Ivonne Santoyo Orozco

The Architectural Construction of Conduct

Supervisors: Mark Cousins, Pier Vittorio Aureli

The aim of this thesis is to reconsider the ways in which architecture has served the needs of various regimes of power by imposing a specific ethos through its grandeur, composition, typologies, and techniques. It will do so by interrogating categories corresponding to different moments in history that have given themselves to deliberate forms of architectural expression, such as wealth, geometry, administration, standards and envi-ronment. In each case, this relation is analysed through a series of historical paradigms which mark the pre-dominance of certain ethical relations vis-a-vis a specific figure of subjectivity. The task is to understand not only how spatial experiences have been conceptualised throughout history but, more importantly, to show how such categories have motivated specific forms of spatial orderings and architectural tropes, influencing and even prescribing a specific type of conduct whose political and economic underpinnings reveal architec-ture’s role in forms of subjectification.

Ivonne Santoyo-Orozco obtained her masters degree from the Berlage Institute in Rotterdam having gradu-ated magna-cum-laude from the UDLA in Puebla, Mexico. She has worked with Arup Integrated Urbanism, Foster&Partners, Wiel Arets, and Fernando Romero. Her work has been exhibited at the Venice Biennale, Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York and the Center of Contemporary Architecture in Moscow, among others. She has been a recipient of sponsorships from the Mexican government and a Collection Re-search Grant from the Canadian Center for Architecture in Montreal. She has taught at the AA, Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, and more recently at the University of Creative Arts.