The reality of risk and the question of cause and effect

Taking Risks in Literature and Culture The proposer, involved in theoretical debates around architecture and the built environment and the relationship between the utilitarian nature of construction and the creativity of the architect, helped to draft UK laws which regulate the risks to health and safety of construction workers, specifically how these risks are managed by those who design them in the first place. In this instance, there is a clear tension between the supposed freedom of the creative act and the regulated, potentially instrumentalised and audited consideration of risks to a person—s life. There remains nonetheless within certain strands of design an urge for danger, for the deliberate breaking of rules, for the challenge to those who —police— these regulations. Examples will be given of this approach, and a contrast struck with the work of certain European architects who deliberately absorb, respect and work with regulations and laws whilst at the same time producing, at a different theoretical level, a challenge and threat to the status quo. A general thesis will be drawn from this by contrasting in turn the literary work — defined by Deleuze as that which creates and is concerned with it own difference (Difference and Repetition, 1967) — with culture as that which is concerned to create and maintain its sense of identity