arch-blog

Assembly is about power, control, technology, signification, meaning, qualities, speeds, lines and territories—all these in collection. An assemblage is at once a territory that expresses meaning and draws connections between “objects and ideas” (82), “lines and speeds” (79) and an apparatus erected to control “enunciation” (80)–as with the assignment of word, meaning, quality etc., control is enacted. In as much as assemblies control, and contain, they are penetrable and can be reterritorialized to enunciate a new assembly. Taking into account Kevin Kelly’s article, I might argue that an assembly that in its control performs in stasis, and resists new territorialisation, is ultimately self-destructive. Perhaps this is the irony inherent in the control-assemblage. But, one cannot discount power’s trump in its ability to draw and re-draw “the connection between objects and ideas” (82) and designate “the articulation of the dominant” (82). The plan-the abstract machine- can contain and resist re-territorialisation and it can also author change within the system and alter the total assembly.

By far my favourite reading of this section, in “Coevolution” Kevin Kelly presents complex systems in a way that is at once philosophical, scientific and, arguably, spiritual. Life is, in essence, a “network” and “like all distributed being, transcends the life of its ingredients” (77). In this discussion, echoes of Meister Eckhart’s (13th Century heretical) belief that “all blades of grass, wood, and stone, all things are One” is present in that Kelly acknowledges that no individual part of the system is divorced from the whole of the environment that it exists in. Even geological formations, though inanimate, are “biogenic in nature, that is, in some way affected by life” (80)—life is more than biological and has effects that extend beyond its borders, bringing “into its game the abiotic stuff of the universe” (80). The natural world, in its ever-present state of stable instability, has incorporated in its system technological processes that pre-suppose human-machine couplings. Life is inherent hybridized symbiotic communication, ever-coevolving towards an equilibrium that is always out of reach because the system relies on a”perpetual almost-falling ensured by constant error” (91). How do we incorporate this understanding of life in process, and of natural symbiotical processes and techniques to produce structures that can ride imperfect the wave of life?

Baudrillard describes human communicative experience as being one evolving to a state of total exposure, a pornographic hyperreality where “space is so saturated, the pressure so great from all who want to make themselves heard” (132) that we begin to be suffocated by the multitude of possibilities that exist. It is both an intimacy in its exposure, but also isolation in that the self is suspended in a sea (white noise) of other selves now made real, accessible in its “absolute proximity” (133). This ecstatic state is so open, so free, it is actually closed and confining—alienating—tending towards a kind of communication entropy from which there is no interiority or “retreat” (133). If we are shouting narcissistic imperatives all at once, is communication really happening?

I would have found Walter’s Benjamin’s belief that “war is beautiful because it ushers in the dreamt-of metallization of the human body… because it enriches a meadow in bloom by adding the fiery orchids of machine guns… because it combines rifle-fire, barrages of bullets, lulls in the firing and the scents and smells of putrescence into a symphony… because it creates fresh architectures such as those of the large tank, geometrical flying formations, spirals of smoke rising from burning villages, and much else besides” (37) rather disturbing and wholly discounted the salient points he made previous to this, were it not for the comment that follows quickly on the heels of this rather troubled statement. Benjamin argues that while war is beautiful, and the technology produced as a result of it, fascinating in its newness, we are not “sufficiently mature to make technology [our] organ” (37). What results from human coupling with technology is ultimately destructive because we don’t have the capacity to incorporate it as part of ourselves. Nonetheless, this coupling is, in spite of its destructive capabilities, becoming, producing newness, generating relationships and evolving towards a coupling that might be considered generative, rather than destructive.

Balmond’s approach to structural design is quite fascinating and his drive to push structure beyond standing “mute” (79) the hallmark of his efforts. Nonetheless, he aspires for a seemless structure, a “look-no-hands”(80) structure, “deep structure” (79) that exists, but at once dissolves into the internal strategies of the building construct—defying imposed boundaries of roof, and plane and wall. Not mute, but informal, informational.

“The Architecture of Vagueness”
Like Balmond, Spuybroek defies pre-imposed boundaries of plan and elevation, and walls extruded straight to fulfill the directive of ease and economy for industrialization. He too supports structural absorption by an integrated building system which he posits supplies movement and dynamism. For Spuybroek, the design process is a process of informational exchange: “all objects and bodies as part of a process of emergence, the made as being part of the making, not the unmade” (359), all bodies and objects are therefore one and the process of structuring relationships between them cyclical, and folded: “circulation into structure… structure into perception… perception into circulation” (359).

“Rappel a L’Ordre, The Case for the Tectonic”

That structure can be poetic, and can present metaphor in its constitution is (I think) the crux of Frampton’s position in this paper. His reference to Sappho who, in her writing, equated “tekkon, the carpenter” with “poet” (521) is particularly intriguing as he relates it to Heidegger’s position that “inanimate objects may also evoke ‘being’ and… perceived as though it were literally a physique” (522). Thus the entire structure, in all its integrity, extends the poet / architect / carpenter’s metaphoric impetus and every “joint becomes a point of ontological condensation rather than a mere connection” (522).

At the onset of this section, Kuhn posits a connection between scientific revolution and political revolution, articulating a likeness in phenomena associated with each. For me, the statement that resonates most (perhaps because I consider myself a pluralist) is Kuhn’s rhetorical query: “Is it really any wonder that the price of significant scientific advance is a commitment that runs the risk of being wrong?” (101). He seems to suggest that it is in the exclusive commitment to one reasoned paradigm, that newness and revolution becomes possible—full resolution can perhaps thus reveal contradiction. Is Kuhn essentially saying that full commitment to one governing theory is crucial to producing discord (newness)?

“Introduction to Architecture and the Crisis of Modern Science”

My favourite new word is “Lebenswelt”; being the “world lived” is, in my opinion, the existential purpose of architecture. In the obsessive search for resolved meaning, and quantifiable purpose—an obsession which spans all facets of human existence, from religion to education—the unquantifiable stuff of life is rendered unimportant. It is this unresolveable part of life that begs addressing—not resolution, not a finite understanding of it, but an exploration of it. It is through this very murky world, that architecture–quite literally that which “houses” the “world lived”—can effectively purpose itself to something beyond the empty deployment of formalist doctrine (new and old), and transcend its current state of “malaise” (466). Ultimately, recovery exists in the rediscovery of the poetry of human existence (473). Like Walt Whitman’s “full-grown” poet, the architect must stand between nature (the phenomenological) and man (“proud, jealous and unreconciled”). Holding each by the hand, the architect can “wholly and joyously” blend them.

When the Full-Grown Poet Came (Walt Whitman)

When the full-grown poet came,
Out spake pleased Nature (the round impassive globe, with all its
shows of day and night,) saying, He is mine;
But out spake too the Soul of man, proud, jealous and unreconciled,
Nay he is mine alone;
–Then the full-grown poet stood between the two, and took each by the hand;
And to-day and ever so stands, as blender, uniter, tightly holding hands,
Which he will never release until he reconciles the two,
And wholly and joyously blends them.

At first blush this article presents as a radical departure from the subject of architecture; however, it is not altogether divorced from the major thematic strokes of this course. Life–and Thacker introduces all sorts of life ‘forms’ in this article (life, bare life, scientific life, general life)–is, in essence, the Deleuzian smooth and all legal practice, all means of control, Deleuzian striation. The problem with controlling life and producing apparatuses that protect life is that life requires protection, but it is also that which threatens itself; “life in this case is both the threat and that which is threatened” (9), it is “at once: the threat, the threatened, and the response… in perpetual conflict with itself… life fighting with life” (20). Therefore, any apparatus imposed by the sovereign, through “response” (20), is new life–bare life–life created in the exception presented by the sovereign. This “juridical no-man’s-land of the state of exception” (16) is a space where anything is possible, where the law is both suspended and in force. Because, life is “outside the law… but is also internal to law, in that the most basic laws protect the very naturalistic life that is the foundation of social and political life” (9), life is “more than biological” its limits are far reaching and endemic. A response imposed by the sovereign in the state of exception produces multiplicities, and produces effects in general life and specific life; thus, “‘life itself’ is impelled to emerge, to self-organize, and to self-regulate”(16) to create new systems. Any apparatus presented, is mere relation between intervention and multiple productions; this is the “Angst of ‘life itself’” (19), life indefinite, life indeterminate. This is the rhizome, the in between, the becoming place of new possibility, the accident, and the moment where striation births smooth and vice versa.

One of the most poignant statements N. Katharine Hayles makes regarding the probabilistic world of Gibbs and Wiener, is that it “operates like a baggy pair of pants, holding together all right but constantly rearranging itself every time it tries to sit down” (89). Wiener and Gibbs’ world is our world; we exist in a constant state of flux, of change and becoming. Whether or not Wiener’s development is an ethical one is irrelevant as is his original dictum that human autonomy be maintained in the face of new and potentially dangerous couplings. Through his creation, the accident has been produced, and “no person, even the father of a discipline, can single-handedly control what cybernetics signifies when it propagates through the culture by all manner of promiscuous couplings” (112). The Posthuman human condition is the recognition that we are assemblages of meaning and signification, “whirlpools in a river of ever-flowing water. We are not stuff that abides, but patterns that perpetuate themselves” (104), not disconnected from the world we live in, nor from the ‘stuff’ we create to negotiate and continuously renegotiate an existence in it. Nonetheless, in order to prevent dissolution into the noise that abounds and increases in complexity as life tends towards entropy, “nimbleness is an essential weapon in this struggle, for to repeat mindlessly and mechanically is inevitably to let noise win” (104). Therefore, the “ultimate horror” Hayles relays, “is for the rigid machine to absorb the human being, co-opting the flexibility that is the human birthright” (105). In this new world (or perhaps old world of human-machine hybridization), the machine must also be endowed with flex and possibility, lest it choke human development with the imposition of a determined organization.

Although the symbolic life-supplying role of woman has been usurped by the symbolic superimposition of male as predominant cultural signifier, this shift is lateral—I would argue. While demonstrating the dominance of one signifier (male) over another (female), the male is made the “’I’ of the discourse” (177). This reflects control of the discourse, dominance of male over female, but does not—in my opinion—affect the gross anatomy of a city—it is still governed by the same human functions (navel or womb, they refer to the same process), but with one gender in control of the discourse. The city is read through the male perspective, and the male perspective is read through the city (193). It is thus that the female form and female experience is repressed and replaced, to be sure, but would architecture be any better if it were strictly female? Would families be any less dysfunctional if they were matriarchal? Either gender in control of authorship and representation is counterproductive to progress, counterproductive to a successful representation and facilitation of human experience. Nonetheless, in experiencing the current crisis from beyond the pale, I believe the female experience can offer a unique perspective as it stands “between symbolic orders, in the interstices” and can represent “a certain symbolic instability” (174). The female can be agitator, catalyst, and instigator.

“When Man is on the Menu” D. Haraway

Putting aside the conflict in gender representation, Haraway suggests that the emerging challenge is not gender inequality, or which identity will be the primary signifier in the emerging cultural imaginary, but human existence as we know it. Bioengineering has catapulted the race into a new playing field—complete with new rules—and thus we approach a world with “quite a different grammar of gender” (42) in which “the functional privileged signifier in this system will not be so easily mistaken for any primate male’s urinary and copulative organ” (42). We have in essence become the object of our own experiments; having surrendered ourselves, we have lost autonomy. I wonder: if the problem of human existence is rife with conflict independent of bioengineering, how is it we can even begin to negotiate and legislate this new territory, as fractured as we already are? Or, does this new territory offer a release from previously established gender norms, rendering them irrelevant?

Architecture is an act of communication on a large scale—communication that encapsulates the visual, the tactile, the auditory, the multi-sensory–and the site of translation, the place where all of these languages converge, is the body; “this translation and this unification are performed once and for all within me: they are my body, itself” (148). Is Merleau-Ponty saying that the body is produced by the information it synthesizes, that “the body comes into being as a body” (149) in the space it occupies, and in the space that defines it? This is an interesting possibility: that architecture can be both be informed by, and inform, both be engaged by, and engage new possibilities. The human body is as indeterminate as our imaginations and through architectural engagement of the body, “our former movements are integrated into a fresh motor entity… which hitherto has been merely foreshadowed in our perceptual or practical field… which by its coming suddenly shuffles the elements of our equilibrium and fulfils our blind expectation” (153). At the moment, the closest I can get to a formal understanding of this relationship is in imagining the body submerged in water; water forming the architecture of the body’s containment. In this scenario, the body is both intimately enveloped by the pressure of water, but is also displacing it, creating change and movement within it through feedback and response; thus, the body “is not in space, it is ‘of’ it” (148).

“Visions’ Unfolding” (P. Eisenman)

I understand Eisenman’s critique of architecture having become a vehicle for the privileging of sight, but I’m confused as to how we can create architecture that facilitates “the looking back of the other”, that flips the origin of the gaze from subject to object. Eisenman argues that it can be done via detachment of what “one sees from what one knows—the eye from the mind” (559). Is he positing the articulation of other sensory forms of knowing? What happens when “the individual no longer remains the discursive function… is no longer required to understand or interpret space” (560) but rather, space interprets the individual? Is this too radical a decentralization? Is it a dangerous undertaking to dethrone the human subject when all built environment is created to house him/her? What are the psychological ramifications? Moreover, is it possible to dislocate the subject in architecture successfully when other paradigms that hold vision and subject firmly in their privileged roles, remain unchanged?