Scandalous Space: Between Architecture and Archaeology

If architecture is a design-centered discipline which proceeds by suggesting propositional constructions then, Zambelli argues, archaeology also designs, but in the form of reconstructions. He proposes that whilst practitioners of these historically interconnected disciplines generally purport to practice in future-facing mode (for architecture) and in past-facing-mode (for archaeology), elements of architecture and archaeology also profoundly resemble one another. Zambelli speculates that some of these resemblances have remained explicit and revealed whilst others have become occluded with time, but that all such resemblances share homological similarities of interconnected disciplinary origin.

Available in the space between disciplines related through homological proximity in this way, is a logically underpinned, visually analogical practice. In this account Zambelli proposes that interdisciplinary practice springs from something like Barbara Stafford’s notion of an “analogical universe” whilst using the abductive logic of C. S. Peirce to rationally support it. Defined as “scandalous,” a term derived from Claude Lévi-Strauss, this analogical practice which Zambelli terms ‘propositional reconstruction’ defines his approach to design and historical analysis. Here, Scandalous Space is constructed across what Julia Kristeva calls “sites of encounter,” through which Zambelli’s visually analogical practice is informed, consisting of historical analysis and design in the form of such propositional reconstructions.