FOLDING IN ARCHITECTURE

@WILEY-ACADEMY

TEN YEARS OF FOLDINGMARIOCARPO

Folding in Architecture, first published in 1993 as a 'Profile'of Architectural Design, ranks as a classic of end-of-mil­lennium architectural theory.' It is frequently cited and

generally perceived as a crucial turning point. Some of theessays in the original publication have taken on lives of their own,and have been reprinted and excerpted - out of context, howev­er, and often without reference to their first appearance in print.This ahistoric approach is characteristic of all works in progress:so long as a tradition is still active and alive, it tends to acquire atimeless sort of internal consistency, where chronology does notmatter. In Antiquity and in the Middle Ages such phases couldlast for centuries. But we have been living in times of fasterchange for quite a while now - we even had to invent a new phi­losophy of history in the nineteenth century to take this intoaccount - and ten years are quite a stretch in Internet time. Thisis one reason why the editors of this volume decided that theoriginal 1993 issue of Folding in Architecture should be reprintedin facsimile, verbatim and figuratim, complete and unabridged:only some typographical errors have been edited out. Indeed,Folding in Architecture is now a classic - not a timeless one, how­ever, but time specific.

More than would be customary in other trades and profes­sions, many architects and architectural historians still believe inhistorical progress and in the pursuit of Innovation. Any reason­able architectural thinker of our days, if asked, would disparagesuch a primitive theory of history, but theory and practice arehere curiously at odds. Regardless of much discourse on longdurations, the directionlessness of time, time warps, the end oftime, and perhaps even the death of the author, it is a fact thatevents and people are still banally and routinely singled out toacquire historical status in architecture when they are thought tohave started something. Folding in Architecture is no exception.In the common lore, this publication is now seen as seminalbecause it was the catalyst for a wave of change that marked thedecade and climaxed towards the turn of the millennium, when,for a short spell of time, the new avant-garde that evolved out ofit came to be known as 'topological', and was regarded as thequintessential architectural embodiment of the new digital tech­nologies that were booming at the time.

Art historians, sociologists and psychologists will at somepoint reconstruct the story of architectural folding in the ninetiesand, as art historians frequently do, they will not fail to identify atrend towards curvilinearity that reversed a preceding trendtowards angularity of form. Indeed, forms have a tendency toswing from the angular to the curvilinear, from parataxis to syn­tax, and art historians, following a pattern inaugurated in 1915 by

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Heinrich W6llflin, have since brought this interpretive model tobear in a number of circumstances.2 Obviously, the nineties start­ed angular and ended curvilinear.3 By the end of the decade,with few exceptions, curvilinearity was ubiquitous. It dominatedindustrial design, fashion, furniture, body culture, car design,food, critical theory in the visual arts, sex appeal, the art of dis­course, even architecture. Admittedly one of the most influentialarchitectural writers of the decade, Rem Koolhaas, kept design­ing in an angular mode, but the most iconic building of the time,Gehry's Bilbao, was emphatically curvilinear. In spite of the manyvarieties and competing technologies of curves that followed,curvilinear folds were and still are often seen as the archetypaland foundational figure of architecture in the age of digital plian­cy. Yet, even cursory scrutiny of the essays and projects pre­sented in this volume shows that digital technologies were but amarginal component of the critical discourse of the time.Likewise, most of the illustrations in this book feature strikinglyangular, disjunctive forms. How can fractures, ridges and edgesrepresent formal continuity? Where are the folds?

1. The formative years: philosophy, flaccidity, and infinityAt the beginning of the last decade of the century, architecturaltheory was busily discussing deconstructivism, and its eminent­ly angular avatars in building. For reasons too long to explain,and perhaps inexplicable, American critical theory of the timewas driving under the influence of some Parisian thinkers - someof them virtually ignored in their homeland. When GillesDeleuze's impervious book on The Fold, Leibniz and the Baroquewas first published in France in 1988, it failed to excite criticalacclaim in the immediate surroundings of Boulevard Raspail 4 Yetthe Deleuzian fold was granted a second iease on life when PeterEisenman - starting with the first publications on his Rebstockproject in 1991 - began to elaborate an architectural version of it.5

Deleuze's book was on Leibniz, on folds, on the baroque andon many other things as well. Most of it can be read as a vasthermeneutic of continuity which Deleuze applied to Leibniz's the­ory of ideas (including his notorious monadology), to Leibniz'smathematics (differential.calculus in particular) and to variousexpressions of the baroque in the arts: the fold, a unifying figurewhereby different segments and planes are joined and merge incontinuous lines and volumes, is both the emblem and the objectof Deleuze's discourse. Folds avoid fractures, overlay gaps,interpolate. Eisenman's reading of Deleuze's fold, in this earlystage, retained and emphasized this notion of forms that canchange, morph and move: a new category of objects defined notby what they are, but by the way they change and by the laws

that describe their continuous variations. Eisenman also relatedthis differential notion of objects to a new age of electronic tech­nologies and digital images (with no reference, however, to com­puter-aided design: Eisenman's writings of the time frequentlycite fax technology as the harbinger of a new paradigm of elec­tronic reproducibility, alternative and opposed to all paradigms ofthe mechanical age and destined to obliterate the Benjaminiandistinction between original and reproduction)6

Eisenman's essays prior to 1993 also bear witness to a signif­icant topical shift which evolved from a closer, often literal inter­pretation of Deleuze's arguments (in 1991 Eisenman even bor­rowed Deleuze's notion of the 'objectile', on which more will besaid later),! to more architecturaliy inclined adaptations, includ­ing the use of Rene Thom's diagrams as design devices for gen­erating architectural folds - a short circuit of sorts, as Thom'stopological diagrams are themselves folds, and Thom actuallyitemized several categories of folding surfaces6 In his perhapsmost accomplished essay on the matter, 'Folding in Time',Eisenman dropped Deleuze's conception of the "objectiie",which he replaced with the contiguous and also Deleuzian con­cept of 'object-event': the breaking up of the Cartesian and per­spectival grids of the ciassical tradition, prompted and promotedby the moving and morphing images of the digital age, requiresarchitectural forms capable of continuous variation - forms thatmove in time'" Several stratagems, such as Thom's folding dia­grams, may help to define them, but the 'foiding' processremains purely generative,'0 and it does not relate to the actualform of the end product. Forms do not fold (actually, in allEisenman's projects featured in Folding in Architecture in 1993they fracture and break), because most buildings do not move:when built, architectural forms can at best only represent, sym­bolize or somehow evoke the continuity of change or motion.

This stance of Eisenman's would be extensively glossed over,rephrased and reformulated in the years that followed," but inthe context it seems unequivocal: folding is a process, not aproduct; it does not necessarily produce visibie folds (although itwould later on); it is about creating built forms, necessarilymotionless, which can nevertheless induce the perception ofmotion by suggesting the 'continuai variation' and 'perpetualdevelopment' of a 'form "becoming".'" Again, art historiansmight rei ate such forms to a long tradition of expressionistdesign. Eisenman himself, at this early stage in the history of fold­ing, defined folding as a 'strategy for disiocating vision.'"

In 1993, Lynn's prefatory essay to Folding in Architecture elo­quently argued for continuities of all types: visual, programmatic,formal, technical, environmental, socio-political and symbolic.

The list of suitabie means to this end is also remarkably diverse:topological geometry, morphology, morphogenesis, Thom's cat­astrophe theory, Deleuze's theory of the foid and the 'computertechnology of both the defense and Hollywood film industry.'"Nonetheless, a survey of the essays and projects featured inFolding in Architecture reveals some puzzling anomalies. Tenyears later, many of the issues and topics that were so obviousiyprominent in 1993 seem to be accidental leftovers of a bygoneera. Today, they simply don't register. In other cases, we can seeWhy certain arguments were made - as we can see that fromthere, they led nowhere. Yet this panoply of curiosities andantiques also includes vivid anticipations of the future. That muchcan be said without risk, as a significant part of that future hasalready come to pass.

Were Henry Cobb's lanky and somewhat philistine skyscrap­ers the predecessors of many folds and blobs to come? Howdoes a philosophical and almost ontological quest for continuityin motion and form relate to Chuch Hobermans' humungousmechanical contrivances: buildings that actually move withcranky hinges, sliding metal panels, pivoting bolts and rivets?Jules Verne would have loved them. Why include the translationof the first chapter of Deleuze's The Fold, an opaque and vague­ly misleading tirade on the organic and the mechanical in theseventeenth-century philosophy of nature, and not the secondchapter, on Leibniz's law of continuity, differential calculus andthe mathematical definition of the fold? What do Bahram Shirdel'sridges and creases (with explicit reference to Thom's diagrams)have in common with some of the earliest cucumiform epipha­nies by Frank Gehry? The commentary blandly states thatGehry's irregular geometries were made possible 'by 3-D com­puter modelling."s Digital technologies for design and manufac­turing are mentioned by both Lynn and Kipnis as one tool amongothers that can help create 'smooth transformations,"6 but theone essay entirely devoted to computing, Stephen Perrella's, ison morphing and computer animation in the making of the movieTerminator 2 (the film's special effects director is quoted as say­ing 'we also used a programme called Photoshop')." Yet Lynn'spresentation of Shoei Yoh's 'topological' roof for the OdawaraSports Complex includes a stunningly perceptive analysis of thenew tectonic, formal and economic potentials brought about bythe merging of computerized design, construction and fabrica­tion. To date, little more has been said on the topic, whichremains a central issue of the now ubiquitous debate on non­standard manufacturing.

The reason why some of the topics that emerged from thearchitectural discourse on folding of the early 1990s now seem

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so distant and outlandish, whereas others do not, is that some­thing happened to separate them from us: a catastrophic eventof sorts, a drastic environmental change followed by a typicallyDarwinian selection. As a result, many of those issues droppedout of sight. But those that remained thrived, and some werehugely magnified.

2. Maturity: mathematics, and the digital turnMost architects in the early 1990s knew that computers couldeasily join dots with segments. But as CAD software quicklyevolved, the graphic capabilities and processing speed of themachines grew, and the price of the new technologies declined,it soon appeared that computers could just as easily connectdots with continuous lines, and sometimes even extrapolatemathematical functions from them. Conversely, given a mathe­matical function, computers can visualize an almost infinite fami­ly of curves that share the same algorithm, with parameters thatcan be changed at will. Smoothness, first defined as a visual cat­egory by theorists of the picturesque at the end of the eighteenthcentury, turned out also to be a mathematical function derivedfrom standard differential calculus. '8 Topological surfaces andtopological deformations are equally described by mathematicalfunctions - a bit unwieldy perhaps for manual operations, butalready in the mid-nineties well within the grasp of any moder­ately priced desktop computer.

In this context, it stands to reason that the original quest forontological continuity in architectural form should take a newturn. Computers, mostly indifferent to queries on the nature ofBeing, can easily deliver tools for the manipulation of mathemat­ical continuity. These could be directly applied to the conception,the representation and the production of objects. And they were.In the late nineties, Bernard Cache could conclude that 'mathe­matics has effectively become an object of manufacture','9 andGreg Lynn remarked that computer-aided design had 'allowedarchitects to explore calculus-based forms for the first time'.2o Toa large extent, our calculus is still Leibniz's: Lynn also added thatLeibniz's monads contained integrals and equations. 21 AsLeibniz's monads famously had no windows, this is hard toprove. Yet at this point Lynn was getting significantly closer toDeleuzes's original reading of Leibniz.

The mathematical component of Deleuze's work on Leibniz,prominent but previously ignored, now sprang to the forefront ­together with the realization that Leibniz's differential calculuswas for the most part the language still underlying the families ofcontinuous forms that computers could now so easily visualizeand manipulate. Indeed, as Deleuze had remarked, Leibniz'smathematics of continuity introduced and expressed a new ideaof the object: differential calculus does not describe objects, buttheir laws of change - their infinite, infinitesimal variations.Deleuze even introduced a new terminology for his new two­tiered definition of the object. he called 'objectile' a function that

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virtually contains an infinite number of objects.22 Each differentand individual object eventualizes the mathematical algorithm, orobjectile, common to all; in Aristotelian terms, as Leibniz mighthave used, an objectile is one form in many events. Deleuze'sfold is itself a figure of differential calculus: it can be describedgeometrically as a point of inflection (the point that separatesconcavity and convexity in a curved line, or the point where thetangent crosses the line).23 However, in good old calculus (as oldas Leibniz, in fact), a point of inflection is in fact a maximum or aminimum in the first derivative of the function of the original curve.Deleuze mentions Bernard Cache with regard to both the mathe­matical definition of the fold and the concept of the objectile(Which, however, he does not attribute to his gifted student).24Bernard Cache's essay, Earth Moves, where both notions aredeveloped, did not appear in print until 1995 - and in English.The original French manuscript is cited in the English version ashaving been drafted in 1983.25

So we see how an original quest for formal continuity in archi­tecture, born in part as a reaction against the deconstructivistcult of the fracture, ran into the computer revolution of the mid­nineties and turned into a theory of mathematical continuity. Byaquirk of history, a philosophical text by Gilles Deleuze accompa­nied, fertilized and at times catalysed each of the different stagesof this process. Without this preexisting pursuit of continuity inarchitectural forms and processes, of which the causes must befound in cultural and societal desires, computers in the ninetieswould most likely not have inspired any new geometry of forms.Likewise, without computers this cultural demand for continuity inthe making of forms would soon have petered out and disap­peared from our visual landscape. The story of folding, and inparticular of the way folding went digital at a time when comput­ers were becoming such a pivotal component of architecturaldesign, once again suggests that only a dialectical interaction ­a feedback loop of sorts - between technology and society canbring about technical and societal change: including, in thiscase, change in architectural form.

The notion of a direct causal correspondence between digitaltechnologies and complex geometries (inclUding the most gen­eral of all, topology) was built on a truism, but generalised into afallacy. True, without computers some of those complex formscould not have been conceived, designed, measured, or built.However, computers per se do not impose shapes, nor do theyarticulate aesthetic preferences. One can use computers todesign boxes or folds, indifferently. In fact, the story that we havebeen tracing indicates that the theory of folding created a cultur­al demand for digital design, and an environment conducive to it.Consequently, when digital design tools became available, theywere embraced and adopted - and immediately put to use toprocess what many architects at the time most needed and want­ed: folds. If we look at Folding in Architecture now, wecannot fail to notice that digital technologies were then the main

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protagonist in absentia. Not surprisingly, they would not remainabsent for long: computers are much better at generating foldsthan Thom's clumsy topological diagrams. In the process, fold­ing evolved towards a seconda maniera of fully digital, smoothcurvilinearity. Folds became blobs.26

3 - Senility? Technologists and visionariesAs suggested above, Folding in Architecture contains the seedsof many developments that would mark the 1990s, and issuesthat were prefigured there are still actively debated. As it nowappears, mathematical continuity in design and in manufacturingcan be the springboard for different and, in some cases, diver­gent endeavors. A continuous sequence of endless variations intime may be used to capture a still frame: a one-off, a synec­doche of sorts, which can be made to stand for the rest of thesequence, and evoke the invisible. This was Eisenman's stanceten years ago and, if the forms may have changed, the principlesunderpinning them have not. Eisenman's frozen forms weremeant to suggest movement. Similar formal statements today ­regardless of some rudimentary qualities of motion and interac­tivity that recent technologies can confer upon buildings - aremore frequently read as metaphors or figurative reminders of thenew modes of making things: they may give visible form to themostly invisible logic at work, which in time will change our pro­duction and manufacturing techniques. Architects often prefig­ure technical change, and artistic invention may anticipate forth­coming techno-social conventions. Such visionary anticipationsof a future, digitally made environment were markedly smoothand curvilinear in the late nineties; and they may remain so forsome time to come. Considering the technology for which theystand, this is not inappropriate: these technical objects shouldbeen seen as presentations, not as prototypes.

Yet, alongside this metaphor of technological change, whicharchitectural invention may represent and even memorialize, realtechnological change is happening, although perhaps not so fastas the 'irrational exuberance' of the late 1990s may have led usto believe.27 The new technological paradigm is also predicatedupon continuous variations, but instead of producing one vari­ance out of many, it posits that many variants may be producedsimultaneously or sequentially. Thus, the same tools for process­ing mathematical continuity can be used to mass-produce theinfinite variants of the same 'objectile' - at no additional cost.Continuity in this case is not set in a chronological sequence, butin a manufacturing series. At a small scale, some such technolo­gies already exist - they are in use and they produce things. Howand when they might become relevant to the general process ofbuilding remains to be seen. When this happens, for the first timein the history of the machine-made environment, forms of alltypes (within the limits of the objectile/object paradigm) may bemass-produced on demand, indifferently, and at the same unitprice. New, non-standard, custom-made and infinitely variable

and adaptable forms will follow programs as never before. Betterand cheaper objects and buildings will be made available tomore people. And if this agenda may recall the moral ambitionsof 20th Modernism, the architectural forms that will come out of itwill most certainly not.

In a coda to his brief presentation of Shoei Yah's topologicalroofs, published in 1997 in an illustrated monograph of Yah'swork, Lynn extended his interpretation of Yah's continuity of formobtained through a multiplicity of minor variations. 2s Yah's struc­tures can endlessly change, morph and adapt as they are builtby the assembly of non-standard parts. Let's compare with themost eloquent example of the opposite: in any given structure,whether horizontal or vertical, Mies's I-beams were all the samesize, regardless of load; hence, as many engineers are keen topoint out, if one section fits the load, then all others are by neces­sity oversized. In contrast, each individual component in Yah's 3­D latticed trusses is only as big as it needs to be. At Mies's time,the waste of building materials caused by oversizing might havebeen compensated by the economies of scale obtained troughthe mass-production of identical parts: one doubts that this argu­ment might have ever been prominent in Mies's mind, but Mies'saesthetics to some extent sublimated that technical condition.Today, digital file-to-factory production systems can generate thesame economies of scale with no need to mass-produce identi­cal beams: beams can be all different - within some limits - andstill be mass-produced. Economies of scale can thus be com­pounded by a more economical use of materials.

As Lynn points out, Yah's use of advanced technologies andoff-site prefabrication is paralleled by his adaptation of tradition­al building materials and artisanal modes of production. Forexample, some of Yah's buildings use wood or bamboo framesand match local building know-how with computer-based designtechnologies. Although Yah himself never seems to have investi­gated the theoretical implications of this practice, the alliancebetween artisanal (pre-mechanical) and digital (post-mechani­cal) technologies is based on solid facts and figures. The arti­sanal mode of production is mostly foreign to economies ofscale: 2000 identical Doric capitals, or 2000 variations of thesame Doric capital, come at the same unit price, as each capitalis hand-made. In the digital mode, industrial economies of scaleare obtained regardless of product standardisation. In bothcases, the result is the same: identical reproduction has no tech­nical rationale, nor any economic justification. When pursuedmanually or digitally, standardisation does not generate cheap­er products, nor better-built ones. Of course one may cherishidenticality for a number of other reasons, unrelated to cost orfunctioning. But let's put it another way. There was a time whenidentical reproduction, or standardization, was eminently justi­fied: the more identical pieces one could make, the less theirunit cost would be. Standardisation was then an inescapablemoral and social imperative. This age of the industrial standard

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began with the mechanical phase of the Industrial Revolution ­and ended with it.

However, as it happens, the end of the mechanical era hasbeen proclaimed on many occasions. One of the most propitious

times to proclaim the end of the first machine age was in the early1930s of the last century, and with some logic: in 1929 themachine age seemed to have imploded - spontaneously, so tospeak: a sudden but natural death. In Technics and Civilization,

first published in 1934, Lewis Mumford disparaged all that had

gone wrong with the machine age that had just crashed, whichhe characterized as 'paleotechnic', and heralded an imminentgolden age of new machines, the 'neotechnic' age, where theevil machines of old would be replaced by new and better ones,not hard but soft machines - organic instruments of a new

biotechnic economy, where man would no longer be obliged toadapt itself to the mechanical rhythm of the machine, butmachines would learn to adapt themselves the dynamic flow of

organic life.29 Mumford's discourse was tantalizingly self-contra­dictory and included streaks of viscerally anti-modern propagan­

da, but in writing of an age of new machines, 'smaller, faster,brainer [sic], and more adaptable' than those of the earlier

Notes1Folding in Architecture, Greg Lynn (ed), Architecturai Design, Profile

102,63,3-4 (1993).

21n his Principles of Art History, first published in 1915, the historian

and philosopher of art Heinrich W61fflin defended a cyclical view of

the evolution of man-made forms, which swing from classical sobriety

to Baroque fancifulness, then back to reason and so on ad infinitum.

W61fflin never characterised the Baroque, either the time specific or

the timeless version of it, as an age of decline or degeneracy. Instead,

he used sets of oppositions (linear and painterly, plane and recession,

closed and open form, etc) through which he defined classical andBaroque phases. Heinrich Wolfflin, Kunstgeschichtliche

Grundbegriffe (1915); English translation: Principies of Art History,

trans MD Hottinger from seventh revised German edition (1929), GBell and Sons (London), 1932, pp 230-5. See also Michael Padro,

The Critical Historians of Art, Yale University Press (New Haven and

London), 1982, p 140.

3 Luis Fernandez-Galiano has compared the 'sharp folds of the F-117Nighthawk Lockheed's stealth fighter' and the 'undulating profile' of

the later B-2 stealth fighter made by Northrop Grumman, considering

the former as representative of the 'fractured forms of deconstruc­

tivism that initiated the nineties under the wings of Derrida', and the

latter as representative 'of the warped volumes of the formless current

that are wrapping up the decade, referring back to Deleuze or

Bataille'. Luis Fernandez-Galiano, 'Split-screen. La decennie

numerique', Architecture d'Aujourd'hui, no 325 (December 1999), pp

28-31: 30. Oddly, the technical specifications - aerodynamics and

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mechanical age, he seems even more than a preacher - hesounds prophetic.3o Around the same time, Frank Lloyd Wright­

then almost on the same wavelength as Mumford, and probablyinspired by him - presented his anti-European blueprint for a 'dis­appeared city', and insisted that the industrialisation of buildingneed not result in the standardisation of form: all buildings shouldbe machine-made, but no two homes need be alike. 31

In 1932 and 1934, respectively, Wright and Mumford werewere probably running a little ahead of the technology of theirtime. Yet it is one of the most significant legacies of the publica­tion of Folding in Architecture that, since 1993, we have no rea­

son not to be aware that this time around, non-standard produc­tion has opened for business and is here to stay.

Mario Carpo, architecturai historian and critic, is currently the Head

of the StUdy Centre at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in

Montreai. His prize-Winning Architecture in the Age of Printing, pub­

lished in English by the MIT Press in 2001, is translated into several

languages. Mario Carpo is the author of several books on the hislory

of architectural theories, and of essays and articles on early-modern

and contemporary tOPiCS.

the avoidance of radar detection - would have been the same for both

of these fighter planes. As architectural curvilinearity has been

conspicuously ebbing and flowing in recent times, the rise of archi­

tectural flaccidity in the digital environment of the late 1990s has

prompted a critical reassessment of antecedents, including some that

had been overlooked until very recently. For a thorough survey of pre­

blob, space-age ovoids in the 1960s and their biomorphic and tech­

nological underpinnings (mostly related to the development of plas­tics technology) see Georges Teyssot, 'Le songe d'un environnement

biorealiste. Ovo'ldes et sphero"ides dans I'architecture des annees

soixante' in Architectures experimentafes, 1950-2000, Collection du

FRAC Centre, Editions HYX (Orleans), 2003, pp 39-43.

4Gilles Deleuze, Le pli: Leibniz el Ie baroque, Editions de Minuit(Paris), 1988; English translation: The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque,

foreword and translation by Tom Conley, University of Minnesota

Press (Minneapolis), 1993.5 Peter D Eisenman, 'Unfolding Events: Frankfurt Rebstock and the

Possibility of a New Urbanism' in Eisenman Architects, Albert Speer

and Partners and Hanna/Olin, Unfolding Frankfurt, Ernst and Sohn

(Berlin), 1991, pp 8-18; 'Oltre 10 sguardo. L'architet!ura nell'epoca dei

media elettronici' (Visions' Unfolding: Architecture in the Age of

Electronic Media), Domus, no 734 (January 1992), pp 17-24 (fre­quently reprinted, most recently in Luca Galofaro, Digital Eisenman:

An Office of the Eleclronic Era, B"khauser (Basel), 1999, pp 84-9);and 'Folding in Time: The Singularity of Rebstock', Folding in

Architecture (1993), pp 22-6.

6See in particular Eisenman, 'Unfolding Events', p 9; 'Visions'

Unfolding' (1992), p 21: and 'Folding in Time' (1993), p 24.

7 Eisenman, 'Unfolding Events', p 14.

8 Greg Lynn, 'Architectural Curvilinearity: The Folded, the Pliant and the

Supple', Folding in Architecture (1993), pp 8-15. See in particular

p 13 on 'the catastrophe diagram used by Eisenman in the Rebstock

Park project ... by Kipnis in the Briey project, and Shirdel in the Nara

Convention Hall'.

9Deleuze 'argues that in the mathematical studies of variation, the

notion of object is change. This new object for Deleuze is no longer

concerned with the framing of space, but rather a temporal modula­

tion that implies a continual variation of matter. No longer is an

object defined by an essential form. He calls this idea of an object, an

"object event". The idea of event is critical to the discussion of singu­

larity. Event proposes a different kind of time which is outside of narra­

tive time or dialectical time.' Eisenman, 'Folding in Time' (1993), p 24.

10 'These typologies, introduced into the system of the Fold, allow the

Fold to reveal itself; the folding apparatus is invisible, purely a con­

ceptual drawing, until it is activated by something cast into it.'

Eisenman, 'Unfolding Events', p 16.

11 For a recapitulation of this discussion in essays by Michael Speaks,

Greg Lynn, Jeffrey Kipnis and Brian Massumi, see Giuseppa di

Cristina, 'The Topological Tendency in Architecture' in Architecture

and Science, Wiley-Academy (London), 2001, pp 6-14, in particular

p 10 and footnotes 15-18: Michael Speaks, 'It's Out There ... The

Formal Limits of the American Avant-garde', Hypersurface

Architecture, Stephen Perelia (ed), Architectural Design, Profile 133,

68,5-6 (1998), pp 26-31, in particular p 29: 'Why does [Lynn's] archi­

tecture not move? ... Why does his architecture stop moving when it

is no longer design technique and becomes architecture?'

12 Eisenman, 'Alteka Office Building', Folding in Architecture (1993), p 28.

13 'Folding is only one of perhaps many strategies for dislocating vision.'

Eisenman, 'Visions' Unfolding', (1992), p 24.

14 Lynn, 'Architectural Curvilinearity', p 8.

15 Frank Gehry and Philip Johnson, 'Lewis Residence, Cieveland, Ohio',

Foiding in Architecture (1993), p 69.

16 Lynn, 'Architectural Curvilinearity', p 12; Jeffrey Kipnis, 'Towards a

New Architecture', Folding in Architecture (1993), pp 40-9: 47.

17 Stephen Perrella, 'Interview with Mark Dippe. Terminator 2', Folding in

Architecture (1993), pp 90-93: 93.

18 See in particular Edmund Burke, Philosophicai Enquiry (1757):

William Gilpin, Observations ... relative chiefly to picturesque beauty

(1782) and Three essays: On picturesque beauty; On picturesque

travel; and On sketching landscape: to which is added a poem On

landscape painting (1792). In mathematical terms, the quality of

smoothness of a line or surface is defined by the function that desig­

nates the angular coefficients of the tangents to each point of it (that

is, by the first derivative of the function that describes the original line

or surface).

19 Bernard Cache, 'Objectile. The Pursuit of Philosophy by Other

Means', Hypersurface Architecture II, Stephen Perelia (ed),

Architectural Design, Profile 141, 69, 9-10 (1999), pp 67-71: 67.

20 For centuries, architects had been drawing with algebra, but now,

'CAD software enables architects to draw and sketch using calculus'

Greg Lynn, Animate Form, Princeton Architectural Press (New York),

1999, pp 16-18.

21 Lynn, Animate Form, pp 15-16.

22Deieuze, Le pli, p 26.

23Deieuze, Le pli, pp 20-5.

24Deleuze, Le pli, pp 22, 26.

25 Bernard Cache, Earth Moves. The Furnishing of Territories, trans!. by

Anne Bayman, ed. by Michael Speaks, MIT Press (Cambridge MA

and London), 1995, p iii. 26. The official date of birth of architectural

blobs (of blobs defined as such) appears to be May 1996. See Greg

Lynn, 'Blobs (or Why Tectonics is Square and Topology is Groovy)',

ANY 14 (May 1996), pp 58-62. For a survey of blob developments in

the late 1990s see Peter Cachola Schmal (ed), Digital Real.

Blobmeister: erste gebaute Projecte, Birkh3user (Basel), 2001. On

the early history of space-age ovoids in the1960s, and the epony­

mous film that popularised the blob in 1958, see Georges Teyssot, 'Le

songe d'un environnement biorealiste', p 40.

27 See Mario Carpo, 'Post-Hype Digital Architecture. From Irrational

Exuberance to Irrational Despondency', Grey Room 14 (forthcoming

in 2004).

28 'In all of these [Shoei Yah's] projects there is a response to the shift in

the economies and techniques of construction from one of assembly~

line production of a standard to the assembly-like production of a

series of singular units. These projects articulate an approach to stan­

dardisation and repetition that combines a generic system of con­

struction with slight variations of each member. This attribute is remi­

niscent of historic methods of craftmanship where every element

could be generic in some regard while given a distinct identity in each

instance ... Through both manual construction and industrial fabrica­

tion [these projects] exploit the economy of what is often referred to

as "custom assembly-line production".' Greg Lynn, 'Classicism and

Vitality' in Anthony lannacci (ed) Shoei Yah, L'Arca Edizioni (Milan),

1997, pp 13-16: 15. See also Lynn's 'Odawara Municipal Sports

Complex' in Shoel Yah, pp 67-70: and 'Shoei Yah, Odawara Municipal

Sports Complex', Folding in Archilecture (1993), p 79.

29 Lewis Mumford, Technics and Civilization, George Routledge and

Sons (London) and Harcourt, Brace and Co (New York), 1934, espe­

cially Chapter Viii, sections 1 (The Dissolution of "The Machine"")

and 2 (Toward an Organic Ideology'), pp 364-72.

30 'In the very act of enlarging its dominion over human thought and

practice, the machine [Mumford here means the earlier, 'paleotech­

nic' machine] has proved to a great degree self-eliminating ... This

fact is fortunate for the race. It will do away with the necessity, which

Samuel Butler satirically pictured in Erewhon, for forcefully extirpat­

ing the dangerous troglodytes of the earlier mechanical age. The

old machines will in part die out, as the great saurians died out, to

be replaced by smaller, faster, brainer [sic], and more adaptable

organisms, adapted not to the mine, the battlefield and the factory,

but to the positive environment of life.' Mumford, Technics and

Civilization, p 428.

31 Frank Lloyd Wright, The Disappearing City, William Farquhar Payson

(New York), 1932, pp 34, 45.

19

GREG LYNNARCHITECTURAL CURVILINEARITYThe Folded, the Pliant and the Supple

For the last two decades, beginning withRobert Venturi's Complexity and Contradic­tion in Architecture, 1 and Colin Rowe andFred Koetter's Collage City,' and continuingthrough Mark Wigley and Philip Johnson'sDeconstructivist Architecture, architectshave been primarily concerned with theproduction of heterogeneous, fragmentedand conflicting formal systems. Thesepractices have attempted to embody thedifferences within and between diversephysical, cultural and social contexts informal conflicts. When comparing Venturi'sComplexity and Contradiction or Learningfrom Las Vegas with Wigley and Johnson'sDeconstruction Architecture it is necessaryto overlook many significant and distin­guishing differences in order to identify atleast one common theme.

Both Venturi and Wigley argue for thedeploymentof discontinuous, fragmented,heterogeneous and diagonal formalstrategies based on the incongruities,juxtapositions and oppositions withinspecific sites and programmes. Thesedisjunctions result from a logic which tendsto identify the potential contradictionsbetween dissimilar elements. A diagonaldialogue between a building and its contexthas become an emblem for the contradic­tions within contemporary culture. From thescale of an urban plan to a building detail,contexts have been mined for conflictinggeometries, materials, styles, histories andprogrammes which are then represented inarchitecture as internal contradictions. Themost paradigmatic architecture of the lastten years, including Robert Venturi'sSainsbury Wing of the National Gallery,Peter Eisenman's Wexner Center, BernardTschumi's La Villette park or the GehryHouse, invests in the architectural repre­sentation of contradictions. Throughcontradiction, architecture representsdifference in violent formal conflicts.

Contradiction has also provoked areactionary response to formal conflict.Such resistances attempt to recover unifiedarchitectural languages that can standagainst heterogeneity. Unity is constructedthrough one of two strategies: either by

24

reconstructing a continuous architecturallanguage through historical analyses (Neo­Classicism or Neo-Modernism) or byidentifying local consistencies resultingfrom indigenous climates, materials,traditions or technologies (Regionalism).The internal orders of Neo-Classicism, Neo­Modernism and Regionalism conventionallyrepress the cultural and contextualdiscontinuities that are necessary for alogic of contradiction. In architecture, boththe reaction to and representation ofheterogeneity have shared an origin incontextual analysis. Both theoreticalmodels begin with a close analysis ofcontextual conditions from which theyproceed to evolve either a homogeneous orheterogeneous urban fabric. Neither thereactionary call for unity nor the avant­garde dismantling of it through the identifi­cation of internal contradictions seemsadequate as a model for contemporaryarchitecture and urbanism.

In response to architecture's discovery ofcomplex, disparate, differentiated andheterogeneous cultural and formal con­texts, two options have been dominant;either conflict and contradiction or unityand reconstruction. Presently, an alterna­tive smoothness is being formulated thatmay escape these dialectically opposedstrategies. Common to the diverse sourcesof this post-contradictory work - topologicalgeometry, morphology, morphogenesis,Catastrophe Theory or the computertechnology of both the defence andHollywood film industry - are characteris­tics of smooth transformation involving theintensive integration of differences within acontinuous yet heterogeneous system.Smooth mixtures are made up of disparateelements which maintain their integritywhile being blended within a continuousfield of other free elements.

Smoothing does not eradicate differ­ences but incorporates3 free intensitiesthrough fluid tactics of mixing and blend­ing. Smooth mixtures are not homogeneousand therefore cannot be reduced. Deleuzedescribes smoothness as 'the continuousvariation' and the 'continuous development

of form" Wigley's critique of pure form andstatic geometry is inscribed within geomet­ric conflicts and discontinuities. For Wigley,smoothness is equated with hierarchicalorganisation: 'the volumes have beenpurified - they have become smooth,classical- and the wires all converge in asingle, hierarchical, vertical movement.'5Rather than investing in arrested conflicts,Wigley's 'slipperiness' might be betterexploited by the alternative smoothness ofheterogeneous mixture. For the first timeperhaps, complexity might be aligned withneither unity nor contradiction but withsmooth, pliant mixture.

Both pliancy and smoothness prOVide anescape from the two camps which wouldeither have architecture break under thestress of difference or stand firm. Pliancyallows architecture to become involved incomplexity through flexibility. It may bepossible to neither repress the complexrelations of differences with fixed points ofresolution nor arrest them in contradictions,but sustain them through flexible,unpredicted, local connections. To arrestdifferences in conflicting forms oftenprecludes many of the more complexpossible connections of the forms ofarchitecture to larger cultural fields. A morepliant architectural sensibility valuesalliances, rather than conflicts, betweenelements. Pliancy implies first an internalflexibility and second a dependence onexternal forces for self-definition.

If there is a single effect produced inarchitecture by folding, it will be the abilityto integrate unrelated elements within anew continuous mixture. Culinary theoryhas developed both a practical and precisedefinition for at least three types of mix­tures. The first involves the manipulation ofhomogeneous elements; beating, whiskingand Whipping change the volume but notthe nature of a liquid through agitation. Thesecond method of incorporation mixes twoor more disparate elements; Chopping,dicing, grinding, grating, slicing, shreddingand mincing eviscerate elements intofragments. The first method agitates asingle uniform ingredient, the second

l

eviscerates disparate ingredients. Folding,creaming and blending mix smoothlymultiple Ingredients 'through repeatedgentle overturnings without stirring orbeating' In such a way that their Indlvlduaicharacteristics are maintained. 6 Forinstance, an egg and chocolate are toldedtogether so that each Is a distinct layerwithin a continuous mixture.

Folding employs neither agitation norevisceration but a supple layering. like­wise, foidlng In geology Involves thesedimentation of mineral elements ordeposits which become slowly bent andcompacted Into plateaus of strata. Thesestrata are compressed, by external forces,into more or less continuous layers withinwhich heterogeneous deposits are stiliIntact In varying degrees of Intensity.

A folded mixture Is neither homogene­ous, like whipped cream, nor fragmented,like chopped nuts, but smooth and hetero­geneous. In both cooking and geology,there is no preliminary organisation whichbecomes folded but rather there areunrelated eiements or pure Intensities thatare Intrlcated through a joint manlpuiatlon.Disparate elements can be Incorporatedinto smooth mixtures through variousmanipulations including fulling:

'Felt is a suppie solid product thatproceeds aitogether differently, as an antl­fabric. It Implies no separation of threads,no Intertwining, only an entanglement offibres obtained by fulling (for example, byroiling the block of fibres back and forth).What becomes entangled are themlcroscales of the fibres. An aggregate ofintrication of this kind is in no way homoge­neous; nevertheless, it is smooth andcontrasts point by point with the space offabric (It Is In principle Infinite, open anduninhibited In every direction; It has neithertop, nor bottom, nor centre; it does notassign fixed or mobile elements but distrib­utes a continuous variation).'?

The two characteristics of smoothmixtures are that they are composed ofdisparate unrelated elements and thatthese free Intensities become Intrlcated byan externai force exerted upon them jolntiy.Intrications are intricate connections. Theyare Intricate, they affiliate local surfaces ofelements with one another by negotiatinginterstitial rather than internal connections.The heterogeneous elements within amixture have no proper relation with oneanother. likewise, the external force thatintricates these elements with one anotherIs outside of the Indlvlduai elements controlor prediction.

Viscous MixturesUnlike an architecture of contradictions,superpositions and accidental collisions,pliant systems are capable of engenderingunpredicted connections with contextual,cultural, programmatic, structural andeconomic contingencies by vicissitude.Vicissitude Is often equated with vacillation,weakness8 and indecisiveness but moreImportantly these characteristics arefrequently In the service of a tacticalcunning.' Vicissitude Is a quaiity of beingmutable or changeable In response to bothfavourable and unfavourable situations thatoccur by chance. Vicissitudinous eventsresult from events that are neither arbitrarynor predictable but seem to be accidentai.These events are made possible by acollision of internal motivations with externalforces. For instance, when an accidentoccurs the victims Immediately Identify theforces contributing to the accident andbegin to assign blame. It Is Inevitablehowever, that no single element can bemade responsible for any accident as theseevents occur by vicissitude; a confluence ofparticular influences at a particular timemakes the outcome of an accident possi­ble. If any eiement participating in such aconfluence of local forces Is aitered thenature of the event will change. In A Thou­sand Plateaus, Splnoza's concept of 'athousand vicissitudes' Is linked withGregory Bateson's 'continuing plateau ofIntensity' to describe events which incorpo­rate unpredictable events through intensity.These occurrences are difficult to iocalise,difficult to Identlfy.1O Any logic of vicissitudeIs dependent on both an Intrlcatlon of localintensities and the exegetic pressureexerted on those elements by externalcontingencies. Neither the intrications northe forces which put them Into relation arepredictable from within any single system.Connections by vicissitude develop identitythrough the exploitation of localadjacencies and their affiliation withexternal forces. In this sense, vicissitudi­nous mixtures become cohesive through alogic of viscosity.

Viscous fluids develop Internai stability Indirect proportion to the external pressuresexerted upon them. These fluids behavewith two types of viscidity. They exhibit bothinternal cohesion and adhesion to externalelements as their viscosity increases.Viscous fluids begin to behave less likeliquids and more ilke sticky solids as thepressures upon them Intensify. Similarly,viscous solids are capable of yieldingcontinually under stress so as not to shear.

Viscous space would exhibit a relatedcohesive stability in response to adjacentpressures and a stickiness or adhesion toadjacent elements. Viscous relations suchas these are not reducible to any single orholistic organisation. Forms of viscosity andpliability cannot be examined outside of thevicissitudinous connections and forces withwhich their deformation is intensivelyInvolved. The nature of pilant forms Is thatthey are sticky and flexible. Things tend toadhere to them. As pliant forms are manipu­lated and deformed the things that stick totheir surfaces become incorporated withintheir interiors.

Curving away fromDeconstructivismAlong with a group of younger architects,the projects that best represent pliancy, notcoincidentally, are being produced bymany of the same architects previouslyinvolved in the valorisation of contradic­tions. Deconstructivism theorised the worldas a site of differences in order that archi­tecture could represent these contradic­tions In form. This contradictory logic Isbeginning to soften In order to exploit morefully the particularities of urban and culturalcontexts. This is a reasonable transition, asthe Deconstructlvlsts originated theirprojects with the Internal discontinuitiesthey uncovered within buildings and sites.These same architects are beginning toemploy urban strategies which exploitdiscontinuities, not by representing them Informal collisions, but by affiliating them withone another through continuousflexlbie systems.

Just as many of these architects havealready been Inscribed within aDeconstructlvlst style of diagonal forms,there will surely be those who wouldenclose their present work within a Neo­Baroque or even Expressionist style ofcurved forms. However, many of the formalsimilitudes suggest a far richer 10glc ofcurvlllnearlty'11 that can be characterisedby the Involvement of outside forces In thedevelopment of form. If internally motivatedand homogeneous systems were to extendin straight lines, curvilinear developmentswould result from the Incorporation ofexternal Influences. Curvlllnearlty can putinto relation the collected projects In thispublication, Gilles Deleuze's The Fold:Leibniz and the Baroque and Rene Thom'scatastrophe diagrams. The smooth spacesdescribed by these continuous yet differen­tiated systems result from curvilinearsensibilities that are capable of complex

25

deformations in response to programmatic,structural, economic, aesthetic, politicaland contextual influences. This is not toimply that intensive curvature is morepolitically correct than an uninvolved formallogic, but rather, that a cunning pliability isoften more effective through smoothincorporation than contradiction andconflict. Many cunning tactics are aggres­sive in nature. Whether insidious or amelio­rative these kinds of cunning connectionsdiscover new possibilities for organisation.A logic of curvilinearity argues for an activeinvolvement with external events in thefolding, bending and curving of form.

Already in several Deconstructivistprojects are latent suggestions of smoothmixture and curvature. For instance, theGehry House is typically portrayed asrepresenting materials and forms alreadypresent within, yet repressed by, thesuburban neighbourhood: sheds, chain­link fences, exposed plywood, trailers,boats and recreational vehicles. The houseis described as an 'essay on the convolutedrelationship between the conflict within andbetween forms ... which were not importedto but emerged from within the house.'''The house is seen to provoke conflict withinthe neighbourhood due to its publicrepresentation of hidden aspects of itscontext. The Gehry House violates theneighbourhood from within. Despite thedominant appeal of the house to contradic­tions, a less contradictory and more pliantreading of the house is possible as a neworganisation emerges between the existinghouse and Gehry's addition. A dynamicstability develops with the mixing of theoriginal and the addition. Despite thecontradictions between elements possiblepoints of connection are exploited. Ratherthan valorise the conflicts the houseengenders, as has been done in bothacademic and popular publications, a morepliant logic would identify, not the degree ofviolation, but the degree to which newconnections were exploited. A new interme­diate organisation occurs In the GehryHouse by vicissitude from the affiliation ofthe existing house and its addition. Withinthe discontinuities of Oeconstructivismthere are inevitable unforeseenmoments of cohesion.

Similarly, Peter Eisenman's WexnerCenter is conventionally portrayed as acollision of the conflicting geometries of thecampus, city and armoury which oncestood adjacent to the site. These contradic­tions are represented by the diagonalcollisions between the two grids and the

26

masonry towers. Despite the disjunctionsand discontinuities between these threedisparate systems, Eisenman's project hassuggested recessive readings of continu­ous non-linear systems of connection.Robert Somol" identifies such a system ofDeleuzian rhizomatous connectionsbetween armoury and grid. The armouryand diagonal grids are shown by Somol toparticipate in a hybrid L-movement thatorganises the main gallery space. Somol'sschizophrenic analysis is made possibleby, yet does not emanate from within, aDeconstructivist logic of contradiction andconflict. The force of this Deleuzian schizo­analytic model is its ability to maintainmultiple organisations simultaneously. InEisenman's project the tower and grid neednot be seen as mutually exclusive or incontradiction. Rather, these disparateelements may be seen as distinct elementsco-present within a composite mixture.Pliancy does not result from and is not inline with the previous architectural logic ofcontradiction, yet it is capable of exploitingmany conflicting combinations for thepossible connections that are overlooked.Where Deconstructivist Architecture wasseen to exploit external forces in the familiarname of contradiction and conflict, recentpliant projects by many of these architectsexhibit a more fluid logic of connectivity.

Immersed in ContextThe contradictory architecture of the lasttwo decades has evolved primarily fromhighly differentiated, heterogeneouscontexts within which conflicting, contra­dictory and discontinuous buildings weresited. An alternative involvement withheterogeneous contexts could be affiliated,compliant and continuous. Where complex~

ity and contradiction arose previously frominherent contextual conflicts, presentattempts are being made to fold smoothlyspecific locations, materials and pro­grammes into architecture while maintain­ing their individual identity.

This recent work may be described asbeing compliant; in a state of being plied byforces beyond control. The projects areformally folded, pliant and supple in orderto incorporate their contexts with minimalresistance. Again, this characterisationshould not Imply flaccidity but a cunningsubmissiveness that is capable of bendingrather than breaking. Compliant tactics,such as these, assume neither an absolutecoherence nor cohesion between discreteelements but a system of provisional,intensive, local connections between free

elements. Intensity describes the dynamicinternalisation and incorporation of externalinfluences into a pliant system. Distinct froma whole organism ~ to which nothing can beadded or subtracted - intensive organisa­tions continually invite external influenceswithin their internal limits so that they mightextend their influence through the affilia­tions they make. A two-folddeterritorialisation, such as this, expandsby internalising external forces. Thisexpansion through incorporation is anurban alternative to either the infiniteextension of International Modernism, theuniform fabric of Contextual ism or theconflicts of Post-Modernism andDeconstructivism. Folded, pliant andsupple architectural forms invite exigenciesand contingencies in both their deformationand their reception.

In both Learning from Las Vegas andDeconstructivist Architecture, urbancontexts provided rich sites of difference.These differences are presently beingexploited for their ability to engendermultiple lines of local connections ratherthan lines of conflict. These affiliations arenot predictable by any contextual ordersbut occur by vicissitude. Here, urban fabrichas no value or meaning beyond theconnections that are made within it. Distinctfrom earlier urban sensibilities that general­ised broad formal codes, the collectedprojects develop local, fine grain, complexsystems of intrication. There is no generalurban strategy common to these projects,only a kind of tactical mutability. Thesefolded, pliant and supple forms of urbanismare neither in deference to nor in defianceof their contexts but exploit them by turningthem within their own twisted and curvilin­ear logics.

The Supple and Curvilinear

, suppIB\adj[ME soup/e, fr OF. fr L supplie-, supplexsubmissivB,

suppliant, Iii, bending under, Ir sub + pl/c- (akin to plie/Heto fold) - more at

PLY] , a: compliant often to the point of obsequiousness b: readily

adaptable or responsive to new situations 2a; capabte of being bent or

folded without creases. cracks or breaks: PLIANT b: able to perform

bending or twisting movements with ease and grace: LIMBER c easy and

fluent without stiffness or awkwardness. 14

At an urban scale, many of these projectsseem to be somewhere betweencontexturalism and expressionism. Theirsupple forms are neither geometricallyexact nor arbitrarily figural. For example,the curvilinear figures of Shoei Yoh's roofstructures are anything but decorative butalso resist being reduced to a pure geomet­ric figure. Yoh's supple roof structures

exhibit a logic of curvilinearity as they arecontinuously differentiated according tocontingencies. The exigencies of structuralspan lengths, beam depths, lighting, lateralloading, ceiling height and view anglesinfluence the form of the roof structure.Rather than averaging these requirementswithin a mean or minimum dimension theyare precisely maintained by an anexact yetrigorous geometry. Exact geometries areeidetic; they can be reproduced identicallyat any time by anyone. In this regard, theymust be capable of being reduced to fixedmathematical quantities. Inexactgeometries lack the precision and rigornecessary for measurement.

Anexact geometries, as described byEdmund Husserl," are those geometrieswhich are irreducible yet rigorous. Thesegeometries can be determined with preci­sion yet cannot be reduced to averagepoints or dimensions. Anexact geometriesoften appear to be merely figural in thisregard. Unlike exact geometries, it ismeaningless to repeat identically ananexact geometric figure outside of thespecific context within which it is situated.In this regard, anexact figures cannot beeasily translated.

Jeffrey Kipnis has argued convincinglythat Peter Eisenman's Columbus Conven­tion Center has become a canonical modelfor the negotiation of differentiated urbanfringe sites through the use of near fig­ures. 16 Kipnis identifies the disparatesystems informing the Columbus Conven­tion Center including: a single volume ofinviolate programme of a uniform shapeand height larger than two city blocks, anexisting fine grain fabric of commercialbuildings and network of freeway inter­changes that plug into the gridded streetsof the central business district. Eisenman'sproject drapes the large rectilinear volumeof the convention hall with a series ofsupple vermiforms. These elementsbecome involved with the train tracks to thenorth-east, the highway to the south-eastand the pedestrian scale of High Street tothe west. The project incorporates themultiple scales, programmes and pedes­trian and automotive circulation of a highlydifferentiated urban context. Kipnis'canonisation of a form which is involvedwith such specific contextual and program­matic contingencies seems to be frustratedfrom the beginning. The effects of a plianturban mixture such as this can only beevaluated by the connections that it makes.Outside of specific contexts, curvatureceases to be intensive. Where the Wexner

Center, on the same street in the same city,represents a monumental collision, theConvention Center attempts to disappearby connection between intervals within itscontext; where the Wexner Center de­stabilises through contradictions theConvention Center does so by subterfuge.

In a similar fashion Frank Gehry'sGuggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spaincovers a series of orthogonal galleryspaces with flexible tubes which respond tothe scales of the adjacent roadways,bridges, the Bilbao River and the existingmedieval city. Akin to the Vitra Museum, thecurvilinear roof forms of the BilbaoGuggenheim integrate the large rectilinearmasses of gallery and support space withthe scale of the pedestrian andautomotive contexts.

The unforeseen connections possiblebetween differentiated sites and alienprogrammes require conciliatory, complicit,pliant, flexible and often cunning tactics.Presently, numerous architects are involv­ing the heterogeneities, discontinuities anddifferences inherent within any cultural andphysical context by aligning formal flexibil­ity with economic, programmatic andstructural compliancy. A multitude of plibased words - folded, pliant, supple,flexible, plaited, pleated, plicating,complicitous, compliant, complaisant,complicated, complex and multiplicitous toname a few - can be invoked to describethis emerging urban sensibility of intensiveconnections.

The Pliant and Bent

pliable\adj[ME fr plierto bend, fold-more at PLY] 1a: supple enough to

bend freely or repeatedly without breaking b: yielding readily to others:

COMPLAISANT 2: adjustable to varying condjtions: ADAPTABLE synsee

PLASTIC antobstinate.'?

John Rajchman, in reference to GillesDeleuze's book Le Plihas already articu­lated an affinity between complexity, orplex-words, and folding, or pi ie-words, inthe Deleuzian paradigm of 'perplexingplications' or 'perplication'.18 The plexedand the plied can be seen in a tight knot ofcomplexity and pliancy. Plication involvesthe folding in of external forces. Complica­tion involves an intricate assembly of theseextrinsic particularities into a complexnetwork. In biology, complication is the actof an embryo folding in upon itself as itbecomes more complex. To becomecomplicated is to be involved in multiplecomplex, intricate connections. WherePost-Modernism and Deconstructivismresolve external influences of programme,

use, economy and advertising throughcontradiction, compliancy involves theseexternal forces by knotting, twisting,bending and folding them within form.

Pliant systems are easily bent, inclined orinfluenced. An anatomical 'plica' is a singlestrand within multiple 'plicae'. It is a multi­plicity in that it is both one and manysimultaneously. These elements are bentalong with other elements into a composite,as in matted hair(s). Such a bendingtogether of elements is an act of multipleplication or multiplication rather than mereaddition. Plicature involves disparateelements with one another through variousmanipulations of bending, twisting, pleat­ing, braiding and weaving through externalforce. In RAA Um's Croton Aqueductproject a single line following the subterra­nean water supply for New York City ispulled through multiple disparate pro­grammes which are adjacent to it andwhich cross it. These programmaticelements are braided and bent within thecontinuous line of recovered public spacewhich stretches nearly 20 miles intoManhattan. In order to incorporate theseelements the line itseif is deflected andreoriented, continually changing its charac­ter along its length. The seemingly singularline becomes populated by finer program­matic elements. The implications of Le Plifor architecture involve the proliferation ofpossible connections between free entitiessuch as these.

A plexus is a multi-linear network ofinterweavings, intertwinings andintrications; for instance, of nerves or bloodvessels. The complications of a plexus­what could best be called complexity­arise from its irreducibility to any singleorganisation. A plexus describes a multi­plicity of local connections within a singlecontinuous system that remains open tonew motions and fluctuations. Thus, aplexial event cannot occur at any discretepoint. A multiply plexed system - a complex- cannot be reduced to mathematicalexactitude, it must be described withrigorous probabiiity. Geometric systemshave a distinct character once they havebeen plied; they exchange fixedco-ordinates for dynamic relationsacross surfaces.

Alternative types of trans­formationDiscounting the potential of earlier geomet­ric diagrams of probability, such asBuffon's Needle Problem, 19 D'ArcyThompson provides perhaps the first

27

_H___

geometric description of variable deforma­

tion as an instance of discontinuousmorphological development. His cartesiandeformations, and their use of flexible

topological rubber sheet geometry, sug­gest an alternative to the static morphologi­

cal transformations of autonomous archi­tectural types. A comparison of the typo­logical and transformationai systems ofThompson and Rowe illustrates two radi­

cally different conceptions of continuity.Rowe's is fixed, exact, striated, identicaland static, where Thompson's is dynamic,

anexact, smooth, differentiated and stable.Both Rudolf Wittkower - in his analysis of

the Palladian villas of 194920 - and Rowe ­

in his comparative analysis of Palladio andLe Corbusier of 194721 - uncover a consist­

ent organisational type: the nine-squaregrid. In Wittkower's analysis of 12 Palladianvillas the particularities of each villa accu­

mulate (through what Edmund Husserl has

termed variations) to generate a fixed,identical spatial type (through what couldbest be described as phenomenologicalreduction). The typology of this 'Ideal Villa'

is used to invent a consistent deep struc­ture underlying Le Corbusier's Villa Stein at

Garche and Palladio's Villa Malcontenta.Wittkower and Rowe discover the exactgeometric structure of this type in all villas

in particular. This fixed type becomes aconstant point of reference within a seriesof variations.

Like Rowe, Thompson is interested indeveloping a mathematics of species

categories, yet his system depends on adynamic and fluid set of geometric rela­tions. The deformations of a provisional

type define a supple constellation ofgeometric correpondences. Thompson

uses the initial type as a mere provision fora dynamic system of transformations that

occur in connection with larger environ­mental forces. Thompson's method ofdiscontinuous development intensively

involves external forces in the deformationof morphological types. The flexible type is

able to both indicate the general morpho­logical structure of a species while indicat­

ing its discontinuous development throughthe internalisation of heretofore external

forces within the system. 22 For instance, theenlargement of a fish's eye is representedby the flexing of a grid. This fluctuation,when compared to a previous position of

the transformational type, establishes arelation between water depth and lightintensity as those conditions are involved in

the formal differences between fish. Theflexing grid of relations cannot be arrested

at any moment and therefore has the

capacity to describe both a general typeand the particular events which influence its

development. Again, these events are notpredictable or reducible to any fixed pointbut rather begin to describe a probable

zone of co-present forces; both internal andexternal. Thompson presents an ?Iternativetype of inclusive stability, distinct from the

exclusive stasis of Rowe's nine-square grid.The supple geometry of Thompson iscapable of both bending under external

forces and folding those forces internally.These transformations develop throughdiscontinuous involution rather thancontinuous evolution.

The morphing effects used In the contem­porary advertising and film industry may

already have something in common withrecent developments in architecture. These

mere images have concrete influences onspace, form, politics and culture; for

example, the physical morphing of MichaelJackson's body, including the transforma­

tion of his form through various surgeriesand his surface through skin bleaching andlightening. These physical effects and theirimplications for the definition of gender and

race were only later represented in hisrecent video Black & White. In this video

multiple genders, ethnicities and races aremixed into a continuous sequence throughthe digital morphing of video images. It is

significant that Jackson is not black orwhitebut black and white, not male orfemale butmale and female. His simultaneous differ­

ences are characteristic of a desire forsmoothness; to become heterogeneous yetcontinuous. Physical morphing, such as

this, is monstrous because smoothnesseradicates the interval between what

Thompson refers to as discriminant charac­teristics without homogenising the mixture.

Such a continuous system is neither anassembly of discrete fragments nor a

whole." With Michael Jackson, the flexiblegeometric mechanism with which his video

representation is constructed comes fromthe same desire which aggressively

reconstructs his own physical form. Neitherthe theory, the geometry or the bodyproceed from one another; rather, they

participate in a desire for smooth transfor­mation. Form, politics and self-identity areintricately connected in this process

of deformation.A similar comparison might be made

between the liquid mercury man in the film

Terminator 2 and the Peter Lewis House byFrank Gehry and Philip Johnson. The

Hollywood special effects sequences allow

the actor to both become and disappearinto virtually any form. The horror of the filmresults not from ultra-violence, but from the

ability of the antagonist to pass through andoccupy the grids of floors, prison bars and

other actors. Computer technology iscapable of constructing intermediateimages between any two fixed pointsresulting in a smooth transformation. These

smooth effects calculate with probabilitythe interstitial figures between fixed figures.Furthermore, the morphing process is

flexible enough that multiple betweenstates are possible. Gehry's and Johnson'sPeter Lewis House is formulated from

multiple flexible forms. The geometry ofthese forms is supple and can accommo­

date smooth curvilinear deformation alongtheir length. Not only are these forms

capable of bending to programmatic,structural and environmental concerns, as

is the roof of Shoei Yoh's roof structures, butthey can deflect to the contours and contextof the site, similar to Peter Eisenman's

Columbus Convention Center and RAAUm's Croton Aqueduct project. Further-

more, the Lewis House maintains a series ofdiscrete figural fragments - such as boatsand familiar fish - within the diagrams ofD'Arcy Thompson, which are important to

both the morphing effects of Industrial Lightand Magic and the morphogenetic dia­

grams of Rene Thom. Gehry's supplegeometry is capable of smooth, heteroge­

neous continuous deformation. Deforma­tion is made possible by the flexibility oftopological geometry in response to

external events, as smooth space isintensive and continuous. Thompson's

curvilinear logic suggests deformation inresponse to unpredictable events outsideof the object. Forms of bending, twisting or

folding are not superfluous but result froman intensive curvilinear logic which seeks tointernalise cultural and contextural forces

within form. In this manner events become

intimately involved with particular ratherthan ideal forms. These flexible forms are

not mere representations of differentialforces but are deformed by their environ­ment.

Folding and other catastrophes forarchitecture

3 fold vb [ME folden, fr. OE foa/dan; akin to OHG faldan to fold, Gk di

plasiostwofold] vt1: to lay one part over another part. 2; to reduce the

length or bulk of by doubling over, 3: to clasp logether: ENTWINE, 4 10

clasp Dr em·brace closely: EMBRACE. 5; to bend (as a rock) inlo foldS 6: to

incorporale (a food ingredient) into a mixture by repeated gentle

overturnings without stirring or beating. 7: to bring to an end,24

28 -----l

Philosophy has already identified thedisplacement presently occurring to thePost-Modern paradigm of complexity andcontradiction in architecture, evidenced byJohn Rajchman's Out ofthe Fold andPerplications. Rajchman's text is not amanifesto for the development of newarchitectural organisations, but responds tothe emergence of differing kinds of com­plexity being developed by a specificarchitect. His essays inscribe spatialinnovations developed in architecturewithin larger intellectual and cultural fields.Rajchman both illuminates PeterEisenman's architectural practice throughan explication of Le Pii and is forced toreconsider Deleuze's original argumentconcerning Baroque space by the alterna­tive spatialities of Eisenman's RebstockPark project. The dominant aspect of theproject which invited Rajchman's attentionto folding was the employment of one ofRene Thom's catastrophe diagrams in thedesign process.

Despite potential protestations to thecontrary, it is more than likelythatThom'scatastrophe nets entered into the architec­ture of Carsten Juel-Christiansen's DieAnhalter Faltung, Peter Eisenman'sRebstock Park, Jeffrey Kipnis' Unite deHabitation at Briey installation and BahramShirdel's Nara Convention Hall as a mereformal technique. Inevitably, architects andphilosophers alike would find this in itseif acatastrophe for all concerned. Yet, their useillustrates that at least four architectssimultaneously found in Thom's diagrams aformal device for an alternative descriptionof spatial complexity. The kind of complex­Ity engendered by this alliance with Thom issubstantially different than the complexityprovided by either Venturi's decoratedshed or the more recent conflicting forms ofDeconstructivism. Topological geometry ingeneral, and the catastrophe diagrams inparticular, deploy disparate forces on acontinuous surface within which more orless open systems of connectionare possible.

'Topology considers superficial struc­tures susceptible to continuous transforma­tions which easily change their form, themost interesting geometric propertiescommon to all modification being studied.Assumed is an abstract material of idealdeformability which can be deformed, withthe exception of disruption.'

These geometries bend and stabilisewith viscosity under pressure. Where onewould expect that an architect looking atcatastrophes would be interested in

conflicts, ironically, architects are findingnew forms of dynamic stability in thesediagrams. The mutual interest in Thom'sdiagrams points to a desire to be involvedwith events which they cannot predict. Theprimary innovation made by those dia­grams is the geometric modelling of amultiplicity of possible co-present events atany moment. Thom's morphogenesisengages seemingly random events withmathematical probability.

Thom's nets were developed to describecatastrophic events. What is common tothese events is an inability to define exactlythe moment at which a catastrophe occurs.This loss of exactitude is replaced by ageometry of multiple probable relations.With relative precision, the diagrams definepotential catastrophes through cuspsrather than fixed co-ordinates. Like anysimple graph, Thom's diagrams deploy Xand Y forces across two axes of a griddedplane. A uniform plane would provide thepotential for only a single point of intersec­tion between any two X and Yeo-ordinates.The supple topological surface of Thom'sdiagrams is capable of enfolding in multipledimensions. Within these folds, or cusps,zones of proximity are contained. As thetopological surface folds over and into itselfmultiple possible points of intersection arepossible at any moment in the Z dimension.These co-present Z-dimensional zones arepossible because the topological geometrycaptures space within its surface. Throughproximity and adjacency various vectors offorce begin to imply these intensive eventzones. In catastrophic events there is not asingle fixed point at which a catastropheoccurs but rather a zone of potential eventsthat are described by these cusps. Thecusps are defined by multiple possibleinteractions implying, with more or lessprobability, multiple fluid thresholds.Thom's geometric plexus organisesdisparate forces in order to describepossible types of connections.

If there is a single dominant effect of theFrench word pli, it is its resistance to beingtranslated into any single term. It is pre­cisely the formal manipulations of foldingthat are capable of incorporating manifoldexternal forces and elements within form,yet Le Piiundoubtedly risks being trans­lated into architecture as mere foldedfigures. In architecture, folded forms riskquickly becoming a sign for catastrophe.The success of the architects who arefolding should not be based on their abilityto represent catastrophe theory in architec­tural form. Rather, the topological

geometries, in connection with the prob­able events they model, present a flexiblesystem for the organisation of disparateelements within continuous spaces. Yet,these smooth systems are highly differenti­ated by cusps or zones of co-presence.The catastrophe diagram used byEisenman in the Rebstock Park project de­stabilises the way that the buildings meetthe ground. It smooths the landscape andthe building by turning both into oneanother along cusps. The diagrams usedby Kipnis in the Briey project, and Shirdel inthe Nara Convention Hall, develop aninterstitial space contained simultaneouslywithin two folded cusps. This geometricallyblushed surface exists within two systemsat the same moment and in this mannerpresents a space of co-presence withmultiple adjacent zones of proximity.

Before the Introduction of either Deleuzeor Thom to architecture, folding wasdeveloped as a formal tactic in response toproblems presented by the exigencies ofcommercial development. Henry Cobb hasargued in both the Chariottesviiie Tapesand his Note on Folding for a necessity toboth demateriaiise and differentiate themassive homogeneous volumes dictatedby commercial development in order tobring them into relation with finer grainheterogeneous urban conditions. His firstprinciple for folding is a smoothing ofelements across a shared surface. Thefacade of the John Hancock Tower issmoothed into a continuous surface so thatthe building might disappear into its contextthrough reflection rather than mimicry. Anypotential for replicating the existing contextwas precluded by both the size of thecontiguous floor plates required by thedeveloper and the economic necessity toconstruct the building's skin from glasspanels. Folding became the method bywhich the surface of a large homogeneousvolume could be differentiated whileremaining continuous. This tactic acknowl­edges that the existing fabric and thedeveloper tower are essentially of differentspecies by placing their differences inmixture, rather than contradiction, throughthe manipulation of a pliant skin.

Like the John Hancock Building, theAllied Bank Tower begins with the incorpo­ration of glass panels and metal frames intoa continuous folded surface. The differen­tiation of the folded surface, through thesimultaneous bending of the glass andmetal, brings those elements together on acontinuous plane. The manipulations of thematerial surface proliferate folding and

29

bending effects in the massing of thebuilding. The alien building becomes acontinuous surface of disappearance thatboth diffracts and reflects the contextthrough complex manipulations of folding.In the recent films Predator and Predator If,a similar alien is capable of disappearinginto both urban and jungle environments,not through cubist camouflage" but byreflecting and diffracting its environmentlike an octopus or chameleon. The contoursbetween an object and its context areobfuscated by forms which becometranslucent, reflective and diffracted. Thealien gains mobility by cloaking its volumein a folded surface of disappearance.Unlike the 'decorated shed' or 'buildingboard' which mimics its context with asingular sign, folding diffuses an entiresurface through a shimmering reflection oflocal adjacent and contiguous particulari­ties. For Instance, there is a significantdifference between a small fish whichrepresents itself as a fragment of a largerfish through the figure of a large eye on itstail, and a barracuda which becomes likethe liquid in which it swims through adiffused reflection of its context. The firststrategy invites deceitful detection wherethe second uses stealth to avoid detection.Similarly, the massive volume of the AlliedBank Tower situates itself within a particulardiscontinuous locale by cloaking itself in afolded reflected surface. Here, cunningstealth is used as a way of involving contex­tual forces through the manipulation of asurface. The resemblance of foldedarchitecture to the stealth bomber resultsnot from a similarity between military andarchitectural technologies or intentions butrather from a tactical disappearance" of avolume through the manipulation of asurface. This disappearance into the fold isneither insidious nor innocent but merely avery effective tactic.

Like Henry Cobb, Peter Eisenmanintroduces a fold as a method of disappear­ing Into a specific context. Unlike Cobb,who began with a logic of construction,Eisenman aligns the fold with the urbancontours of the Rebstock Park. The repeti­tive typologies of housing and officebuildings are initially deployed on the site ina more or less functionalist fashion; then atopological net derived from Thom'sButterfly net is aligned to the perimeter ofthe site and pushed through the typologicalbars. This procedure differentiates theuniform bars in response to the globalmorphology of the site. In thiS manner themanifestation of the fold is in the incorpora-

30

tion of differences - derived from themorphology of the site - into the homogene­ous typologies of the housing and officeblocks. Both Eisenman's local differentia­tion of the building types by global folding,and Cobb's local folding across construc­tional elements which globally differentiateseach floor plate and the entire massing ofthe building are effective. Cobb andEisenman 'animate' homogeneous organi­sations that were seemingly given to thearchitect - office tower and siedlung - withthe figure of a fold. The shared principle offolding identified by both Eisenman andCobb, evident in their respective texts, isthe ability to differentiate the inheritedhomogeneous organisations of bothModernism (Eisenman's seidlung) andcommercial development (Cobb's tower).This differentiation of known types of spaceand organisation has something in commonwith Deleuze's delimitation of folding inarchitecture within the Baroque. Foldingheterogeneity into known typologiesrenders those organisations more smoothand more Intensive so that they are betterable to incorporate disparate elementswithin a continuous system. Shirdel's use ofThom's diagrams is quite interesting as thecatastrophe sections do not animate anexisting organisation. Rather, they begin asmerely one system among three others. Theconvention halls float within the envelope ofthe building as they are supported by aseries of transverse structural walls whosefigure is derived from Thom's nets. Thismixture of systems, supported by thecatastrophe sections, generates a massiveresidual public space at the ground floor ofthe building. In Shirdel's project the ma­nipulations of folding, in both the catastro­phe sections and the building envelope,incorporate previously unrelated elementsinto a mixture. The space between thetheatres, the skin and the laterai structuralwalls is such a space of mixtureand intrication.

With structure itself, Chuck Hoberman iscapable of transforming the size of domesand roofs through a folding structuralmechanism. Hoberman develops adjust­able structures whose differential move­ments occurs through the dynamic transfor­mation of flexible continuous systems. Themovements of these mechanisms aredetermined both by use and structure.Hoberman's structural mechanismsdevelop a system of smooth transformationin two ways. The Iris dome and sphereprojects transform their size while maintain­ing their shape. This flexibility of size within

the static shape of the stadium is capable ofsupporting new kinds of events. Thepatented tiling patterns transform both thesize and shape of surfaces, developinglocal secondary pockets of space andenveloping larger primary volumes.

So far in architecture, Deleuze's, Cobb's,Eisenman's and Hoberman's discourseinherits dominant typologies of organisationinto which new elements are folded. Withinthese activities of foiding it is perhaps moreimportant to identify those new forms oflocal organisation and occupation whichinhabit the familiar types of the Latin crosschurch, the siedlung, the office tower andthe stadium, rather than the disturbancesvisited on those old forms of organisation.Folding can occur in both the organisationsof aid forms and the free intensities ofunrelated elements, as is the case withShirdel's project. Likewise, other thanfolding, there are several manipulations ofelements engendering smooth, heterogene­ous and intensive organisation.

Despite the differences between thesepractices, they share a sensibility thatresists cracking or breaking in response toexternal pressures. These tactics andstrategies are all compliant to, complicatedby, and complicit with external forces inmanners which are: submissive, suppliant,adaptable, contingent, responsive, fluent,and yielding through involvement andincorporation. The attitude which runsthroughout this collection of projects andessays is the shared attempt to placeseemingly disparate forces into relationthrough strategies which are externallyplied. Perhaps, in this regard only, there aremany opportunities for architecture to beeffected by Gilles Deleuze's book Le PII.The formal characteristics of pliancy­anexact forms and topological geometriesprimarily - can be more viscous and fluid inresponse to exigencies. They maintainformal integrity through deformations whichdo not internally cleave or shear but throughwhich they connect, incorporate andaffiliate productively. Cunning and viscoussystems such as these gain strengththrough flexible connections that occur byvicissitude. If the collected projects withinthis publication do have certain formalaffinities, it is as a result of a folding out offormalism into a world of external influ­ences. Rather than speak of the forms offolding autonomously, it is important tomaintain a logic rather than a style ofcurvilinearity. The formal affinities of theseprojects result from their pliancy and abilityto deform in response to particular contin-

gencies. What is being asked in different

ways by the group of architects and

theorists in this publication is: How can

architecture be configured as a complex

system into which external particularitiesare already found to be plied?

Notes1 Venturi, Robert Complexity and Contradic­

tion in Architecture (New York: Museum of

Modern Art Papers on Architecture, 1966).

2 Two ideas were introduced in this text that

seem extremely relevant to contemporary

architecture: typological deformation and the

continuity between objects and contexts.

Both of these concepts receded when

compared with the dominant ideas of

collision cities and the dialectic of urban

figurelgroundrelationships. Curiously, they

illustrate typological deformations in both

Baroque and early modern architecture:

'However, Asplund's play with assumed

contingencies and assumed absolutes,

brilliant though it may be, does seem to

involve mostly strategies of response; and, in

considering problems of the object, it may be

useful to consider the admittedly ancient

technique of deliberately distortfngwhat is

also presented as the ideal type. So the

reading of Saint Agnese continuously

ffuctuates between an interpretation of the

building as object and the building as texture

... Note this type of strategy combines local

concessions with a declaration of independ­

ence from anything local and specific.' p77.

3 See Sanford Kwinter and Jonathan Crary

'Foreword' Zone 6: Incorporations (New York:

Urzone Books. 1992), pp12-15.

4 Deleuze, Gilles A Thousand Plateaus:

Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Minneapolis:

University of Minnesota Press, 1987), p478.

5 Wigley, Mark Deconstructivist Architecture,

p15.

6 Cunningham, Marion The Fannie Farmer

Cookbook, 13th edition (New York: Alfred A

Knopf, 1990) pp41-47.

7 Deleuze, Gilles Plateaus, pp475-6.

8 An application of vicissitude to Kipnis' logic

of undecidability and weak form might

engender a cunning logic of non-linear

affiliations. This seems apt given the

reference to both undecidability and

weakness in the definition of vicissitudes.

9 Ann Bergren's discussions of the metis in

architecture is an example of cunning

manipulations of form. For an alternative

reading of these tactics in Greek art also see

Jean-Pierre Vernant.

10 Deleuze, Plateaus, p256.

11 This concept has been developed by Leibniz

and has many resonances with Sanford

Kwinter's discussions of biological space

and epigenesis as they relate to architecture

and Catherine Ingraham's logic of the swerve

and the animal lines of beasts of burden.

12 Wigley, Mark Deconstructivist Architecture,

p22.

13 See '0-0' by Robert Somal in the Wexner

Center for the Visual Arts special issue of

Arfhitectural Design (London: Academy

Editions, 1990).

14 Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary

(Springfield, Mass: G&C Merriam Company,

1977), p1170.

15 Husser~, Edmund 'The Origin of Geometry

Edmund Husserl's Origin of Geometry: An

Introduction by Jacques Derrida (Lincoln:

University of Nebraska Press, 1989).

16 See Fetish ed'ited by Sarah Whiting, Edward

Mitchell & Greg Lynn (New York: Princeton

Architectural Press, 1992), pp158-173.

17 Webster's, p883.

18 Rajchman identifies an inability in

contexualism to 'Index the complexifications

of urban space'. Rajchman, John,

'Perplications: On the Space and Time of

Rebstock Park,' Unfolding Frankfurt (Berlin:

Ernst & Sohn Verlag, 1991), p21.

19 A similar exchange, across disciplines

through geometry, occurred in France in the

mid-18th century with the development of

probable geometries. Initially there was a

desire to describe chance events with

mathematical precision. This led to the

development of a geometric model that

subsequently opened new fields of study in

other disciplines. The mathematical interests

in probability of the professional gambler

Marquis de Chevalier influenced Comte de

Buffon to develop the geometric description

of the Needle Problem. This geometric model

of probability was later elaborated in three­

dimensions by the geologist Dellese and

became the foundation for nearly all of the

present day anatomical descriptions that

utilise serial transactions: including CAT

scan, X-Ray andPET technologies. For a

more elaborate discussion of these ex­

changes and the impact of related probable

and anexact geometries on architectural

space refer to my forthcoming article in NYMagazine no 1(New York: Rizzoli Interna­

tional. 1993).

20 Wittkower, Rudolf, Architectural Principles in

the Age of Humanism (New York: WW Norton

& Co 1971).

21 Rowe, Colin Mathematics of the Ideal Villa

and Other Essays (Cambridge: MIT Press,

1976).

22 For an earlier instance of discontinuous

development based on environmental forces

and co-evolution, in reference to dynamic

variation, see William Bateson, Materials for

the Study of Variation: Treated with Especial

Regard to Discontinuity in the Origin of

Species (Baltimore: John Hopkins University

Press, 1894).

23 Erwin Panofsky has provided perhaps the

finest example of this kind of heterogeneous

smoothness in his analyses of Egyptian

statuary and the Sphinx in particular: 'three

different systems of proportion were em­

ployed - an anomaly easily explained by the

fact that the organism in question is not a

homogeneous but a heterogeneous one.'

24 Webster's, p445.

25 In Stan Allen's introduction to the work of

Douglas Garofalo forthcoming in assemblage

19(Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1992) a

strategy of camouflage is articulated which

invests surfaces with alternatives to the forms

and volumes they delimit. The representation

of other known figures is referred to as a logic

of plumage. For instance, a butterfly wing

representing the head of a bird invites a

deceitful detection. This differs from the

disappearance of a surface by stealth which

resists any recognition.

26 This suggests a reading of Michael Hays' text

on the early Mies van der Rohe

Friedrichstrasse Tower as a tactic of disap­

pearance by proliferating cacophonous

images of the city. Hays' work on Hannes

Meyer's United Nations Competition Entry is

perhaps the most critical in the reinterpreta­

tion of functional contingencies in the

intensely involved production of differenti­

ated, heterogeneous yet continuous space

through manipulations of a surface.

31

JEFFREY KIPNISTOWARDS A NEWARCHITECTURE

'Well, I stand up next to a mountain,and I chop it down with the edge of myhand.Then I pick up all the pieces and make anisland,might even make a little sand.' Jimi Hendrix

Over the last few years, a few projects by ahandful of architects have broacheddiscussions of a New Architecture. Thethemes of this discussion are only nowcoming into sufficient focus to allow for thepreliminary efforts to articulate some ofthem in this volume. Before we turn ourattention to that specific task, however, letus consider for a moment what is at stake inthe endeavour.

'A New Architecture'. Today one whis­pers this phrase with trepidation andembarrassment, perhaps for good reason.True enough, most New Architectures areso ill-conceived that they are stillborn or diea merciful death early in infancy. But theprognosis is poor even for those with thestrength to survive their hatching, for themajority of these are killed by a well co­ordinated, two-pronged attack.

There are several variations, but thegeneral schema of this attack is well­known: first, critics from the right decry thedestabilising anarchism of the New Archi­tecture and the empty egotism of itsarchitects; then, critics from the left railagainst the architecture as irresponsibleand immoral and the architects as corruptcollaborationists. Sapped by this on­slaught, the eviscerated remainders arequickly mopped up by historians, with theiruncanny ability to convince us that thesupposed New Architecture is actually notnew at all and that it was in fact exploredwith greater depth and authenticity inEurope some time ago.'

Today, historians and critics alikeproselytise upon the creed that there isnothing new that is worthwhile in architec­ture, particularly no new form. Their doxol­ogy is relentless, 'praise the past, fromwhich all blessings flow.' Thus, we retreatfrom the new and have become ashamed tolook for it. I have colleagues who comb

drafts of their work before publication inorder to replace the word 'new' as often aspossible; I have done it myself. As a result,PoMo, whose guiding first principle is itsunabashed and accurate claim to offernothing new, has become the only architec­ture to mature over the last 20 years.

'Nonsense" It will be argued. 'During thesame period a flourishing revival of theavant-garde has developed' and fingerswill point to MOMA's Decon exhibition andto the buildings of Eisenman, Gehry,Libeskind, Tschumi, Koolhaas, Hadid andothers. Yet, upon closer examination, it isnot more accurate to say that these workshave been executed under the auspices ofan implicit contract of disavowal. In otherwords, is it not the case that these designsare celebrated as auratic, signaturebuildings of interest only for theirirreproducible singularity, rather than assources of new principles for a generalarchitectural practice. In that sense, thediscipline of architecture has recognisedthem as exotic, precisely so as to suppresstheir contribution to a New Architecture.

Yet within these disparate works areinsights that might well contribute toformulating a framework for a New Archi­tecture: one that promises both formalvitality and political relevance. Consider thework of Daniel Libeskind, for example. Fromhis Chamber Works to his recent projects inGermany and elsewhere, one finds asustained, penetrating critique of the axisand its constellation of linear organisations.Considering the political, social and spatialhistory of the axis in architecture andurbanism, this is no minor issue. Yet, verylittle on this subject can be found in thecritical literature treating these projects.Instead, Libeskind is configured as anavatar of the esoteric and the status andpower of the axis in quotidian architecturalpractice, so thoroughly re-thought in hisprojects, is left unquestioned.

On the surface, our retreat from the Newseems both historically and theoreticallywell-informed. Towards its utopian aspira­tions, architectural Modernism sought tooverthrow obsolete spatial hierarchies and

establish a new and more democratic,homogeneous space. However well­meaning this goal was, insofar as its searchfor the New was implicated in an Enlighten­ment-derived, progressivist project, it wasalso implicated in the tragedies thatresulted. The instrumental logic of architec­tural Modernism's project of the newnecessarily calls for erasure and replace­ment, of Old Paris by Le Corbusier, forexample.

In the name of heterogeneity, post­modern discourse has mounted a critiqueof the project of the new along severalfronts. It has demonstrated both theimpossibility of invention tabula rasa andthe necessity to celebrate the very differ­ences Modernism sought to erase. Its ownversion of the search for the New, a giddylogic of play, of reiteration and recombina­tion, of collage and montage, supplantsModernism's sober, self-serious search forthe Brave New. In Post-Modernism's play,history regains renewed respect, though ondifferent terms. Rejected as the linear,teleological process that underwrites itsown erasure and replacement, history isnow understood as the shapeless well ofrecombinatorial material; always deep,always full, always open to the public.

In Post-Modernism's most virulentpractices, those that use reiteration andrecombination to insinuate themselves intoand undermine received systems of power,a relationship to the New is maintained thatis optimistic and even progressive, albeitnot teleologically directed. In such post­modern practices as deconstruction, theproject of the new is rejected. New intellec­tual, aesthetic and institutional forms, aswell as new forms of social arrangements,are generated not by proposition but byconstantly destabilising existing forms.New forms result as temporaryrestabilisations, which are thendestabilised. Accelerated evolutionreplaces revolution, the mechanisms ofempowerment are disseminated,heterogeneous spaces that do not supportestablished categorical hierarchies aresought, a respect for diversity and differ-

57

-

scription of the problem, Tschumi was geometry has a similar effect on the major much from its lack of discipline as from itsspecific in outl'lning the various possibili- structural piers that hold the three theatres obedience to policy. If there is aties. Since many of the existing structures (each one a box whose form is determined DeFormation, it has only just begun.were in disrepa.ir, a return to an erase-arid-. simply by exigeriffuhctionalJequirements) Much hasbeen written and no doubtreplace approach was perfectly plausible. "'. suspended in section. ·more",ill be written that consigns the workOn the other hand, the quality of the ··.Jhe internal and extermil{jeometries' 9f DeFormatioh(and InFormation) to this orhistorical forms and spaces at Le FreSnoy COnnElct in such a way that 'major' spa,ce.of tha,t.c.<)~temporary philosopher: particujarly.also suggested a renovation/restoration the comp,lex Is entirely residu.a('8,n alley, so Gill!'s Deleaze•. lt6annot be denied that aapproach it la Collage. Tschumi eschews to Speak, rived in the provisional JInks powe(ful consonanceexis.\s between theboth, however, and envelops the entire between two 'ihva,ginated geometries, The field ol'effects sought'by thesecomplex within a partially enclosed.m6·d- residual-space elfe.ot is reinforced by 'the architeetwes and various formulations 01ernist roof to create a cohesive graft. the, fact that all of the explicit programme of the Deleuze aild Guattari in A Thousandgraft does not produce a collage; rather ". . building is concentratedin the theatres and Plateaus or by Deleuze in Le Pli. The sheerthan creating compositionally resolved rotabies that float as objects'above and ·:.number-0Ueri'rls.lhat the architecturalcollection of fragments, the roof reorgan- aWay'lro,m the main space. In a'S('nse, literature has borroweciiiorrnhe·Deleuzianises and redefines each of the elements Shirdel's '8.tti!udetowards programme.fsthe discourse (affiliation, pliancy, smooth"and .into a blank, monolithic unity whose incon- opposite of Tiichymi's. Although the' striatektspace, etc) hot to mention suchgruity is internalised. Tschumi sutures building functions according to its prief, '. fortuities as the shared thematisatlon oftogether the broad array of resuftillg there is no architectural'programme 6ther fOlqiDg,leslify to the v;';lue'ofthls corJe,spaces with a system of catwalks and· ..-.... than the function, no informiilg.choreogra- $:pondence. However, fOI-8,1I of the profit-stairs, visually interlacing them with cuts, '_pi:ly nor any use of technology to"a{Otivate 'ability of this dia,logue there are costs topartial enclosures, ribbon windows and spacescShirdel's computer renderin't;ls.of whichwe s.ttoutd·be affenfive: Tn gerrer!\J, .. '. _,_" :..... ,:'"broad transparencies. Wherever one is in Japanese dance~~. performing in eerie obligatihii any architecture to a PbjlosOphy .' . .>'.

the complex, one sees partial, disjointed isolation in the empiTeti,.residualspace"·.Qr theoly maintai?1l,.a·powertUl·bulSUSpeGh.... ·•views of several zones from inside to underline the point. The ehiiceissue of . tra'dition ih..::nich ar~hitecture is understood'. .,outside at the same time spatial heterogeneity rests in the.aeSlh.etics as a~·ap~liedi>ractice·.ln that tradili6n;the ..,:<,;:::;:' ',.

Like the visual effects, the rOI~ofproh., .. ". of the form and in the opposition between· ....measLire·Of.archilEl6lurai.d.esignisthe··);:~/;:",<;gramming in this project concerns the 'unpio'grammed event and function. In . degree to wh.ich it exerripli{ies.a lh'e;of{Of->". .:'.':production of space as much, if not more passing, it is ..Iorfhnoljng,lhatthe risk of philo~()ph.y, rather than thJ,cf6W~i~'wh[cB>than, the accommodation of function. As far proposing that the dominant(am:I-<nQ~t it.continuouSiyprod~oe'S'new;ar9h'itecl;;a:L~·as possible, Tschumi programmes all the expensive) space of a building be nothing''''''..e'ltects; as a conseq~eqteithe(ger1e(at1v'ili"··i .•"",resultant spaces, even treating the tile roofs other than residual space should n9t beforee01tiesigneffeclsinih<:ir ovyn tight:a(e'of the old building as a mezzanine"WbeEe underestimated, subordinated tolhe,.lirnitedoapa,cily·ol ... ,direct programming is not possible, he '''Tp'uisu,flh'e'development.o.f.DeEorrnation arohrtecture to produoephilosqphl<;al{o! ..,' ~elaborates the differential activation in in greater detail below and will have .-... tfieorelrGa~ effects.' .. ",' '\.':'" ,::':c":'" .material/events. In the structural trusses of occasion to return \0 the Shirdel Nara In his readiilgofLeibnit,;n L'ePli,'Qeii,~,<.,:~·.the new roof, he projects videos as an project. However, I believe thalthe brief stages'~ismeditation onthe:j6Iditi''Pirt~Q''.~' ..'' '.architectural material in order to activate comparison above, is·sufficient to indicate. . <3.nir:l1er.oretation--er-,t,he.spaoe.o1 Saraque :;'those residual spaces with events. both the s,m'la!'~e.s and.c!i¥€!rgencesln·Hw· architect~f-e, thus it ihight belJ,ssuinedth'!t .~::

The result is a project which promises.a.... · ,wtrles-tfiafare being mapped by Baroque arc!)itecture slands.as a.paradigm·,spatial heterogeneity that defies any simple InFormation and DeFormation towards a "of the architec'tura,I.effe'6fs{;f the fold. Suchhierarchy: a collection of differentiated New Architecture. ao as,sJJmptibii; however c~rl>less, ;"'001<:1 .. 'spaces capable of supporting a wide ,..... ·tie,fair and would'underwritet~ecOhfigura-variety of social encounters without DeFormation"..... tion '01 DeFormation as n"othiTig more than aprivileging or subordinating any. As is always the case'irnirchitectural neo,Baroque... .. ..Le Fresnoy undermines the classical desiQ.n.,tl:leorY:Oclormation is ~n artifact, a Now,·th9Jl9h·'6~leuze's reading of.\.architectural/political dialectic between >---c6nstruction of prinoiples that have BlJ,roqoE'architectur~ is adequgte'(ohierarchical heterogeneity and homogene- emerged after the fact from projects by /' "Elxemplify his thought-on th"lold, it is by noity and points to a potentially new institu- diverse architects that were originally"" means an adequate readj~g 01 the archi- " .. 'tional/architectural form. forged with different intentions,a-rid under tectural effects9f·tfi~ Baroque. Barog.ue··

'like Tschumi at Le Fresnoy,Shirdel also different terms and c9.00ilIons. Thus,'strictly architecture·ti; no more able to realise the/ "'" '" "

uses a collecting-graft to unify an incongru- speaking, there arena DeFormationist contemporary architectural el~ts of the '.ous, box-in-box secflon in his project for the architects.(yet), just as there were no fCliathan Leibniz's philosophy isaole toNara Convention Center. Unlike Tschumi, MaMeri~t or Baroque architects. It is a /;ealise the contemporar"philosophioa,1however, he shapes the form and internal minor point, perhaps too obvious to b('Ja' . effects of Deleuze's·lhought1n other 'structure of the graft by folding a three-bar bour; yet as we move towards a 9.evelop- words, Deleuze:Sphilosophy is ilo.rnoreparti with two complex regulating line ment of principles and a tec,hnfcallan- '(merely) neo·{eibnizian than DeFormatioogeometries. The first geometry involutes the guage w',th which to ar\iCliiate them, we is·(rnerely)neO,Baroque.exterior of the building into an abstract, must be cautious norto allow these prema- However much Deleuze's philosophynon-referential monolith whose form flows turely to circymscribe and regulate a profits from the generatiVe effects Ofinto the landscaping of the site. The second motion in design whose fertility derives as "Leibniz's texts,jts paYoff, ie, what it has new

60

..,- ~.._~ .--,-, - ~-" ~- - ~ --. - .. - -.~--------------

to say, does not rest on the accuracy of its To generate these forms, Shirdel devel-scholarly recapitulation of Leibniz's phi- oped a technique in which he would beginlosophy; rather, it rests primarily on the with one or more recognisable figure(s)differences between what Deleuze writes whose underlying organisation possessedand what Leibniz writes. On this point, I th.,desired internal complexity. Then,'in abelieve Deleuze (and Leibniz!) would ~series of ~teps, he mapped the architec-agree. in the same way, the interest of tural ge6metry 9f these figures in meticu-DeFormation does not rest on its recaprtLJla- 101ls'detail,'carefully abstracting or erasingtion of BaroqLje themes, but primarily on the, in each progressive step aspects of thedifferences it effects with the ~atoque and ..,. original figure that caused it to be referentialits other predecessors. ,,-' or recognisable - a process I termed

But perhaps, the d~arestcost to wllicn. disciplined relaxation at the time. Similarwe must be attenti)ie is the degr.ee to which .processes appearTrj the discussion of theformulating Depormation in teims of ,..: .., Gehryand Eisenmanprojects to follow.pele4Zianlanguage,peliestheindepeO,dent The culmination of the black-stuff investi-developrn~Qt oIttfe(~onsonantideils gations was the Shirdel/Zago entryyvi!fiiRJarehitecJllre,No dou~t ttM:~evelop- p[,emiated in the Alexandria Library compe-rnent, mor19ageneaIOgYlhilrrahisl"ry,)ilioQ"lld~sign)h.atevoJved from a disci-lacks !t>e graCe and P19pigree that)t w04Jd plined relaxation of a painting of foldedoblalnlfom architeeture conceived as'" cloth by Michelangelo. In that figure of theappliedphilosophy. Yei, the halti~g, fold, Shirdel found precisely the formalcirc.ui{oJ.!sp8;thways-ofDeFom;iltipn'S qualities he sought. Although the final form

",evoilltion.",here Ii gt'rliQ9On clQth folds." "'shows<lo opvioustraces ofthe original. 'depictecJ inl;>. pain~ng by Michelangelo, painting, rel~ti()nshipS amongsurlace, form

thBrePfltra(A..1racks,herea.t:i.,sperate and space are captured in the architecture. '.,"'tt,ertfP-ttpwifl"~"competitLcin;,,therealas\, Shortly after the Alexandria competition,mlf\!!(e.,i'!.f()itI6·s\lliSJY:~ nerVOllS client, and "'Pele.r Eisenman entered a limited competi-tll"'f~Br{lWjqg-tip()n thepreVipus work of tion ag,,'InSIl::l9!1, Henshaw, Pfau andqihi9fs:;r1ofpnlY"be",rs a'QignitY'a1Hts own, Jones, and Michael Graves" to design aPut~l~,inaie(ia'lly aug'rnentsthe'suqstanceconvenlion centre for Columbus,Ohio.,eti~e PhilqSpPIlY,><' '. ," '. "', , '" 'sepause the City of Columbus framedlhe.,).:Al!?W,'r,]i&tj1ep,'toreiraQ,19some ol.tt'ese.,· openTngQf the centre in terms of its

.·paths,-¢oll~cti{'!lmyeffects'al9ng tt)e way.: qUintcentermi?1 celebration of Christopher.<:Nejlho/;,arbi!ferHy n'0(deCls.ivelY,I~8{lin' . Columbus' first vOyege, Eisenman's initial

"j '.' y,ftbllli8i'co/'ter'l'\f'0ianeousp,rojects, strategy was to desigl1acollage project:>S;;irc~~Y~nd'tag;"sAlexandriaLlbrary:' ba~ed.()n the nautical architectwe of the'-GOI11petllrOn~ntry,'Eisenm'an's Coii:ll'nbUS Santa Maria. With only three weeks,emain-

/Coiwe.ntion Ceril,efand Gehr,,'s Vitra"ing in the 12:wllek competition period:,MUseum.'2· Eisenman learneq that Graves, too, was

. f.o~anumoo"r of years beginning in the'.. basjn.g his design ohanautical theme.'early 1980s;Sahram Shirdel, in association Anxious to win the competition, (he had onlywith Andrew Zagb, purs~edan architecture j~st opened his own office) Eisenman took

. which he te,rmed black-stuff. Ironic as the' thil extremerjsk of ab"ndoning nine weeksterm may'(irst appear, black-stuff is quilil an of work and sllifting to.an entirely dijf~rent

'accurate 'namll·for the effectsShirdel scheme, taking amoment to send Graves asoughflgathieve. RejeClmg the postcar(j of a sinkingship en passant.djlconstructivist thilmes of fragments, The new scheme wiJS based on the,signs, assemglages and accreted space, notion of 'weak form' Eisenman had onlyShirdelPulsued a new, abs~ract just begun to formulate, "15 Working frommonolithicity that would broach neither tWO oddly similar diagrams, one of a fibre-reference nor resemblance. Shirdel was optics cable crgss-section and the other ofinterestedin,.geri'erating disciplined the train·track.switching system that oncearcAitectural forms that were not ea"ily' occupied the site in Columbus, Eisenmandecomposable into the dynamicsof po\nll produced the winning design: a monolithicline/plane/volume of moderriformalls'm.We box knitted out of vermiform tendrils. Thewill come to refer to these.,forms in terms of likeness shared by the two diag rams isanexactgeorrietries and non-developable important to note, for in thet weak resem-

.. ,surfa:ces,buIShirdel's black-stuff set the blance, Eisenman first saw the potential ofstilgefor the Deformationist principle of weak form.non-referential, monolithic abstraction wil Although similar in many reSpects, thehave already discussed. Eisenman weak-form projects are different

from Shirdel's black-stuff in one aspect thatis of fundamental significance to theprinciples of DeFormation. Eisenman alsoattempts to achieve an abstract monolithfree of explicit reference. But while theblack-stuff projects were intended to beradically other, Eisenman's notion of

.Weakness requires the form to retain a hintof resemblance., so that it might enter intounexpected relationships, like the one thatconnects the two diagrams.

Trlle enough, once alerted, one is quiteable to read both the train-truck and fibreoptic diilgrams in the convention centreform. However, the most surprising weaklink occurs when the scheme is placed onthe site. As is to be expected, the designaddressed many traditional architecturalrelationShips to the site; such as reinforcingthe street edge and negotiating a severescale transition. On the other hand, almostas if it had been planned from the begin­ning, the braided forms of Eisenman'sproject connected the mundane three­storey commercial buildings across tostreet from centre to the complex highwaysystem interchange behind it. Thoughentirely unplanned, this connection has theeffect of transforming the prevailingarchitectural logic of the site.

Borrowing from Deleuze, DeFormationrefers to these tentative formal links withcontingent influences as affiliations, andengendering affiliations is the foremostmechanism by which DeFormation at­tempts to Point. Affiliations are distinct fromtraditional site relations in that they are notpre-determined relationships that are built

, into the design, but effects that flow fromthe intrinsic formal, topological or spatialcharacter of the design.

Typically, one identifies important siteinfluences such as manifest or latenttypological/morphological diagrams,prevailing architectural language, material,detailing or the like, and incorporates some

. pr all ofthese influences into a design, oftenby collage. Such relationships are notaffiliations, but alignments and serve toreinforce the dominant architectural modesgoverning a context.

Affiliations, on the other hand, areprovisional, ad hoc links that are made withsecondary contingencies that exist withinthe site or extended context. Rather thanreinforcing the dominant modes of the site,therefore, affiliations amplify suppressed orminor organisations that also operate withinthe site, thereby re-configuring the contextinto a new coherence. Because they linkdisjoint, stratified organisations into a

61

~jOtiL.b~dly;:s4C

- cohtiR~.i'! 1ntractive~ ya ...ati$B; Ilinl)El,\ieiY:,jio~It:~'

"".'

-.,.

-.-

, ;;" ~,,:

- r§lifililfJharialliliatlve:n:~itgetnS10:m<l'_llletI:j)Y:-;' F~. -.c,: .~e~ermining!lWoorlttngep! infl):lem:ei>t!), !ha:ny:lir

, .";. ~,.- ...•:... '.

Eisenman is sa fond." Similarly, the Altekatower begins with the high-rise type andfolds it in a process reminiscent oforigami inorder to deform the type and to producemultiple residual spaces.

Many diagrams such as those depictingLacan's 'mirror state' or parabolic umbilicfold and the hyperbolic umbillc fold associ­ated with Thom's Catastrophe Theory, haveattracted architectural interest for severaireasons. In order to avoid the pitfalls ofexpressionist processes, such diagramsoffer a levei of discipline to the work. Usingthese diagrams as a source of regulatinglines, so to speak, aliows the architect todesign with greater rigour. As Le Corbusierwrites, 'The regulating line is a guaranteeagainst wilfulness.' Moreover, as stated,such diagrams are neither purely figural norpurely abstract. They therefore hold thepotential to generate weak, resemblanceeffects. Finally, the mUltiple and disjointformal organisations that compose thesecompound d'lagrams themselves havemany of the desired spatial characteristiCsdescribed preViously on sections.

A more sophisticated use of thesediagrams as regulating lines can be foundin Shirdel's Nara Convention Center. Tobetter understand the role of the diagramsin this project, it is necessary to examine itsdesign process in greater detail. Ratherthan beginning with a typological or formalparti, Shirdel initiated the design for the Hallby grafting a carefully excerpted portion ofthe Scottish National Museum project to thesite. He chose a portion of the museumwhere two independent lobes of themuseum joined obliquely and were sub­tending a constricted, interstitial space.Transferred to Nara, this graft had theadvantage of already being incongruentbut coherent, an after-effect of excerptingthe connection between the two disjointiobes. Shirdei reinforced this effect byusing the resultant interstitial space as themain entry-way into the new building.

Studying the famous Todai-ji temple inNara, Shirdel found the temple spacedominated by three figures: a giant centralBuddha and two smailer fianking attendantfigures. Stimulated by this analysis, Shirdeldecided to encase each of the Hall's threetheatres in objects that would float in thesection. The forms of these theatre-objectswere determined simply by functionalexigencies. Other than their patinatedcopper cladding, chosen to link the sec­tional objects to the figures in the temple,the theatres were entirely undesigned.

Visitors to the Todai-ji temple encounter

64

the Buddha figures frontaliy; a classicaiarrangement that emphasises the subject!object relationship between the two.Shirdel, on the other hand, arranged histhree sectional ob jects axially. Visitorsentering the Convention Hali confrontnothing but empty space - theenormous mass of the three theatreshovering off to the side. In order to designthe envelope of the Hall and to configurethe main entry as residual space, Shirdeluses two foids. First, he reconfigured themassing of the original graft with a Thomiandiagram of a hyperbolic umbilic fold,extending this fold into the surroundinglandscape so as to smooth the connectionof the building with its immediate site. Then,he shaped the concrete piers holding upthe three theatres and the lobby of the smallmusic theatre according to the parabolicumbilic fold. As a result, the main space ofthe Hall is the residuai space between thetopology of these two folds, an effect thatthe constricted entry-way again reinforces.Shirdei's scheme introduces into Nara anentirely new form in both the architecturaland institutional sense. More interestingly, iteffects its affiliations spatially as weil asformally. At the level of a bUilding, it accom­plishes the effects that the preliminaryprinciples of DeFormation seek to engen­der. I also believe that it meets the fivecriteria for a New Architecture, ie, that itPoints, that it is Blank, Vast, Incongruentand Intensiveiy Coherent.

Whether or not DeFormation and lorInFormation mature into a New Architec­ture, remains to be seen. Certainly, the rateof realisation for DeFormation is not yet aspromising as it is for InFormation and notsufficient for either to develop or evolve.Yet, I believe it can be said with someconfidence that at least these architectureshave broached the problem of the New andthus offer a measure of optimism. But, thecritics and historians have not begun tocircle them in earnest. Yet.

Notes

1 Historians may note similarities in the work

'Included in this volume to the spatial character of

Baroque architecture and/or to the formal

character of German Expressionism. I predict their

observations will conclude that none of the archi­

tects or theorists working in this area are aware of

these sim'liarities. Because the wr'ltings and

projects are not salted with analyses of Borromini,

Guarini and Bernini or references to Finsterlin,

the Tauts. Polzig, Haring, Mendelsohn, Scharoun.

Steiner, etc, it will be assumed the work is con­

ducted in blissful ignorance of these sim'darities.

This first conclusion is necessary to support the

second, namely that the similarities are far more

important than the differences. Thus, recalling

Marx, they will argue that the second instance is

but a parody of the tragic profundity of the first; a

tautological argument, since the first instance

establishes the terms and conditions of similarity.

By coincidence, this argument also happens to

support the capitalisation of their professional act­

'Ivities), However 'Interesting and worthy of study

the similarities are, greater stakes are found in the

differences: historians will again miss the point

2 Cf, Unger, RM, Knowledge and Politics, Free

Press, New York, 1979: Unger, RM, Social Theory,

Cambridge University Press, 1987,

3 Other post-structurai architectural theorists,

notably Jennifer Bloomer and Robert Somol, have

appealed to the writings of Deleuze and Guattari,

though to different ends

4 'Collage' is used here as a convenient, if coarse

umbrella term for an entire constellation of prac­

tices, eg bricolage, assemblage and a history of

collage with many important distinctions and

developments. This argument is strengthened by a

study of the architectural translations of the various

models of collage and its associated practices.

As we proceed further into the discussion of

affiliative effects belOW, one might be inciined to

argue that surrealist collage, with its emphasiS on

smoothing the seams of the graft, might provide an

apt model. Though there is merit in this position, it

seems to me that so-called seamlessness of

surrealist collage, iike all collages, acts actually to

emphasise by irony the distinct nature of the

elements of the collage and therefore the

incoherent disjunctions at work,

A better model might be Jasper John's cross­

hatch paintings, prints and drawings. Though

these works certainly emplOY many techniques

associated with collage, their effect is quite

different. In them non-ideal, grid-like organisations

are materialised by grafting elements whose form

is disjoint from the overall organisation. Moreover,

in some of these works, other cioud-like shapes

entirely outside of the dominant form ai/tonal

language are built up of the medium itself and

camouflaged within the work. For me, these

paintings are good examples of a cohesive

heterogeneity engendered out of an intensive

coherence in the eiements themseives.

5 For example the Wexner Center for the Visual Arts

and his 'scaling' projects eg, 'Romeo and Juliet.'

6 Clearly, the economic and political difficulties that

result from a model of heterogeneity based on

rostering definable species of difference I have

associated with coliage have broad implications

across many institutional frontiers. In the recent US

presidential election, for example, a key issue in

the election was the widely felt frustration over the

number of officialiy recognised special interest

groups (now numbering in the thousands) seeking

to influence decisions by federal government.

However cynical one may be about this situation, it

is an inevitable consequence of a social arrange­

ment that attempts to negotiate the classical

conflict between individual and community and to

achieve a democracy by offering the right to

adequate voice and recognition of differences, ie,

democracy through extensive incoherence

Models of heterogeneity achieved through

intensive coherence would need not only to rethink

the individual/community conflict, but ultimately to

rethink the entire notion of a democracy achieved

by systems of rights.

7 Cf, Robert Somol, 'Speciating Sites', in Anywhere,

Davidson, ed, Rizzoli, 1992.

8 To be sure, we have already seen possibilities for

such grafts, eg, in the work of Hejduck or Rossi. It is

entirely unpersuasive to account with the logic of

collage for the effects of Aldo Rossi's incongruous

grafts of received institutions with his catalogue of

autonomous architecturallorms or for the effects of

Hejduk's mytho-poetic, scenographic urban grafts

9 See Unger, 'The Belter Futures of Architecture', in

AnyoneOavidson, ed, Rizzoli, 1991.

10 Rem Koolhaas stresses this point in his short

programme for the recent Shinkenchiku Housing

competition, entitled, 'No Style'. cf JA 7

11 Many of the ideas introduced in the second part of

this text grew out of discussions I have enjoyed

with Greg Lynn and Sanford Kwinter as well as from

their writings. That I do not cite these writings in

particular in this text is merely a testimony to how

thoroughly it is suffused with their influence, C!,

Greg Lynn, 'Inorganic Bodies', Assemblage 19, or

Sanford Kwinter in the Journal of Philosophy and

the Visual Arts, Vol 2, Benjamin, ed, For related

issues, see Incorporations, Crary and Kwinter, eds,

UrZone Press, New York, 1992

12 In order to achieve some focus, in thi~ account I

stress DeFormation primarily as a matter of

building design and touch on urban issues only as

they arise iJl that context. Several projects have

attempted to extend the themes I here identify with

DeFormation to urban design, such as Eisenman's

office and housing park in Rebstock and the

Shirdel, 2ago, Kipnis project for the central

business district of Montreal. There are also

projects incorporating the themes of InFormation

such as Koolhaas' Lille and La Defense or

Tshcumi's Chartres, I will attempt a treatment of

these works in another setting.

13 For a discussion of these three projects, see my

'Freudian slippers, or what were we to make of the

Fetish', in The Fetish, Lynn, Mitchell and Whiting,

Princeton ArChitectural Press, Princeton, 1992,

14 For a discussion of Eisenman's weak form projects,

see my 'A Matter 01 Respect', in the A+U special

edition on Eisenman, January, 1990.

15 One of the most fascinating aspects of Peter

Eisenman's design career is his uncanny ability to

derive an entire architectural design thesis from a

key word or phrase happened upon fn his reading

of criticism or philosophy, While not underestimat­

ing the significance of this eventual arrival at some

understanding of the source of the term in

question, the fact of the matter is that Eisenman's

design inventions virtually always evolve from his

intial reaction to what he sees as the architectural

implication of the term or phrase, loosened from its

original discursive context. Whether itwas

Chomsky's 'deep structure', Derrida's 'trace',

Mandelbrot's 'fractal scaling', or Vattimo's 'weak',

Eisenman's architectural derivations have much

more to do with his stimulated intuition of potential

architectural effects than with embodying the

original philosophical effect in question.

Eisenman's 'deep structure', 'trace', 'scaling' and

'weak form' therefore have little to do with the

philosophy, but much to do with architecture

This comment is by no means meant to disparage

Indeed, to the contrary - insofar as Eisenman's

work has at one and the same time maintained a

dialogue with philosophical discourse while

loosening the domain of architectural effects from

and exemplifying/embodying obligation to

philosophical effects may be its most important

contribution. The conspicuous absence of this

issue from the critical literature on Eisenman's work

- including my own - testifies to an ins!itutional

need for critical literature to maintain a metaphysic

of embodiment at any cost, even at the cost of

paying attention to the architecture.

16 Camouflage is often cited as a paradigm of

affiliations that smooth. Effective camouflage such

as 'dazzle painting' is often entirely different from

the prevailing influences of the operative context

and almost always outside of the dominant modes

of the primary discipline (ie, of clothing design or

the surface treatment of ships or planes), Yet the

effect of camouflage is to smooth the disjoint

relationship between site and interloper into

another context.

17 Though the discussion of affiliation to this point

emphasises form-to-form effects, a meditation on

the weak-links of affiliative effects also undermines

the most pre-eminent of strongly aligned relations

in architecture: the correlation between form and

programme. 'Form follows function', is, of course,

the declaration par excellence of an alignment

between architectural design and programme. Yet,

does a close attention to the history of architecture

actually sustain that position? I believe a careful

reading of that history would require a negative

answer to the question.

Throughout its history, the relationship between

form and programme has been far more affiliative

than aligned, a fact to which the endless numbers

of reprogrammings more than testify (houses to

museums, fascist headquarters to state treasury

facilities, fire stations to Ghostbuster's offices ad

infinitum). This is not to say that there is no

relationship between form and function, but that

the relationship is in its essence weak. It is the

affiliative character of the form/programme

relationship that allows Rossi to produce his

typological grafts and Tschumi to theorise about

dis-cross and trans-programming. After all, has the

design of any building significant to arChitectural

history ever achieved its status due to how well it

functioned? But the most glaring case of form!

programme affiliation is to be found in the house,

for no one ever lives in a house according to its

architectural programme, Can a theory of strong

alignment between form and programme account

for reading in the bathroom or eating in the

livingroom, or for the particular pleasures of having

sex anywhere but the bedroom? No doubt it was

out of a frustration over the failure of affiliations to

congeal into alignments that drove Mies van der

Rohe to nail down the furniture, The affiliative

nature of the relationship between form and

programme accounts in the large part lor

DeFormation's relative complacency vis a vis

InFormation on the issue of programme.

18 For additional discussion of the Shirdel, 2ago,

Kipnis Place Jacques Event Structure project, see

L'Area, December 1991, no 55.

19 For additional discussion of the Shirdel, 2ago

Kipnis project for the Scottish National Museum,

see ANYWHERE, Rizzoli, 1992,

20 A mixed-use office tower in Berlin Though

unavailable for publication at this time, the Max

Reinhardthaus project is scheduled to be

published in ANYWHERE

21 To state that the most interesting discussions in

architecture revolve around design technique, is,

to me, virtually a tautology, The most interesting

aspect of any and every study of architecture­

historical, theoretical or otherwise - is its conse­

quence for current design technique.

22 For more on the Rebstock project see R Somol,

'Accidents Will Happen', A+USeptember 1991 and

John Rajchman, 'Perplications', the catalogue

essay lor the Unfolding Frankfurtexhibition, Aedis

Gallery, Ernst & Sohn, Verlag, 1991, For Eisenman

on folding see 'Visions Unfolding', Incorporations,

Crary and Kwinter, eds, Ur20ne Books, 1992, An

earlier version is in Domus, June 1992.

23 In his studio at the Ohio State University, Eisenman

and his students began to develop the implications

of the initial Rebstock folding for the building

sections and to study its capacity to interlace

disjoint organisations, I intend to treat this work and

further developments of the scheme in more detail

in my forthcoming treatment on InFormation and

DeFormation urban design,

The illustrations with this article are of theBriey Intervention, a project by Jeffrey Kipnisin consultation with Philip Johnson.Project Architect: Matt Geiser; Producers:Don Bates, Ken Rabin; Construction Super­visor: Greg Skogland; Computer drawings:Modelling on the Form Z

65

JOHN RAJCHMANOUT OF THE FOLD

What might architecture and urbanismmake of the concept of the fold today - towhat new places might they sti[1 take it?

The concept is a very old one. And yet,one cannot say that it is a concept tradi­tionai to philosophy, even though as anetymo[ogical matter it is parent, in Euro­pean languages, of many concepts thatare: 'explication' and 'implication', 'perplex­ity' and 'complexity', for example, derivefrom it. As such, it has a long history. TheGreek root, to do with weaving, recurs in thesymploke or weaving-together of discoursethat Plato describes in the Sophist, but it isthrough Latin that words like 'implicate','explicate' and 'repiicate' enter French, andin a slightly different way, English. Alreadywe find Plotinus speaking of a great'Complicatio' of the One in all that is. Muchlater, rather independently, we find refer­ences to the foldin Heidegger and, ofcourse, in Mallarme.

Perhaps the most intricate and extensivecontemporary treatment of the concept IS tobe found in Gilles De[euze's book, Le Pli(The Fold) that advances a new perspectiveon Leibniz and the Baroque. But then,Deleuze has a special view of what philo­sophical concepts are: they are monsters.They show (montre) things which, sincethey can't yet be said, appear incongruousor untimely. Deleuze wishes to restore toconcepts in philosophy a dimension, not oflogical possibility or necessity, but oflogical force- the manner in which suchconcepts expose new 'enfoldings' or'implications' that are yet to be 'unfolded' or'explicated'; the manner in which theyinstigate new unanticipated possibilities inthe midst of things, without predeterminingor prefiguring the outcome; the manner inwhich they thus take a given conceptualspace elsewhere, out from itself.

In fact, one may read Deleuze as offeringan original image of conceptual space itselfas something 'pliable' or ever susceptibleof being folded, unfolded and refoldedanew. Thus he writes of the bifurcations, theopenings and closings, the surfaces,intervals, heights and depths of conceptualspace, and of the manner in which thought

'orients' itself within that space. He therebyoffers a different image of conceptualspace from Frege (a philosophical conceptis not a function mapping a range onto adomain) and from the austere Wittgenstein,whose image of the purity and simplicity ofelements Adolf Laos found so appealing.

For De[euze, conceptual space is notdivided up by sets of discrete elements, norgiven through a Unity or Totality of parts;and its aim is not to 'represent' or 'depict'the world by ordered combinations of suchelements, any more than it is to 'express'the unity of such parts. Indeed, the worlditself is not 'all that is the case' (asWittgenstein took it to be) for it includes anundepictable anterior element out of whichnew kinds of things can happen, newconcepts emerge - the space whereunforeseen things 'take place'.

Conceptual space is thus neither time­less nor time-bound, but implies a peculiartype of temporality that Deleuze tries tounfold from 19th-century thought. fromProust's notion of a 'complicated time' (thatstill is connected to the Cathedral); fromBergson's notion of 'virtuality' (in which wecan in retrospect see a relation to 'motionpictures'); and especially from Nietzsche'snotion of the 'untimely' (which Deleuze seesFoucault as introducing into the archivalstudy of history). At the end of the century,Frege had focused on the problem ofnumbers and sets. However, with theconcept of the fold, Deleuze's philosophicalimagination is drawn rather to mathemati­cians like Rene Thom and BenoitMandelbrot, whose topographies suggestresonances with other domains, otherspaces.

Fold-words - words with plic- and plex-­do of course also enjoy a prominent role inthe discourses of architecture and ofurbanism. Perhaps there is no word usedmore frequently than 'complexity'; and forWolf Prix of Coop Himmelblau, architectureis a key art of the 90s because it must dealat once with social, economic and formalcomplexities. But 'complexity' has notalways been so central a concept, and animportant date for its emergence is pro-

vided by a work that for many marked aturning-point in architecture and architecMtural discourse: Complexity and Contradic­tion in Architecture of 1966. In this book,Robert Venturi drew on a vocabulary thathad been elaborated by the Anglo-Ameri­can New Critics, and was unaware thatduring the same years Deleuze waselaborating in France a different kind ofvocabulary, a logic of 'difference andrepetition', on which he would later draw inhis own discussion of Mannerism and theBaroque in Le Pli. This other logic would betaken up some years later in architecture:For example, in his Manhattan TranscriptsBernard Tschumi would appropriate fromDeleuze the notion of 'disjunctive synthe­sis', that in turn would lead to Derrida'sreference to the fold in his essay on 'Main­taining Architecture'. However, out of thefold there may yet arise other possibilities,other ramifications; and some implicationsand complications of the concept may betraced along these four lines: multiplicity,chance, orientations and manners.

MultiplicityThe pli-word of which Deleuze is fond ofabove all others, and through whose eyeshe sees all others is the word 'multiple'. Onthe first page of his book he declares: 'Themuitiple is not only what has many parts,but what is folded in many ways'. InDeleuze's philosophy, the multiple comesfirst before the One. States of affairs arenever unities or totalities but are rather,'multiplicities' in which there have arisenfoci of unification or centres of totalisation.In such 'mu[tiplicities' what counts is not theelements or the terms but what is in be­tween them, their intervals or 'disparities'.Multiplicity thus involves a peculiar sort ofcomplexity - a complexity in divergence­where it is not a matter of finding the unity ofa manifold but, on the contrary, of seeingunity as a holding-together of a prior virtualdispersion. This sort of complexity does notconsist in the One that is said in many ways,but rather in the fact that each thing mayalways diverge onto others, as in the ever­forking paths in Borges' fabled garden. A

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'multiple' fabric Is therefore one that cannever be completely unfolded or definitivelyexplicated, since to unfold or explicate It Isonly to fold or complicate it anew. Thus themultiple Is not fragments or ruins of a lost orabsent Whole, but the potentiality fordivergence within any given unity. In thismanner, the concept of complexity Is freedfrom the logic of contradiction or oppositionand connected Instead to a logic of Inter­vals: It becomes a matter of a 'free' differen­tiation (not subordinated to fixed analogiesor categorical Identities) and a 'complex'repetition (not restricted to the Imitation of apre-given model, origin or end).

Such a notion of 'complexity In diver­gence' differs from Venturi's notion of acontradictory or 'difficult' whole, just as Itinvolves a strange, invisible, groundlessdepth; unlike the 'ground' in Colin Rowe'spicture of Cubist collage and Gestaltlstperception. For, Venturi would reducecomplexity to a given totality and simplicityof compositional elements, and Rowewould reduce depth to the simultaneity offigure and ground. In this way they wouldeliminate just that which makes complexitymultiple and divergent, and just whatmakes depth Intensive and ungrounded.For them, architectural or urban visionremains fundamentally a matter of discov­ering an Imperceptible unity In a percepti­ble diversity of elements. Deleuze suggestsanother kind of vision: one that tries to findthe 'signs' of an Imperceptible 'dlsparatlon'In what presents Itself as a perceptualtotality - the vision of an Intensive 'multl­plexlty' In the midst of things.

ChanceFor Deleuze, there Is thus a folding of thingsthat ',S prior to design or princ'lple and thatsubsists as a potential complication Inthem. As SUCh, the fold Is connected to anotion of chance and necessity, whichDeleuze formulates In his study ofNietzsche by saying: 'Nietzsche Identifieschance with multiplicity ... What Nietzschecalls necessity (destiny) Is thus never theabolition but rather the combination ofchance Itself.'

Such views belong to a more general'erosion of determinism' in which aLaplacian Image of the universe as a sort ofclock wound up by God opens onto astochastic, unpredictable universe, wherethe laws of complex forms are not deter­mined by those of simpler ones, but comeinto existence as those complex forms arecreated in the history of the universe: theuniverse as a great casting of the dice, the

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patterns of which, upon failing, wouldassume a kind of necessity. For Peirce, asfor Nietzsche, this new territory of chanceopened up new sorts of philosophicalquestions. For, as Ian Hacking has argued,these two philosophers help to distinguish a'bifurcation' in the new territory, dividingalong the lines of two concepts of chance;one 'tamed', the other 'untamed'. In thisway, we see how statiticians and dadaistscame to populate the same conceptual andsocial world.

In Deleuz8, we find a similar distinctionbetween 'sedentary' and 'nomadic' views ofchance. Pascal, in his wager, exemplifiesthe first, since he plays the game of chanceaccording to pre-eXistent categorical rulesthat define probabilities which allow one tocalculate gains and losses. But Nietzscheand Mallarme play the game In anotherway: the table Itself bursts open andbecomes part of a larger, more complexgame that always Includes the possibility ofnew rules, so that in making each move onemust affirm all of chance at once. And asthe game of 'nomadic' distributions re­places the game of categorical ones,chance ceases to be tamed or hypothetical,and becomes free and imperative.

For Deleuze, the fold therefore Involvesthe subsistence of a virtual space ofchance in the organisation of design and ofprogramme. And perhaps one might arguethat this nomadic or untamed kind ofchance was something that a certain heroicambition in architecture and urbanism, anda certain Image of the architect or theplanner as a sort of master-bUilder, triedunsuccessfully to eliminate: the spaces of'envelopment' In development, the spacesof virtual 'dlagrammatlsatlon' In plans andplannings. The question then arises of howand where such spaces might be discov­ered In another way than through the senseof omnipotence (and dejection) that comesfrom the desire to eliminate them.

OrientationsHeights and depths, ups and downs­these belong to what Deleuze terms the'ascenslonal psych Ism' that Plato helpedIntroduce Into philosophy with his prover­bial stories of the soul con-vertlng,reorienting Itself out of the cave towards thelight. What Socrates' suicide shows, hesuggests, Is the depressive side of suchcelestial orientation along a vertical axis.Deleuze wants to propose a different way oforienting oneself In thought: It would not bea matter of turning or looking up to thehe'lghts above things, any more than of

delVing down Into the formless bas beneaththem, but of looking along the surfaces, intheir Intervals and midsts for what yet mayhappen, coming thus to see that 'the mostprofound Is the skin'. The Logic ofSenseoffers many perspectives on this placewhere sense and non-sense would meetand where new, unforeseen things mighthappen. And, for Deleuze, this 'mid-place',this 'mi-iieu', Is precisely where foldingoccurs: 'Things and thoughts grow or growup through the midst (miiieu), and It is therethat one has to be, It Is always there thatthings are folded (que ,8 se plie).'

Through his notion of the milieu, Deleuzewould deliver uS from a 'linear' picture oftime, proceeding from beginnings toendings as In a story or hisloire. The midstIs rather where beginnings are recast andnew endings opened up in our stories; amilieu always interrupts the calm narrativeof things, exposing a prior complexity andcomplication In them. And conversely, Inthe Intervals in the midst of things therealways subsists the chance for the sort offree self-complication of a space thatinstigates without prefiguring.

For Deleuze, events never happen out ofa tabula rasa, but come out of complica­tions, out of the fold; and time occupies a'complicated' rather than a linear or circularspace: It lies at the Intersection of multiplelines that can never be disentangled In asingle transparent plane given to a fixedexternal eye.

Thus Deleuze sees Lelbniz as Introduc­Ing a new 'regime of light', different from theCartesian regime of the clear and thedistinct: a baroque regime where thingscan be continuous even though they aredistinct, and where what is clear or clarifiedIs only a region within a larger obscurity, aswhen figures emerge from the 'dark back­ground' in the paintings of TIntoretto or EIGreco. For Lelbnlz's 'windowless monads'Illuminate or clarify only singular districts inthe dark complexities of the world that Isexpressed in them; and Lelbniz becomes aperspectivlst philosopher where thingsthemselves are points of view on the worldthey express. Yet Leibnlz retains the meta­principle that God selects this world asbest, and that everything that happens Isthus 'composslble' in that world. Deleuzeconsiders Nietzsche to take things further:whereas for Leibnlz, things are points ofview on the same city, for Nietzsche, eachpoint of view is a different city, resonatingthrough Its divergences with others, suchthat his principle was 'always another city Inthe city'.

MannersWe ourselves are folded beings, for there isa sense in which we never stop folding,unfolding, refolding our lives; and we are'complicated' beings before we are logicalones, following out our 'life plans' within thespaces in which they can be expected tooccur. When Deleuze says we are each ofus plural or multiple, he doesn't mean thatwe are many things or have many egos, butthat we are 'folded' in many entangled,irregular ways, none the same, and that this'multiplicity' goes beyond what we canpredict or be aware of: we are 'folded' inbody and soul in many ways and manytimes over, prior to our being as 'subjects',as masters and possessors of what hap­pens to us in our lives. Each of us is thus'multiplicitous'; but not because we divideinto distinct persons or personalitieslooking for a unity, lost or supposed, andnot because our brains are programmed byseveral helpfully interacting cognitive'modules'. It is rather that our modes ofbeing are 'complicated' and 'unfold' in sucha way that we can never be sure just whatmanners our being will yet assume.

Sartre saw the being of the other, ofautrui, as this ungraspable gaze thatcaptures and involves one in a violentstruggle for recognition. But Deleuze, whoadmired Sartre, thought we should seeautrui rather as the 'expression' of enfoldedor implicated possibilities that don't yetexist outside the expression, but that maybe unfolded or explicated through those'encounters' that release them; and it is thusthat they determine the points from whichone can 'look' and be 'looked at', ortheterrains in which struggles of gazes cantranspire. 'The other' is thus not a subjectany more than it is an object for one; it israther the existence of multiple unrealisedpossibilities that go beyond the subject andthat come to be expressed through whatDeleuze called 'signs', in his study ofProust. In this book, Deleuze underscoresthat at least in the Proustian universe suchinvoluntary 'signs' of enfolded possibilitiesare far richer in love and jealousy than theyare in the friendship and goodwill thatattracted those ancient Greek philoso­phers, who tried to make 'recognitionamong subjects' seem more important toour manners of being than 'encounters'among different worlds of possible compli­cation. Conversely, to put 'encounters'before 'recognitions' is to see that there issomething of which the body is yet capable,just as there are always states of the soul ormind that go beyond what one may be

conscious of: that is, using Spinoza's word,what Deleuze calls affects. Our enfoldingsand unfoldings 'affect' us before we re­collect them in the planned spaces of ourpurposeful undertakings. And if we cantoday re-read Spinoza and Leibniz as'expressionist' philosophers, it is because,unlike Descartes' view of the mechanical orrobotic body, they thought of body and soulas 'expressions' of the same thing: ofentangled, enfolded manners or modes ofour being, themselves as splendidlyimpersonal as the 'it' in 'it's raining'. Thusthey thought that the soul is not 'in' thebody, any more than it is 'above' it, but thatit is rather 'with' it, accompanying it alongthe bifurcating paths of its distinctivemanners of being.

It is this 'expressionist' construal of thephilosophical theme of 'manners' or'modes' of being that Deleuze connects, inLe Pli, to 'Mannerism' and the Baroque, andso reads the interior and exterior of Ba­roque architecture in terms of theLeibnizian theme of the windowless monad,and the harmonies of body and soul. Andyel, Deleuze thinks, our own moment ofcomplication requires another kind ofexpression. For we no longer have use for aprinciple of pre-established harmony; wehave passed from the notion of the bestcompossible world to the possibility of a'chaosmotic' one, in which our 'manners'ever diverge into new complications.

For Deleuze, the fold thus involves an'affective' space from which the divergingmanners of our being come and go, ofwhich one may ask whether it will discoveran architectural expression. The modernist'machines for living' sought to express aclean efficient space for the new mechani­cal body; but who will invent a way toexpress the affective space for this othermultiplicitous one?

What then might architecture make of thiscontemporary philosophy of the fold?Perhaps it is too soon to say, for it is amatter of new connections and of thecreation of spaces in which such connec-

matter of the force of the concept in itsencounter with architects.

Axonometric view of the Rene ThomCatastrophe Section drawn by Jeffrey Kipnis

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