Dr Albena Yaneva

Education: PhD in Sociology, Centre de Sociologie de l’Innovation, Ecole Nationale Supérieure des mines de Paris (2001); MA in Sociology of Science, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris (1997); MA in Sociology, University of Sofia, Bulgaria (1996).

Professional appointments: founding director of The Gallery of Research at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna (2004-2006); visiting Lecturer in Anthropology of Art, Université de Neuchâtel, Switzerland (spring fall 2005); postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard University (2004); postdoctoral research fellow at the Max-Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin (2001-2003).

Memberships: member of the Society for Social Studies of Sciences (since 1999); member of the European Association for Social Studies of Sciences and Technologies (Since 1998).

Consultancies: Consultant for Moshe Safdie Associates, Boston and The Venetian, Las Vegas (2006). Member of the scientific board of the ArtScience museum in Singapore (since 2006).

Administration: External Student Affairs Co-ordinator (University of Manchester, 2006-).

PhD students: Jan Fischer: Sustaining Buildings: Designers as intermediaries for Carbon Neutral Futures. Julie Crawshaw: Beyond targets – an holistic approach for evaluating the impact of the arts in community development.

I have worked extensively on ethnography of installation art and museum architecture, architecture of addition and renovation. In my research I have applied in numerous occasions the Actor-Network-Theory to explore fieldworks in architectural design, industrial design, contemporary art and art craftsmanship. Used primarily to account scientific practices, this methodology opens new perspectives for Architectural Studies. Following the ANT approach I recently completed an ethnographic study of the office of Rem Koolhaas. It presented an account on how designing architects garner specific knowledge: from history as a narrative achieved by enquiry, and from design venture as a series of operations to "obtain" data about a new building. Other projects include accounts of ‘architecture in the making’ from an interdisciplinary perspective, crossing the disciplinary boundaries of science studies, cognitive anthropology, architectural theory and political philosophy.

My current research agenda revolves around the following topics:

1) The architecture of scientific controversies. Using a purpose designed inventory of controversy websites, our task is to rethink the techniques for improving the cognitive competences of the controversies, spaces and the visual languages for navigating controversies on the web. We tackle questions such as: how to reinvent the public space on the web and make it uniquely adjusted to the peculiarity of technical democracy; how to represent issuesin a coherent and legitimate way in especially designed assembling arenas; how to create cognitive environments adjusted to define the tasks of public participation. This research is a part of a bigger project that aims at exploring the practical tools to represent in a new way scientific and technical controversies (the EU-funded project MACOSPOL).

• MACOSPOL project website

2) The architectural presentation: techniques and politics. The project explores the architectural presentation as a specific experimental form of public action. Departing from a description of the speech-generating techniques of different forms of architectural presentations (office presentations, client presentations, competition presentations, media presentations), I analyse the mechanisms for enrolment of a variety of publics (both internal – architects, consultants, contractors, and external – clients, marketing and industry people, potential users, representatives of city authorities and government). I follow these publics in the process of gathering around the visuals in the presentational settings, and account in an anthropological fashion their reactions, their interpretations, their ways of communicating with architects and visuals. The main research questions revolve around the following issues: What are the particular architectural repertoires for convincing and enrolling publics? What are the new forms of experimenting and creating public arenas with architectural means? How do architectural presentations succeed in shaping new forms of public participation in the field of built environment and re-enact the forms of collective action in the urban spaces?

The project is funded by a Small Research Grant of the British Academy.

Current – 2010 “MApping COntroversies on Science for POLitics (MACOSPOL)”, European Union Framework Programme 7; Co-investigator; Principal Investigator: Bruno Latour; Project grant: 924, 514. 00 Euro.

1 July 2008 – 1 July 2009  “The Architectural Presentation: Techniques and Politics”, British Academy Small Research Grant, 5 999 GBP.

I am teaching the module “Exploring Typologies: A Socio-Technical Approach to Buildings” to Architecture students. This course argues against the widely accepted view that architecture reflects society and is conditioned (even determined) by a variety of cultural and social contexts. Instead, it considers buildings as being active participants in society, education, science, culture and politics and looks at them as active mediators in organizing the relations among human actors and their environments. Based on historical and contemporary insights into a variety of empirical cases of different types of buildings (parliaments, museums, hospitals, prisons, scientific laboratories, shopping malls and opera houses), the course provides also specific knowledge about their architects – from Bentham and Fonta, through Le Corbusier and Venturi, to Foster and Koolhaas. Students are invited to tackle the technical parameters of buildings as being inseparable from their social aspects, and to explore what buildings do (not what they mean, nor what they symbolize): how they condition different experience, act as reminder to users of who they are, shape a multitude of cultural practices, enrol a variety of public actors (citizens, investors, political stakeholders, neighbours, public authorities, preservationists, ecologists), and exercise influence upon the thoughts and actions of all the protagonists in the controversies surrounding the design, planning and use of these buildings. Thus, the course is supposed to bring more awareness of the various ways architecture participates in the shaping of social realities, of the social links and interdependencies established between buildings and their users and conceivers.

PhD supervision

I am ready to supervise PhD students willing to undertake research on the following topics:

• Controversies over building proposals. Urban controversies. Architecture of controversies.
• Design thinking. Distributed cognition in design. Model making.
• Ethnography of design practices.
• Museum architecture.
• Architecture of renovation. Architecture of addition. Conservation issues in architecture.
• Actor-Network-Theory applied to design and architecture.

Refereed journal papers

Yaneva, A. (2008) “How Buildings ‘Surprise’: the Renovation of the Alte Aula in Vienna”, in Science Studies: An International Journal of Science and Technology, special issue “Understanding Architecture, Accounting Society”, volume 21, number 1, September, pp. 8-29.

Yaneva, A (2008) “Understanding Architecture, Accounting Society: A Dialogue of Architectural Studies and Science and Technology Studies”, in Science Studies: An International Journal of Science and Technology, special issue “Understanding Architecture, Accounting Society”, volume 21, number 1, September pp. 3-8. (with Simon Guy).

Yaneva, A. (2005) “Scaling Up and Down: Extraction Trials in Architectural Design,” in Social Studies of Science, 35(6): 867-894.
Translated in Italian: "Ridurre e aumentare la scala. Prove di estrazione nella progettazione architettonica" in D. Mangano, A. Mattozzi, "Il discorso del design", E/C, rivista on.line dell'Associazione Italiana di Studi Semiotici, numero speciale n. 4, 2008. The ISSN codes are 1970-7452 (on-line), 1973-2716 (print); www.ec-aiss.it.

Yaneva, A. (2003) “When a Bus Met a Museum. To Follow Artists, Curators and Workers in Art Installation” (PDF), in Museum and Society, 1 (3): 116-131.

Yaneva, A. (2003) “Chalk Steps on the Museum Floor: The ‘Pulses’ of Objects in Art Installation”, in Journal of Material Culture, 8 (2): 169-188.

Books

Yaneva, A. The Making of a Building: A Pragmatist Approach to Architecture, Oxford: Peter Lang AG.

Book Chapters

Yaneva, A. (2008) “Give me a Gun and I will Make All Buildings Move: An ANT’s View of Architecture”, in Geiser, Reto (ed.), Explorations in Architecture: Teaching, Design, Research, Basel: Birkhäuser, pp. 80-89 (with Bruno Latour).

Yaneva, A. (2008) “Obsolete Ways of Designing? Scale Models at the Time of Digital Media Technologies” in Jorg H. Gleiter, Norbert Korrek,Gerd Zimmermann (Hrsg.) Die Realität des Imaginären. Architektur und das digitale Bild. Internationales Bauhaus-Kolloquium Weimar 2007, Verlag der Bauhaus-Universitat Weimar, pp. 83-91.

Yaneva, A. (2007) “Breaching Design Routines: An Ethnography Note on Emergency in Design”, Arquitectura y Sostenibilidad II, Ediciones Generales de la Construccion, Valencia, 107-118.

Yaneva, A. (2007) “Towards a New Understanding of Architecture of Addition: The Unrealized Extensions of Whitney Museum of American Art”, in M. Swenarton, I. Troiani & H. Webster (eds.), The Politics of Making, Routeledge, Taylor & Francis Books Ltd, 159-168.

Yaneva, A.  (2006) “Shaped by Constraints: Composite Models in Architecture,” in Inge Hinterwaldner and Markus Buschhaus (eds.) The Picture’s Image. Wissenschaftliche Visualisierung als Komposit, München, 68-84.

Yaneva, A. (2005) “A Building is a Multiverse,” in B. Latour & P. Weibel (eds), Making Things Public, MIT Press, 530-535. [More on this publication]

Yaneva, A. (2004) “Birds Make Traps for Humans. Hanimann’s Techniques of Artistic Entrapment,” in Birdwatching, catalogue of the exhibition Birdwatching of Alex Hanimann, Neue Kunsthalle St.Gallen, Edition Fink, Zürich, Switzerland: 65-76.

Yaneva, A. (2002) “Challenging the Visitor to Get the Image”, in B. Latour & P. Weibel (eds.), in Iconoclash, Beyond the Image War in Art, Science and Religion, MIT Press, 421-422.

Yaneva, A. (2001) “Walking on Brueghel? New Approaches in the Sociology of Art”, in Sociological Dimensions of Art, anthology of texts, vol. II, Askoni, Sofia (published in Bulgarian).

Yaneva, A. (2000) “When the Object Convolutions Fit Together: Objects’ Creation in Art, Design and Art Craftsmanship”, in Proceedings of the International Summer Academy on Technology Studies, Strategies of Sustainable Product Policy, ed. Ursula Pretterhofer, published by IFF/ IFZ, 2000, Graz, Austria, 287-294.

Edited Books

Yaneva, A. and Stefanov, I. (2001) Sociological Dimensions of Art, anthology of texts, vol. I and vol. II, Askoni: Sofia (published in Bulgarian).

Edited Special Issues

“Understanding Architecture, Accounting Society” Special Issue of Science Studies: An International Journal of Science and Technology, volume 21, number 1, September 2008 (with Simon Guy).

Professional Reports

Yaneva, A. et Hennion, A. (2000) Savoirs rares, objets de qualité, artisans d’exception : définir la qualité pour la maintenir et la produire, rapport du CSI, ENSMP, Paris, 2000. Conseil des métiers d’art, DAP/DAPA-Ministère de la culture, 123 p, (published in French).

Book Reviews

Yaneva, A. (2009) “Scientific Images and the Crafting of the Self”, review of the book Objectivity, by Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, in Iris: European Journal of Philosophy and Public Debate, I, n.1 January-June 281-292.

Yaneva, A. (in press) “Making the Social Hold: Towards an Actor-Network-Theory of Design”, in Design and Culture, vol.1:3.

Yaneva, A. (in press) “Is the Atrium More Important Than the Lab? Designer Buildings for New Cultures of Creativity”, vol. 3: Geographies of Science, Vienna, New York: Springer.

Yaneva, A. (in press) “The Architectural as a Type of Connector”, Perspecta 42, The Yale Architectural Journal, MIT Press.

Yaneva, A. (in press) “How Buildings Live” Dialoghi di San Giorgio: Inheriting the past. Traditions, shifts, betrayals and innovations, Venice.

Yaneva, A. (2009) “The Architectural Presentation: Techniques and Politics”, in Networks of Design, Boca Raton, Florida, USA: Universal Publishers, pp. 212-219.

Yaneva, A. (2009) “Staging Scientific Controversies: a Gallery Test on Science Museums’ Interactivity“, in Public Understanding of Science (with T. Rabesandratana and B. Greiner), 18(1): 79-90.

Research grant awards

2004 - 2006: Development and supervision of four research projects at The Gallery of Research | Galerie der Forschung in Vienna: Sites of Science: city dynamics and research practices in early 20th century Vienna; How the Cosmos probes the Space: film ethnography of space research (with the European Space Agency); The Gallery of Research building: social history and ethnography of renovation; The Visual Language of Otto Neurath: applications in science communication and media philosophy.
Annual budget: 1.5mil. Euro.

2001 - 2004: Scaling Up and Down: Models and Publics in Architecture. The Extensions of the Whitney Museum for American Art Project started at the MPI in Berlin (2001) and finalized at Harvard University (2004); sole investigator Total project grant: 86400DM+10000USD.

1999 - 2000: Savoirs rares, objets de qualité, artisans d'exception: définir la qualité pour la maintenir et la produire, Project commissioned by the Ministry of Culture of France, Principle investigator, with A. Hennion.

Academic honors, awards, and fellowships

2004: book writing fellowship at the Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, Germany.

2003: grant award of The Board of Trustees of Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, Chicago, USA. Project: Scaling Up and Down: Models and Publics in Architecture – The Extensions of the Whitney Museum of American Art.

1998 - 2001: French Government 3-year grant for PhD studies at Ecole des mines de Paris.

Recent Lectures and Keynotes

8 July 2009, invited speaker at the international workshop “From Scale to Scalography”, Saïd Busines School, University of Oxford.

The Center for Management Studies of the Building Process, Copenhagen Business School, 18 May 2009, invited speaker, lecture title:“The architectural presentation: techniques and politics”.

“Materialising the Subject: Phenomenological and post-ANT objects in the social sciences”, The University of Manchester, 26-27 February 2009, invited speaker

Invisio, “Multidisciplinary visual resources”, as a part of the International Network for Visual Studies in Organizations, The University of Manchester, 30 January 2009, invited speaker, lecture title: “Making Statements with Visuals: The Architecture of the Architectural Presentation”

“How Can Design Studies Learn from STS and Actor-Network-Theory?”, workshop organised by the Danish School of Design, Center for Design Studies, 19 June 2008, Copenhagen, invited speaker, lecture title: “Towards a Pragmatist Approach to Design” a Dialogue of STS and Design Studies”.

“The Physique of the Public”, international workshop, 6 June 2008, Goldsmiths College, University of London, Centre for the Study of Invention and Social Process (CSISP), Department of Sociology, Goldsmiths and The Spaces of Democracy and the Democracy of Space network, invited speaker, lecture title: “The Architectural as a Type of Connector”.

l'Institut Bruxellois d'Architecture Instituut (IBAI), centre culturel "Recyclart”, 29 May 2008, Brussels, invited speaker, lecture title: “On Models, Agency and the Politics of Architectural Presentations”. (Blog).

Dialoghi di San Giorgio: “Inheriting the past. Traditions, shifts, betrayals and innovations,” 12-14 September 2007, Venice, invited participant in the Dialogues.

• www.cini.it/english/00home/eventi.html.
• www.cini.it/italiano/attivita/cinipdf/stampa/200707241539220.luglio07.pdf
• www.cini.it/italiano/attivita/cinipdf/eventi/200707261002360.pdialoghi07.pdf

 “Recalcitrant Spaces”, international workshop organised by the Universidad de Alicante, 18 May 2007, Alicante, invited speaker, lecture title: “Recalcitrant Models: Experiments in Design Cognition”.

“The Reality of the Imaginary: Architecture and the Digital Image”, 10th International Bauhaus Colloquium, Bauhaus-Universität, 19 - 22 April 2007, Weimar, invited speaker, lecture title: “Obsolete Ways of Designing? Scale Models at the Time of Digital Media Technologies”.

Annual Conference of Valencia School of Architecture, 26-27 October 2006, Valencia, Spain, invited speaker, lecture title: “Breaching Design Routines: An Ethnography Note on Emergency in Design”.

Seminar of the Department of Material Culture, UCL, 16 October 2006, London, invited speaker, lecture title: “Compelling Objects: on Models, Foam, and Agency in Architectural Design.

The International Symposium “Emergency Design”, 15-16 February, 2006, hgkz, Zurich, invited speaker, lecture title: “Clashes” in the Office: an Ethnography Note on Emergency Design”.

The Architectural Congress “[oriental HOT:KEY] - Dubai and other booming regions,” the Museum für Angewandte Kunst, 24 October 2005, Vienna, invited speaker, lecture title: “The Meaning of Extension: Historical Complexity and Urban Change”.

The School of Architecture in Madrid, 9 December 2003 Madrid, Spain, invited speaker, lecture talk: “Historical Continuity in Architecture of Addition: The Extensions of Whitney Museum of American Art.”

Session/workshop convenor

Convener of the sessions “Understanding Architecture. Accounting Society” [I] and [II], joint EASST & 4S meeting, 20-23 August 2008, Rotterdam.

Organizer of the session “Towards a Socio-Technical Understanding of Architecture and Urbanism I: Design Thinking: an STS perspective on architectural practices”, Annual 4S Society Meeting, 10-12 October 2007, Montreal.

Convenor (together with Simon Guy) of the session “Connecting Sociology to Architecture: Learning from STS“, session at the Annual Conference of the British Sociological Association, “Social Connections:  Identities, Technologies, Relationships”, 12-14 April 2007, University of East London.

Initiator of the international workshop “The Artistry of Thinking Like an Architect: Stories from the Architectural Office”, an art, science & business/symposium: Die Kunst, wie ein Architekt zu denken-Geschichten aus dem Architekturbüro, 12-14 May 2005, Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, Germany.

Convenor (together with Sophie Houdart) of the session “Doing Architecture, Accounting Society: Social Studies of Architecture Practices”, EASST 2002, York, UK.

Country Experience

France, USA, Bulgaria, The Netherlands, Austria, Germany, Switzerland.

Languages

Bulgarian, French, Russian, German.

Peer reviewer for the following journals

• Architectural Research Quarterly
• Social Studies of Science
• The Journal of Material Culture
• Museum and Society
• Progress in Planning
• Public Understanding of Science
• Home Culture Music and Arts in Action (MAiA)

Peer reviewer of grant proposals

Member of the Peer Review College of AHRC 2009-2012.

Reviewer for The National Science Foundation, USA.

Peer reviewer of book proposals for Manchester University Press.

External examiner

The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture, Copenhagen.

Copenhagen Business School.

Consultancy & Scientific Boards

2008: member of the scientific advisory board of the exhibition "Place des Controverses", European City of Science, Paris - Grand Palais, 14-16 November 2008.

2006: consultancy for Mosche Safdie architects, Boston and The Venetian, Las Vegas on the scientific concept of the ArtScience museum in Singapore as a part of the architectural competition for the Marina Bay centre in downtown Singapore.

Since 2006: Member of the scientific board of the ArtScience museum, Singapore.