





































Andrew Ballantyne’s books include

Key Buildings From Prehistory to the Present: Plans, Sections and Elevations, 2012

Architecture in the Space of  Flows, 2012 (co-edited by C. Smith)

Deleuze and Guattari for Architects, 2007

Architecture Theory: A Reader in Philosophy and Culture, 2005

Architecture and Experience: Radical Change in Spatial Practice, 2004

Architectures: Modernism and After, 2004

Architecture: A Very Short Introduction, 2002

What is Architecture?, 2002

Architecture, Landscape and Liberty: Richard Payne Knight and the Picturesque, 1997

Andrew Ballantyne and Stefan  koller



Trying to think in a connected 
sort of way

Andrew Ballantyne in conversation with stefan koller

Question: You’ve written Deleuze and Guattari for 
Architects, you’ve written on architecture philosophy, but 
originally you’ve written things that were maybe not so clearly 
yet situated within the philosophy of  architecture. How did 
you eventually came to that material and why?

Answer: It is difficult to summarize, but my 
doctorate and my first book were about Richard 
Payne Knight and the theory of  the Picturesque. I 
was interested in the topic from the point of  view 
of  architecture theory, but it turned out to be the 
theory of  everything else as well. Especially the 
theory of  landscape design, people’s relationship 
with their environments, people’s relationship with 
ideas, and the ideas that they use to think about 
things, think about places, think about nature and 
how they engage with nature. So I found myself  
going on a very wide-ranging study of  Knight’s 
ideas.

I first encountered him as a theorist of  
architecture through Peter Collins’ book, the 
Changing Ideals in Modern Architecture where he’s 
positioned as someone who thought all rules were 
wrong. That seemed to me to be so evidently 
sensible. I didn’t understand why anyone would 
every have moved on from that position. So I 
wanted to find out about him, and through a very 
rich, very rewarding character who turned out to 
have lots of  interest.

Now of  course I do understand why people 
moved on from that position. Because if  you have 
rules, it simplifies things, it cuts down the range 
of  choices. Often what you want as a designer is a 
reason to limit what you’re interested in so that the 

Often what 
you want as 

a designer is a 
reason to limit 

what you’re 
interested in 
so that the 

question isn’t as 
multifarious as it 

could be

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question isn’t as multifarious as it could be, but it’s focused on the issue 
of  the day, or of  the issue that we decide to make the issue of  the day, 
and that simplifies things. It resolves the question into what we’re dealing 
with now.

Q: These are all inherently, genuinely, legitimately philosophical questions. At what 
point does moving on and engaging with people like Deleuze and Guattari become a 
move towards philosophical questions? Or is it more of  the same that just happens to 
be concerned with authors who are recognized by others as having philosophically dealt 
with the built environment?

A: I’m not sure, but what I want to pick up on in that question is the 
idea of  the variety and multifariousness of  the world as we know it, of  
things, and the way we need to simplify it in order to deal with it. What I’d 
hope that I try to do is engage with lots of  things and the big complexity 
of  what we are immersed in and then fasten on different things to focus 
on in each text. 

So, we hone in on something and try and address some sort of  
questions, but I do want the background richness and the background, 
complexity or chaos – whatever it is – I want that to be part of  my life, 
part of  my intellectual outlook, and so there’s a tradition of  dealing with 
those things. Deleuze and Guattari very nicely formulate it as nomadic 
thought where you move about, you change the set of  ideas that you’re 
using to deal with the world from one occasion to another, and you use the 
ideas that are the most effective at the given time, given what you are trying 
to do, what you’re trying to think about, what you’re trying to engage with 
and then move on from them and use a different set on another occasion.

Q: Deleuze’s book on Nietzsche talks about taking other peoples’ insights like 
arrows that have landed on the ground and that we can just pick them up and shoot 
them off  again. So it seems you instrumentalize the arrows and you make them do the 
things that you want them to do for you. In the sense there is a tradition that engages 
these broader questions more narrowly or in a more design-oriented context, is that 
one way to draw on and instrumentalize the philosophical tradition? In order to pose, 
articulate, and sometimes answer questions within the tradition of  architecture that may 
be harder otherwise to unearth?

A: My first reaction is to think, ‘I don’t know, I’ll have to go away and 
think about that’. But, what I do know is that I don’t read philosophical 
texts as a philosopher. I read them, however I do read them. There are 
some things that jump out and seem interesting, seem compelling and 
I somehow latch on to and they seem like something that I’ve got to do 
something with. If  what I’m doing with that concept is just explaining 
it in exactly the same terms that the philosopher has presented it, then 



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I have no role, there’s no point in my doing that. 
Other people can do that. The philosopher has 
done it already. Why would it be interesting just to 
repeat back what the philosopher has said? What 
I’m interested in doing is taking it up, picking up 
that arrow, firing it to a new place, and seeing 
where it lands. It’s an instrument for exploration of  
something. You find that it will do something, and 
I’m not always clear what it’s going to do, but I have 
this feeling that something is going to happen with 
it. We find out as we progress with the text, with 
the thinking, with exploring that idea, seeing what it 
leads ups with, and seeing where it lands.

Q: In Deleuze and Guattari for Architects you 
quote from a novel by Bernard Malamud where he reads 
Spinoza. Malamud reads Spinoza with great speed and says, 
‘sometimes I wouldn’t understand a sentence and I would 
go through it and afterwards I felt I wasn’t the same man 
anymore’. So there’s a transformative potential of  philosophy 
here which doesn’t require Malamud’s character to read 
Spinoza’s text the way academically trained philosophers 
might feel compelled to do (line by line). So it’s a way to 
open up something about architecture without knowing 
where it will lead you, but also without feeling compelled that 
for philosophy to do this, you have to follow an academic 
philosophical attitude of  engaging the text. Is that fair to 
say?

A: Yes, it is fair to say, but also I would say that 
one of  the things that I like about listening to 
philosophers is that methodical presentation of  an 
argument and leading me through step-by-step. I 
hope that’s something that I can learn from and can 
follow that sort of  procedure. I’m not sure that it 
always works out that way, but I would hope (to 
have) that clarity of  thinking and the precision 
of  thinking that philosophers are so good at 
demonstrating. That’s something I’d aspire to do 
and that I’d hope that I could learn from.

The way that I come across philosophers being 
used by architects, far too often, is of  imperfectly 
understood ideas being collaged together. I know 

The way that 
I come across 
philosophers 
being used by 

architects, far 
too often, is 

of imperfectly 
understood ideas 

being collaged 
together

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that if  I hear the names of  more than three philosophers in a sentence 
I panic. I just know that I’m not being presented with something that’s 
being thought through. I’m perfectly comfortable with the idea that I 
don’t know everything, and I’m perfectly contented with the fact that 
there may be philosophers who’ve thought the way I’ve thought before, 
and I’m not referencing them; that doesn’t invalidate the argument. What 
I’m really keen on doing is trying to think in a connected sort of  way like 
philosophers do. It’s that I want to learn from them more than anything.

Q: What I find so interesting is the way you characterize your work, the way you 
characterized what you sometimes find in the field, and what I think many of  us have 
encountered. Of  course, that is nothing at all peculiar to architects. Philosophy belongs 
to the public and to a readership well beyond the academic establishment, which means 
that people engage with it without scholarly scruple. Perhaps in the same sense that they 
read novels without having to feel the need to attend a seminar on say French literary 
theory first.

Sven Olov-Wallenstein’s book on bio-politics contains a history of  all of  
Enlightenment philosophy. That’s not a presentation, or representation, of  someone 
like Kant or Locke in these pages that is recognizable to a trained philosopher, but at 
the same time it would be extremely effective, and has been extremely effective in opening 
up some questions to ask of  architecture, or to confront architecture with. 

That’s exactly the same mixture of  not being too scrupulous with the source 
material to be able to arrive at something original. That is something that Olov-
Wallenstein does, in a very short space, and I understand that you give yourself  and 
your own philosophical explorations much more space and fewer authors to work with. 
But compared to your work, is the Olov-Wallenstein example a difference in degree, or 
difference in kind?

A: Well, I don’t know my way around that text, but I would guess that 
the substance of  it, if  it’s doing something valuable, probably isn’t in those 
introductory remarks. That’s setting the scene and if  it is doing something 
valuable then it would have to be thinking through things in a more careful 
way than that. It may be giving a few broad-brush strokes to set things up. 
There may be something inaccurate or wayward in that, but maybe that’s 
not important, that’s just background. The key to it would be the central 
argument where the ideas are properly engaged. I don’t know, but that’s 
my suspicion from your description there. There’s always something that’s 
in the background that you don’t know about but you might need to make 
reference to it, just as something maybe out of  focus in the background 
which nevertheless is helpful in establishing some sort of  context.

Part II of  this interview will appear in Vol. 1, No. 2 of  Architecture Philosophy.


