The zero degree of architectural writing

From the ’60s to the ’90s, architectural practitioners and critics adopted the Barthesian idea of ‘zero degree writing’ to break loose from the antinomies that plagued the crisis of modernity. Following Roland Barthes’ Le degré zéro de l’écriture (1953), they translated and reformulated the possibility of a new kind of writing in the field of architecture that could overcome the historically embedded conflict between popular and literary language. They advocated a ‘zero degree’ of architectural writing, providing architects and writers in architecture another way, a ‘third term’, by which they could transcend the duality of genres, such as ‘high and ‘low’, which divided positions in the postmodern era.

This symposium organised by the Faculty of Architecture La Cambre Horta – Universite Libre de Bruxelles explores the history of the idea of ‘zero degree’ of architectural writing, as it moved across the globe in various media and theatres of debate, and its resonance in the present. It does so from three angles. First, we propose to differentiate the intellectual positions that Barthes’ idea of ‘zero degree’ was supposed to pin down. Second, we intend to review architectural projects and drawings which their authors thought epitomized or exemplified a ‘zero degree’. Third, we set out to question the nature of the ‘places’ where the ‘zero degree’ was the central issue of debate and focus of reflections.

To summarize, what are the borders between artistic disciplines that the idea of ‘zero degree’ has straddled? What are the permeabilities between architectural practice and theory that ‘zero degree’ writing relied on? What were the different milieus and places of encounter where ‘zero degree’ was forged as an architectural language spoken in many tongues? How can we consider the operativity of the idea of ‘zero degree’ in the field of theory, criticism and practice today? This symposium welcomes contributions interested in these questions and the approaches described above.