ABSTRACT

This essay claims that habit is a crucial way to engage with the contemporary in and out of architecture. It focuses on the subject matter of habit and architecture and their co-imbrications. Particular attention is paid to the recalcitrances, viscosities, and automaticities at the heart of notions of fluidity, which are raised whenever issues of habit are at stake. Instead of providing an overview of the relationship of habit to architecture and the contemporary, the chapter engages in a detailed reading of Tom McCarthy’s influential novel Remainder (2005), and the equally complex feature-length film interpretation of the same name, directed by the video-artist, Omer Fast (2015).