The Scarlet Letter: A Critical Review
- Submitting institution
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Birmingham City University
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 32Z_OP_D7001
- Type
- D - Journal article
- DOI
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10.2752/205078214X14107818390757
- Title of journal
- Architecture and Culture
- Article number
- -
- First page
- 403
- Volume
- 2
- Issue
- 3
- ISSN
- 2050-7828
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month of publication
- -
- Year of publication
- 2015
- URL
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-
- Supplementary information
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-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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1
- Research group(s)
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-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This article emerged from a wider project which explored architecture, transgression and the boundaries of architectural practice, and which questioned aspects of established practice that typically remain unchallenged.
To transgress is to go beyond the boundaries set by law, convention, or discipline. Transgressive acts of architecture push the boundaries of what architecture is, could or should be. The article critically analyzes Nathaniel Hawthorne’s nineteenth-century romance <The Scarlet Letter>, which centres on the simple transgression of adultery and its social consequences, in order to expose a framework of other transgressions which explore ideas of space. The article identifies the multiple forms of transgression within Hawthorne’s text and discusses these within the context of a wider exploration of architecture and the body. The article highlights elements of liminality, ambiguity and otherness that provide useful analogies for a reading of transgression in relation to both body and space. The article positions the relationship between transgression, architecture and the body—building on Bernard Tschumi’s 1976 essay on architecture and transgression—to transform existing understandings of architectural endeavour; positioning a role for architecture that operates at or beyond the margins, and to act as a force for change. More broadly, the article demonstrates how the book pre-figures much twentieth-century philosophical thinking on transgression.
This research has been disseminated through an exhibition (Transgression: Architecture without Architects, Bristol Architecture Centre, 2012), an associated book <Architecture + Transgression> an issue of the international journal <Architectural Design> (2013); hosting the 10th international conference of the Architecture and Humanities Research Association (AHRA) Transgression, Bristol 2013; publication of a Routledge book, <Transgression: Towards an expanded field of architecture> (2014); and the publication of <Transgression: Body and Space>, which was a special issue of the journal <Architecture and Culture> (2014) in which this paper is published.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -