The Economy of Affordances

Joy Zhu, The New Normal researcher, activist, philosopher, and Ph.D. candidate at UCLA Architecture and Urban Design, reinterprets the concept of affordance in terms of the Chinese concept of yuanfen, which turns two mutual but mismatched needs into one that is matching through critical moments. In this event, an immanent, productive relation of cooperative subsistance is created. Based on this interpretation, Zhu reveals a non-naturalistic concept of efficiency, demonstrating it through the preservation of outdated technologies in Siberia.