Dr Dagmar Motycka Weston
BArch (Toronto), AA Grad Dip, MPhil and PhD (Cantab)
Lecturer in Architectural History, Theory and Design

Room: 4.19A
Tel: (0)131 650 2620
Email: dagmar.weston@ed.ac.uk

Architecture: School of Arts, Culture and Environment (ACE)
The University of Edinburgh
20 Chambers Street
EH1 1JZ, Scotland

Profile

Dagmar Motycka Weston was born in Prague. She qualified and practiced as an architect in Toronto, before taking up postgraduate studies at the Architectural Association and the University of Cambridge. She has been teaching architectural design and history at the University of Edinburgh since 2000, and is presently running the first-year design course there. She believes that architecture must be situated in a cultural context and understood in reciprocity with the humanities. She has a strong interest in the history and philosophy of architecture, and in the ways in which they can fruitfully inform contemporary design. Her current research interests revolve around the issues of modernity: embodiment, spatiality, memory, the loss of the symbolic tradition, and efforts to restore meaning in architecture through metaphor. She has an active interest in the life and architecture of the public realm, both traditional and contemporary. Dagmar has written widely on the various conjunctions between Surrealism and architecture. Her current research project is a book on the theme of the artist's and architect's studio and personal museum as a matrix of creativity.

The condition in which mainstream contemporary architecture finds itself is often dominated by instrumental concerns, a globalizing tendency neutralizing all traces of meaningful regional character and place, and a hunger for novelty. This often makes for an architecture which is arbitrary, narcissistic, aestheticized and excessively concerned with its own autonomous form. To overcome these circumstances, and to maintain its traditional communicative role, architecture must grow out of a given setting; it must be situated in and expressive of a particular physical and cultural context. In this sense, its ‘setting’ must play a central role in informing the content and form of architecture and of the public realm. Architecture itself may also fruitfully be seen as a (situational) setting, providing a material and spatial support to the theatre of human activities and relationships. The history of ideas and of architectural traditions play an essential role in helping to identify the kind of themes architecture and public space should communicate in order to be appropriate, and to fulfill their essential ethical function. The interpretative, hermeneutical approach, with its emphasis on the communication between past and present culture in the restoration of meaning, and on the generative role of metaphor, is fruitful in this process.

Selected Publications

2009. ‘“Down into the Cellar”: The Architectural Setting as an Embodied Topography of the Imagination in Two Films of Jan Švankmajer”, to be published in the Architecture and Phenomenology II Conference book (Book chapter).

2009. ‘”Worlds in Miniature”: Some Reflections on Scale and the Microcosmic Meaning of Cabinets of Curiosities’, Architectural Research Quarterly.

2007. 'Spojité nádoby: André Breton a jeho ateliér, domov a osobní muzeum v Parízi, Czech Surrealist journal Analogon: Surrealismus – Psychoanalýza – Antropologie – Prícné Vedy, Vol 52/53.

2006. ‘Communicating Vessels: André Breton and his Atelier, Home and Personal Museum in Paris’, Architectural Theory Review, Vol. II, No. 2, 101-128.

2004. ‘Le Corbusier and the Restorative Fragment at the Swiss Pavilion’. In C. Hermansen and M. Hvattum (eds), Tracing Modernity: Manifestations of the Modern in Architecture and the City: 173-194. London: Routledge (Book chapter).

2003. ‘The Lantern and the Glass: On the Themes of Renewal and Dwelling in Le Corbusier’s Purist Art and Architecture,’ in I. B. Whyte (ed.) Modernism and the Spirit of the City: 146-178. London: Routledge (Book chapter)

2002. ‘Giorgio de Chirico: The Phenomenal Temporality in his Metaphysical Painting,’ in K. Lippincott and C. Heck (eds), The Symbols of Time in the History of Art: 177-192. London: Brepols (Book chapter).

1996. ‘Surrealist Paris: The Non-Perspectival Space of the Lived City’. In A. Pérez-Gómez, S. Parcell (eds.), Chora 2: Intervals in the Philosophy of Architecture: 136-149. Montreal: McGill – Queen’s University Press (Book chapter).

1991. ‘The Window: Some Reflections on its Meaning’. Scroope Cambridge Architecture Journal 3, 1991, 17-20.

(Forthcoming)

'Architecture as a Humanistic Discipline: The Communicative Space of André Breton’s Studio’, in N. Temple, R. Tobe et al eds, Building Metaphors: The Humanities in Design Practice, London: Tayor & Francis (Book chapter).

Caves of the Imagination: The Artist’s Studio and Personal Museum in the Early 20th Century, Yale University Press. Assisted by AHRC Research Leave for 2006-07.

CONFERENCE PAPERS

‘"The Language of Stones": From the Field to a Situated Architecture,' paper proposed for the AHRA 'Field/Work' International Conference, University of Edinburgh, November 2009.

‘“Down into the Cellar”: The Architectural Setting as an Embodied Topography of the Imagination in Two Films of Jan Švankmajer', 'Architecture and Phenomenology II' International Conference in Kyoto, June 2009.

'Interdisciplinarity: Understanding Architecture in a Humanities Context'. Keynote address presented at the 'Transilient Boundaries' International Postgraduate Conference, University of Edinburgh, April 2009.

‘Communicating Vessels: André Breton and his Atelier, Home and Personal Museum in Paris’, presented at the 'The Role of the Humanities in Design Creativity' International Conference, University of Lincoln, 2007.

‘Communicating Vessels: André Breton and his Atelier, Home and Personal Museum in Paris’, presented at the 'Living in Surrealism' 5th International Symposium on Surrealism at West Dean College, May 2007.

'The Situational Space of de Chirico's Metaphysical Painting and Le Corbusier's Purism.' Invited paper presented at the 'Fantasy Space: Surrealism and Architecture' conference, University of Manchester, 2003.

'The Lantern and the Glass: On the Themes of Renewal and Dwelling in Le Corbusier’s Purist Art and Architecture,’ ‘Body and Soul’ 26th Annual International Conference of The Association of Architectural Historians, University of Edinburgh, 2001.

‘Giorgio de Chirico: The Phenomenal Temporality of his Metaphysical Painting’, ‘Time’ 13th International Congress of the History of Art, University of London, 2000.

'To Make a Paradise on Earth: On the Sacrificial Themes in Le Corbusier's Purist Art and Architecture,' presented at the 'Architecture and Sacrifice' international conference at the University of Bath, 1999.

'Le Corbusier's Swiss Pavilion: Some Thoughts on the Possibilities of Meaning in Contemporary Architecture,' presented at Harvard University's 'Testing Ground' International Symposium. 1995.

BOOK REVIEWS

2006. A. Pérez-Gómez, S. Parcell (eds) Chora 5: Intervals in the Philosophy of Architecture, for McGill-Queen’s Publishers.

RESEARCH INTERESTS

Dagmar welcomes postgraduate research proposals in the following areas:

Cultural history of 20th century art and architecture
Experiential space and time Perspective, perspectivity and modern culture
Phenomenology and hermeneutics
Cubism, constructivism and surrealism with respect to architecture
Le Corbusier
Carlo Scarpa
Creativity, the artist's studio and personal museum 16th and 17th-century cabinets of curiosity
The history and culture of the Western city.
Symbol and architecture
Theatre, music and film with respect to architecture
Architectural education in the age of digital representation