All posts by admin

transformation, urban

Deptford. Ageing in the City

with Caterina Nirta

 

Abstract. In this article, we conduct an applied territoriology of Deptford, a town in south-East London, to highlight the peculiarities of ageing in place in the context of a changing neighbourhood. We look in particular at the intersection of ageing and public space, devising a phenomenological gaze onto places, with an eager ear towards the stories they tell – and sometimes, conceal. An exercise in trans-scalar thinking ensues, whereby large-scale urban trends are illuminated through the mundane and the ephemeral. The neighbourhood emerges as a ‘fold’ of potentially conflicting but actually coexistent turns, whereby an emplaced ‘generational time’ is crafted.

 

Keywords: ethnography of public space; urban ageing; walking as method; urban transformations; London

 >>> draft available upon request

creation, element, Gabriel Tarde, Gaston Bachelard, Georg Simmel, Gilles Deleuze, intensiology, manifold, measure, memory, morphogenesis, René Thom, rhythms

On Social Intensiology

Conceptualizing social life through topological folding, braid operators and collapse functions

Abstract. Social intensiology is outlined here in its connection to morphogenesis. the latter aims to explain how form come into existence, just as the former seeks to tackle the intensive states of social life. A topological reference model is proposed for conceptualizing how social life operates immanently with saliences and pregnances. The paper starts from the famous Collatz conjecture, and reviews how it has been recently modelled by Danail Valov using braid groups and including thermodynamic irreversibility into the picture. A ‘Valov braid’ can be understood as a manifold, an entity that is, at the same time, individual and collective. Its collective structure can be reconstructed, through its operational logic, as a tensional field. An attempt is made to show how phenomena of memory and measure are intertwined with the braid’s developments, giving rise to a rich present, multi-faceted that lives in non-coincidence. Within such framework, rhythmanalysis is presented as a useful tool for assaying and experimentally improving social life.

Keywords: social theory; social modelling; topology; braid groups; rhythmanalysis

>>> draft available upon request

Creative Commons source : https://live.staticflickr.com/24/92514653_59f55ab0ab_b.jpg
Adolf Portmann, Charles Sanders Peirce, Gilles Deleuze, intensiology, manifold, morphogenesis, René Thom, surface / depth

Something critical occurs at a fractional dimension between two and three…

A proposal for knitting together semiophysics and biosemiotics

 

NOW OUT in Biosemiotics

https://link.springer.com/epdf/10.1007/s12304-025-09613-1

 

Abstract. The paper advances a proposal for binding together the insights of biosemiotics and those of semiophysics. The task of achieving an intelligible ontology, in opposition to both mechanical reductionism and metaphysical vitalism, is shared by these two approaches. Yet, there are architectural differences between the two theories. The paper reviews such a differendum, focusing in particular on the difference between Thom’s two-fold construction of saliences and pregnances, and Peircean three-fold categorial construction encompassing firstness, secondness and thirdness. An integrated semiophysical-biosemiotic graph thus encompasses five key categories. This paper suggests to arrange them as a “W” shape to chart their possible dynamical interactions.

Keywords: semiophysics; biosemiotics; theory of meaning; salience/pregnance; firstness/secondness/thirdness

 pdf version

 

 

element, environment, intensiology, measure, morphogenesis, social manifold, visib

The Elemental Forms of Social Life

translucent-concrete-2Out now in Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy

Abstract. The notion of elemental reality is parsed here as instrumental to a renewal of the understanding of social formations, orders, processes, events, and, more generally, social life. An attempt is made to revisit the element notion drawing insights from the classical imagination, so as to develop an ‘elementalism’ that does not imply a simple return to atomism, but rather retrieves some important insights from the Aristotelian tradition. Elementalism, it is suggested, enables us to see the limitations of both individualist and collectivist takes on social life, allowing for a more ‘environmentalist’ idea of what constitutes society. In an attempt to analyze how an elemental reality can be said to be at play, the category of ‘the visible’ is considered, so as to evince some of its constitutive dimensions, properties, and moments.

Keywords: social theory; medium theory; social environment; elemental reality; the visible

Link to OA article : https://cosmosandhistory.org/index.php/journal/article/view/1168

Also here

cover-excerpt
publicness, territories, territoriology, urban

A New Index for Public Space

(with Tali Hatuka)

9781032555836

Out on August 18, 2025 – See : https://www.routledge.com/A-New-Index-for-Public-Space-After-Distancing/Hatuka-Brighenti/p/book/9781032555836

With four generous endorsements from:

 

“This erudite and provocative book melds social and political theory with design thinking to produce a new set of terms to understand both the nature and the phenomenology of publicness. Inspired by the challenges of physical distancing that accompanied the global pandemic, the authors show the durability of the public realm while offering new ways to interpret and produce a range of disordered, agonistic, and spatially-situated interactions that will continue to make public spaces the lifeblood of cities.”

Diane E. Davis, Charles Dyer Norton Professor of Regional Planning and Urbanism, Harvard Graduate School of Design

*

“How can we talk about public space and make sense of its continuous mutations in contemporary cities? As the authors suggest, we need to explore patterns of experience and affect along with efforts to conceptualize sociospatial crises. This book is an inventive and highly successful experiment in analyzing publicness that offers to city dwellers and planners alike an index of terms to be used in thinking about city life as a multifarious set of realities and possibilities.”

Stavros Stavrides, Professor of Architectural Design and Theory, School of Architecture, National Technical University of Athens

*

“Triggered by the contemporary challenges and appreciation of the post-pandemic future of urban space the authors continue the quest to understand and assess public space. Through a new index they introduce us to a series of fresh and inspiring methods and prompts that traverse disciplinary boundaries and help explore the experiential and phenomenological dimensions of public space. The book is a welcome addition that introduces researchers, teachers, and students in the built environment and social science disciplines to innovative ways of examining the future of public space and eventually to show new ways to “read” the city.”

Vikas Mehta, Fruth/Gemini Chair, Ohio Eminent Scholar of Urban/Environmental Design, and Professor of Urban Design, University of Cincinnati

*

“This is a playful book on how public space negotiates distance and propinquity amongst human and nonhuman bodies. It is a truly exciting cornucopia of affects, memories and desires that crisscross one another like a boardgame. But like most good boardgames, here too there is wisdom, depth and astute observation of all the things that compose ourselves and our lives. The authors have managed the impossible: to create an intensely visual, lyrical, ludic net of possibilities about our post-Covid world in way that is both celebratory and cautionary, visionary and sobering. In many ways, through its innovative form, its collaborative process of writing, and its ground-breaking content, this book opens up an entirely new way of being in public. This is a fundamentally beautiful and useful book.”

Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, Professor of Law & Theory, University of Westminster, UK; Artist and Fiction Author

 

Alex Langer, animals, body, commonality, environment, geo, life, measure, the vegetative stratum, value

On Bioabilities. A new approach for ecological thinking and action

Beaver Dam
source | https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/kZsn7fdLFPgmuJzEB4ntT3-1200-80.jpg

(with Carlo Brentari and Federico Comollo)

Abstract. We propose the notion of bioability as the subjective correlate to biodiversity. Bioability entails the capacity to maximize the forms and patterns of life within given ecosystems. Cutting across the natural and social sciences, the bioability approach opens up a field for research and intervention, which focuses on the imaginational and aspirational dimensions of terrestrial politics. In the context of increased awareness of climate tipping points, developing bioabilities help advancing experimental practices in ecological conversion.

>>> Draft available upon request.