Targeting Theory: Criticality and The City

WONG MAY EE

Publication

Targeting Theory: Criticality and The City

WONG MAY EE

Abstract

Examining the discourse of post-critical architecture and the use of architectural/critical theory in the Israeli Defense Forces? urban warfare doctrine, this thesis asserts that contemporary network-influenced notions of architecture reveal knowledge, theory and architecture as expressions of militarised thought, which is embodied in the concept of targeting. Targeting is the projection of a goal that is operationalised through the establishment or eradication of the boundary or limit. The logic behind critical thinking, targeting raises a problem of criticality with the selective eradication of boundaries that, while suggesting flow, might fail to account for socio-political or ideological implications. This thesis highlights the transitivity in targeting which exposes the flow of networks as the result of contestation between critical thinking and critique: a reflective mode of thought identifying the boundaries/limits of an emergent phenomenon, which renders the spaces generated by networks as bordered spaces of complexity instead of borderless ones.