Architectors: specific architectural competencies

 The dissertation aims to understand how certain aspects of an architectural production ‘come about' while others die out. Competence is understood and examined as the many different and entangled relationships between architects and architecture considering that both ‘come about' in mutual interdependence. Gilles Deleuze's concept of ‘be-coming' is used as ‘architectural be-coming' in its dual and interrelated sense: ‘be-coming of architects' and ‘be-coming of architecture'. This understanding of ‘architectural be-coming' is the basis on which the dissertation examines different perceptions of the concepts of ‘architecture', ‘architects', ‘creation', ‘resistance', ‘criticism' and ‘learning'.

Analyses of competence - and therefore power, knowledge, rationality and practice - are studied with Michel Foucault in mind as ‘the effects they cause in the entire network in which they are caught'. The dissertation's main theory contextualisation is authors in the field of science and technology studies, which provides the basis for a number of critical discussions of theories about learning and competence that are entirely based on ‘social aspects' and thus have difficulty promoting an understanding of ‘the agency of things', which is essential for investigations of how architecture comes about.

The ‘empirical stories' of the dissertation about architectural practices range from an analysis of the construction of Gothic cathedrals and the creation of works by architects Louis Kahn and Alvaro Siza to contemporary processes such as the planning of a new school in Copenhagen. On these theoretical and empirical backgrounds, the dissertation develops three concepts to cover the ‘effective entanglements' that come about - and die - in architectural practices: ‘architectural formulation', ‘architectural statement' and ‘architectors' as in the title.