplicity of objects (interior and exterior) can be "instrumentalized to collectively imbue a large-scale degree of objecthood." Objects can also be nested: "objects are inserted within objects at some scales." Objecthood is thus redistributable across scales and fragments rather than a property of the single unified thing — the theoretical license behind "new types of wholes."

The Fried / OOO Distinction

Erdman chooses Fried against the contemporary philosophical object-turn. Where Speculative Realism and Object-Oriented Ontology (Harman's Triple-O, Meillassoux, Kant's object of knowledge) treat the object as a withdrawn, flat-ontological entity, Fried's objecthood is a perceptual condition within art practice — which makes it, for Erdman, the version "more directly aligned to architecture and its potential praxes." This matters for the wiki's interior cluster: Odom's chapter positions contemporary practice "in the breach between… Gernot Bohme (Atmospheres) and Graham Harman (object-oriented ontology)" (cunning-of-cosmetics), while Erdman's chapter plants its object theory on the Fried side. The wiki therefore holds two object-theories: the flat, withdrawn object (OOO) and the graded, perceptual one (Fried via Erdman).

Key Thinkers

David Erdman — the concept's architectural importer: objecthood as degrees, whole-talk as objecthood-talk, and the nested/collective object of alteration (2018).
Michael Fried — the concept's source: "Art and Objecthood" (Artforum 5, June 1967); objecthood as "a predominately perceptual and sensual idea" — explicitly not yet paged (see log).
Graham Harman / Quentin Meillassoux — the philosophical pole Erdman distinguishes his concept from (Triple-O, the Kantian object of knowledge) (not paged — see log; see cunning-of-cosmetics for the wiki's Harman-adjacent register).

The Architectural Whole — the objecthood-talk's subject: "when discussing the architectural whole, we are effectively talking about degrees of 'objecthood'"; fragmentation as maintained objecthood.
Alteration — the concept's practice: reconfiguring objects' interiors while keeping "a degree of objecthood"; the "new collective object" as alteration's promise.
The Architectural Object — the object's financialized register (Bismarck): the self-referential building as privatized asset — a different sense of "object" the degrees-vocabulary must not be confused with.
Interiorized Object — the object-type alteration produces: the object whose interior pulls experience inward.
Interiority — the perceptual medium: each alteration technique "invokes degrees of a perceptual interiority" — objecthood and interiority as twin graded conditions.
Cunning of Cosmetics — the wiki's other object-theory node (Odom's Böhme/Harman breach): effects and atmosphere versus the object; Erdman's Fried-register is its Fried-side counterpart.

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

The System of Objects (Baudrillard 1968) — the object's double reality: the technological plane as "the most concrete aspect of the object" (technemes; "what happens to the object in the technological sphere is essential") against the sign-plane where the object is "in perpetual flight from technical structure towards… secondary meanings"; and the possessive object "abstracted from its function."
Altered (e)states: Architecture and its interiority (Erdman 2018) — the concept's source: the degrees-thesis ("we are effectively talking about degrees of 'objecthood'"), the Fried derivation and the OOO boundary (note 10), nested and collective objects, and the fragmentary maintenance of objecthood through alteration.
Jean Baudrillard: The Defence of the Real (Butler 1999) — the book-length secondary study that reads Baudrillard "in his own terms": the paradox of the sign (paradox-of-the-sign), simulation as the realization rather than the loss of the real (simulation-hyperreality), seduction as the limit to simulation, and the doubling power of theory (doubling, the-real, double-strategy).

Open Questions

Fried's essay mounted "Art and Objecthood" as an attack: objecthood is what literalist (theatrical) art acquires when it addresses the viewer's situation in time. Erdman borrows the term but reads it neutrally (graded presence of the object). Does architectural objecthood escape the theatricality critique — or is Erdman's "collective object," experienced episodically, precisely the theatrical object Fried warned against?
If objecthood comes in degrees, what is its zero and its one — is a fragment-with-cohesion more of an object than the "fully integrated entity" the tradition named, or less?
The concept is explicitly not OOO — but Erdman acknowledges Fried "has a direct relationship to Harmon's work" (as printed; Harman). Can the perceptual and withdrawn object-theories be held simultaneously by a practice, or does choosing Fried forfeit the object-turn's argument that effects are not the object (cf. cunning-of-cosmetics)?
Does "degrees of objecthood" give the interior disciplines a way to claim object-competence — interiors as objects at low degrees — without re-entering architecture's whole-object monopoly?