A REVIEW ON ACTOR-NETWORK THEORY AS A POTENTIAL TOOL FOR ARCHITECTURAL STUDIES

Abstract

Actor-Network Theory (ANT) is an ontological approach, emerging from science and technology studies. As an ontological frame, ANT proposes that the work of science does not differ from other social processes, and sociality should not be understood as a priori knowledge. Instead, ANT offers a lens to see science as an assemblage of social, technical, conceptional, and textual processes entangled with human and non-human entities by looking at their material nature. ANT proposes to follow traces of material relations and how that material nature constitutes social. There has been a considerable increase in the threshold of ANT and Architecture studies. ANT seems to offer new perspectives to understand architecture by looking at architecture from its own material reality. Thus, this study aims to reveal the whole picture of the studies in the threshold of ANT and architecture by analyzing ANT concepts implemented in architecture. By relating ANT concepts to the architectural field, this systematic review aims to understand ANT and its implications of architectural studies. Visualizing the relations of ANT and architecture related categories, the review is supposed to reveal gaps and the most studied fields of ANT in architecture.