-pli -plic -plex

On Parametric Typology

2011-09-14T03:41:00.000-07:00

The following is excerpted from my presentation (1) at the 4th International Alvar Aalto Meeting on Modern Architecture, organized by the Alvar Aalto Academy (2) under the topic 'High-Rise Shuffle' at the University of Jyväskylä. The paper focused on the application of parametric design to a high-rise typology that functions as densifying urban infill but also begins to close the gap between design and planning.

High Rise Shuffle

...
Parametric modeling with a complex set of variables provides architects a conceptual structure which encourages the investigation of design premises under different conditions (3), a requirement of any experimentation. The potential for such multiplicity also makes parametric design a powerful research tool for investigating the profound and widespread effects of even quite minor typological inventions. The research presented here tests the application of high-rise typology as a method of infill. Infill, of course, implies a connectivity in both the design concept and physical space between the tower and its surroundings. Such a model obviously contradicts the typical high-rise development which either stands back from the city as an iconic object or exists within a segregated territory; a gated community or business park. The desired sensitivity to a multitude of situations within the existing city requires a new approach to the planning of very large developments in which the fine-tuning—and even mutation—of the urban design proceeds from the architectural organization outward, rather than prior to and superseding it. In this way urban design can become a mutable process which incorporates integral feedback between the plan and the proposal.
...
Throughout the definition of this typological study I have avoided as much as possible a reliance on geometric forms, using instead geometric procedures whose relational properties are known but whose form is unpredictable. These procedures—proximity, convex hull, intersection—are more sensitive to small perturbations and illustrate the ability of parametric modeling to produce novel variations that go beyond simple transformations such as scaling, rotation, or the selection from a set of a few predefined categories. Within these procedures a number of options are also made available to the user to control directly, especially the resolution at which the analysis operates, the degree of interconnection... or the relative intensity of different values. A conservative user could, for example, restrict the [parameters] to produce quite normative towers. The results produced by these controls is, as everywhere in the process, mediated through the generative processes, however, so some modifications do not always lead to the expected results. Though the actual processes are fairly simple in themselves, their flexibility and the density of their interrelation (and selective discontinuity across thresholds) generates complex proposals. No attempt has been made to avoid the possibility of contradiction among the many input variables, but rather to filter such conflicts through the combination of “black-box” algorithmic methods and the users exploration of projections through intuitive visual feedback (4).

Exploring parameter space (animation)

...
The origin of this research stemmed from an interest in how the city in its generic condition reacts to the occasions of iconic architecture (5). More precisely, how might architects be able to react without themselves creating just another exceptional building.

Experiments with ‘non-iconic’ architecture have been made in the past, most notably through mat-buildings (6) and vernacular types (7). My approach borrows some techniques from these approaches, including deeply-integrated connectivity, multiplicity of parts and functions, and engagement with context. Implementation within a high-rise situation brings unique challenges such as the conflict between horizontal and vertical extension, the already densely built urban surrounds, and the impossibility of primitive construction. Moreover, the computational aspect of the project includes a risk of reducing the realization of the design to a mere figuration of the data inputs or parametric variables: a swing too far from the symbolic or iconic into a linguistic or indexical mode which only pretends to contextuality while withdrawing behind a screen of interpretation.

From either side, then these concerns frame a narrow path of possibility. The project needed to itself be a projection of potentials rather than a unique solution. As a projection, however, it needs a specificity of architectural actuality, neither a spreadsheet nor amorphous cloud are enough. This suggests a combination of preprogramming and indeterminacy which a parametric model, given sufficient complexity, is ideal to enact. Complexity here, certainly does not refer to the amount or the length of code, but a system whose interactions interparticipate in bringing forward nonlinear results which only result from repeated testings. The first source of indeterminacy is, of course, the possibility of unpredicted variation, by the user, of the initial conditions—alterable variables, the idiosyncrasies of sites—wherein the designer gives over some authorship to the user. The complexity of the internal calculations produces a second source of indeterminacy, when contradictory intentions clash—a kind of agonistic noncomposition. The invisible calculations made by the inner workings of the algorithm means that the user’s control may only lead indirectly to the result. The agency of the model resists certain configurations and the user must concede some authorship back to the programmer (8).

Alain Badiou defines the generic as “an untotalizable subset, a subset that can be neither constructed nor named” (9) but which is also the source of all novelty or invention, a definition which allows us to relink the generic with the genetic and the generative. Thinking the generic city in terms of this definition poses an urgent challenge to all architects: how to work with something at once so familiar and so elusive? It seems to me that this can only be approached through a combination of representation and authorship, both compromised and held at some distance, such that complete control of the system is never entirely graspable, no matter how many controls one has available to manipulate,

...the simultaneous presentation of the tower and planning models is capable of making the argument that architecture, rather than having the role of simply completing a predetermined urban image as one would fill in the pieces of a puzzle, has instead the ability to participate in and define an urbanism that evolves along with its pieces. Put another way, urban design has the potential to evolve beyond static, imagistic models into participatory systems without predefined results.

1. The paper was titled, 'Taipei 2.0.2: Computation and the Urban Generic' after my Master's thesis (under the advisement of Preston Scott Cohen) which initiated he research
2. The organizers of the conference were incredibly generous and thoughtful hosts. I'd like to thank them for the experience again here.
3. Robert Woodbury, Elements of Parametric Design.
4. See below, paragraph 4.
5. I think that Koolhaas’ characterization of the ‘Generic City’ as the erasing of character, a convergence on homogenization is too reductive, (though I would agree that discarding identity does open up new freedoms), but that the Generic as a category has a quality and character which exceeds identity and which attempts to rigorously define can only explain as homogeneous without meeting frustration (see note 9 below)
Rem Koolhaas, "The Generic City." in S,M,L,XL.
6. Alison Smithson, " How to Recognize and Read Mat-Building." and Timothy Hyde, "How to Construct an Architectural Genealogy." in CASE: Le Corbusier's Venice Hospital.
7. Bernard Rudolfsky, Architecture without Architect: a Short Introduction to Non-Pedigreed Architecture.
8. Mario Carpo’s notion of ‘split agency’ is currently the most developed model for acknowledging the emerging complexities of authorship in the architectural field, though the rapidly multiplying ways which architects are interfacing with software and software designers requires that this model be both broadened and interrogated at specific moments.
Mario Carpo, "Epilogue: Split Agency." in The Alphabet and the Algorithm.
9. Alain Badiou, Infinite Thought, p48.

On the Edge

2010-09-28T04:58:00.000-07:00

I'm excited to announce after long anticipation, Architecture at the Edge of Everything Else is now available.

AEEE, Esther Choi, Marrikka Trotter eds.

"Architecture at the Edge of Everything Else is the first in a series of planned Work Books being produced in alignment with a new generation of spatial thinkers and practitioners working to assimilate interdisciplinary methodologies into architectural action and discourse [...] Seeking to bridge the gap between what students, practitioners, and academics are willing to risk in private conversation vs. public forums, each contribution in AEEE contains a speculative and creative proposal for thinking and acting architecture differently. Interwoven with these proposals are conversations between emerging thinkers and established authors and practitioners including Sanford Kwinter, Sylvia Lavin, K. Michael Hays, Philippe Rahm, Liam Gillick, Teddy Cruz, and Michael Meredith." (1)

The Collective Image: Form, Figure, and the Future. Trevor Patt.

This is not by any means a neutral review, I have an essay in the book (2) and know almost all of the contributors. Nor do I want to summarize my argument or provide some kind of post facto commentary track for the essay itself. I'm only going to say that the essay I began with so long ago has changed so many times, each time a little bit for the better and that rereading now I'm very happy with the state it ended in as an accumulation and expansion of the many threads I was trying to fold together. For this I owe a debt of gratitude to my amazing and patient editors, Esther Choi and Marrikka Trotter, and their tireless work launching the project.

Having had a chance to read the book in its entirety now, they also deserve a huge amount of credit for the job they've done organizing and structuring the book. In the light of the anxiety and supposed incohesive state of the discipline (as well as the number and diversity of participants) it is both encouraging and surprising to track a note of cohesion throughout the texts. There is a recurring insistence that architecture is always attended by action (3), and that far from relegating the politics of resistance (4), we are interested in how this action can be used to create new political forms (5). All of this is accompanied by a tone which felt—to me—more authentically optimistic (6) than many recent attempts to play at glib, too-cool-for-school rabblerousers (7), which is truly an accomplishment.

1. work-books.org
2.Trevor Patt. "The Collective Image: Form Figure and the Future." p138-151
3. See Esther Choi's conversation with Philippe Rahm, "Airtight" p153-159. which unpacks so many areas I had wished to read more about in his previous monographs.
4. In this insistence, Bret Albert's interview with Sylvia Lavin "Neither Sweet nor Sour" was cathartic to read.
5. Matthew Allen. "Control Yourself! Lifestyle Curation in the Work of Sejima and Nishizawa" p22-33
6. In particular, the excitement of enchantment that arises in Marrikka Trotter's discussion with Michael Hays. "Re-enchanted Architecture", p130-137.
"Singing into being" ecstatically calls to mind Badiou's recollection of his primary disagreement with Deleuze, ("Deleuze spoke highly of what he characterized as my poetic and impassioned song in praise of sets but remained steadfast on the issue on which our exchange had come to an impasse: for me, multiplicities 'were' sets, for him, the 'were not.'
The Deleuzian song of the virtual is no less impassioned and certainly more poetic—it should be listened to attentively." Alain Badiou. Deleuze: The Clamor of Being. p48) but speaks to an ontology which is not so dependent on the void as a creative necessity.
7. R.E. Somol and Sarah Whiting. "Ok, Here's the Plan..." in Log 5. Cynthia Davidson ed.

On Rhetoric

2010-06-03T15:42:00.000-07:00

Part 1
Peter Eisenman's somewhat recent essay There Are No Corners after Derrida (pdf) in Log 15(1) of last winter encouraged a rethinking of representation in architecture which prioritizes "undecidable" relationships and decouples the architectural object from the architectural sign. On this point I agree with him entirely and the point seems important to reiterate in light of current trends toward iconicity and hyperindexicality. However the actual engagement with Derrida in this essay is disappointingly unincisive (he is neither quoted nor cited directly). One is left thinking Eisenman would have been better off pursuing the triadic structure of Peirce's pure rhetoric (briefly mentioned) than assuming that "any rhetoric can be said to have evolved out of this stable dyadic relationship [signifier-signified] and thus is secondary to it."(1) Without this implicit need to overturn the illusion object-sign coexistence, Eisenman might have avoided what seems to me the biggest weakness of the essay: the reliance on the corner as a singular, even exceptional architectural "integer".

Corner, Palazzo dei Conservatori. Trevor Patt.

Peirce insists on a triadic basis of all signification precisely in order to avoid the impression of a static correspondence between signified and signifier.

The meaning of a representation can be nothing but a representation. In fact, it is nothing but the representation itself conceived as stripped of irrelevant clothing. But this clothing never can be completely stripped off; it is only changed for something more diaphanous. So there is an infinite regression here. Finally, the interpretant is nothing but another representation to which the torch of truth is handed along; and as representation, it has its interpretant again. Lo, another infinite series. (2)

When one reconsiders each and every sign as a participation in a potentially infinite series of interpretant signs, the supposedly stable relationship slips away (moreso when one considers that the path and depth of the series of interpretants varies for Peirce with every observation) into diaphanous tissue. This is what DeMan meant in writing of "only [then] would there be no need to distinguish between grammar and rhetoric"(4). Within Peirce's pure rhetoric, nowhere not even in architecture do "object, sign, and meaning converge"(1).

If all signification then participates in the rhetorical, what then can we make of the rest of Eisenman's essay. We cannot simply say, "well, There Haven't Been Corners Since Peirce," nor is it enough to remove the corner from its privileged position and consider our work finished. What is necessary is to put forward models, whether integer or multiple, with more complexity than the corner can provide(4). Why, in fact shouldn't walls be just capable of expressing undecidable signification?
Here Scott Cohen's analyses of the "contested symmetries" of Villa Gambano and Villa Tauro(5) would serve well to illustrate the dense and overlapping relationships of inclusion, interference and interdependence suggestive of the infinite representation engendered by representation. However, to hew more closely to the examples offered in the essay (the position of triglyphs in Greek and Roman freizes, and the reentrant corner of Bramante's courtyard at S. Maria della Pace) I'm going to offer examples of my own.

Resolution of the corner triglyph in Greek and Roman design.

source: Log 15(1) p114.

To quickly recap the question of the triglyphs: the Doric frieze as constructed in stone introduced a disjunction between the position of the triglyphs, the width of the entablature, and the location of the columns. The typical solutions in classical Greek architecture were either to widen the outboard triglyph such that it matched the column dimension and the two appeared centered (3rd drawing above), or to decrease outer column bays, moving the last column inward to line up with the outer edge of the triglyph (4th drawing above). Roman architects, meanwhile maintained the column/triglyph position, accepting the extension of the frieze beyond the outer triglyph. This reinforces the characterization of Greek and Roman space as defined by, respectively, a diagonal approach which emphasizes the continuity of the corner, and a frontal approach to a central entrance.

Eisenman, with most scholars, treats this as a definitive example of the problem of corner design. This is a reasonable assessment, as the adjustments to the facade rarely extends beyond the last bay. A very close analysis of Michelangelo's Palazzo dei Conservatori, however reveals the latent potential of this operation to engage the grammar of the entire facade.

Elevation of the Palazzo dei Conservatori. Trevor Patt.

Most discussion of the Piazza del Campidoglio focuses on the design of the plan (6) and the problem posed to Michelangelo by the existing buildings and their historical significance, while the design of the palazzi and their elevations are given less attention. However, within the framework established here, these buildings become very interesting.

the Capitoline Hill. Trevor Patt.

The Piazza del Campidoglio, approached from the Piazza d'Aracoeli and the Cordonata presents the Palazzo dei Conservatori first from the corner, an impact exaggerated by the trapezoidal plan of the piazza. However as befitting a building of the palazzo typology, the Conservatori is primarily a frontal building and addresses itself to the piazza a such. Moreover in it's urban habitat, the 'Roman' solution is certainly expected and resonant with both its context and lineage. And yet, that oblique approach precludes the possibility of the conventional Roman solution, as on the Palazzo Senatorio. Michelangelo's solution is to maintain the even spacing of column bays (similar to examples 3 and 5 in the diagram above, and unlike 4) as well as the constant dimension of the mutules (similar to 4 and 5, and unlike 3), while preserving the corner position of the outboard mutule by subltly varying the spacing across the entire facade.

As an aside: a quick glance at the facade of the Palazzo dei Conservatori reveals that the frieze is certainly not a pure Doric frieze and lacks triglyphs altogether. For the purpose of this analysis I will be discussiong the position of the mutules and the ornamental downspouts located on the geison which are paired with them. The diminished visual importance of these elements should underscore the care with which Michelangelo composed this facade.

Analysis of the elevation of the Palazzo dei Conservatori. Trevor Patt.
Underlying drawing from Bruno Zevi and Paolo Portoghesi's Michelangiolo Architetto(7) p486-87.

At the center bay, we can see that the mutules are perfectly centered above the columns. Were this pattern carried to the edges, the corner of the entablature would occur in the middle of the space between mutules. Therefore at all of the columns to the right of the central bay we find them shifted slightly toward the front of the piazza. One additional mutule is then added outboard of the the column and the downspouts to make the corner. This is a departure, if minor, from the traditional solution(8). What Michelangelo does on the left side is even more unusual. Rather than simply mirroring the right side across, he makes every column/mutule arrangement unique; proceeding from the center, each subsequent bay is shifted one step more than the previous. Thus the first column left of the central bay sees it's attendant mutules moved to the left one third space, the next twice the shift, and at the final column the mutules have moved an entire unit—unlike the right side nothing is added at the corner, the drainspouts are, however, realigned one mutule to the right(9).

Analysis detail of left side. Trevor Patt.

Analysis of spatial compression in the elevation of the Palazzo dei Conservatori. Trevor Patt.
Underlying photograph from Vincenzo Fasolo's

Michelagniolo Architettor Poeta(10) p27.

The elevation of the Conservatori, then, registers an index of spatial compression in the piazza, expanding out over Rome on one side and gathering close against the Senatorio on the other. Significantly the composition cannot be isolated in a single moment but produces a network of relatinships entangled in a nonhierarchical series of competing and often contradictory representations(11).

Analysis of spatial compression in the elevation of the

Palazzo dei Conservatori. Trevor Patt.
Underlying drawing from James Ackerman's

L'Architecture de Michel-Ange(12) p130-31.

The effect is quite subtle and I have yet to find an elevation drawing which reproduces the condition accurately(9). To emphasize the specificity of measure and construction which was necessary, we can observe the relative disorder and lack of cohesion on the Palazzo Nuovo, opposite, built from the same drawings, but begun almost 40 years after Michelangelo's death(13) Here the columnns and mutules have no distinct relationship, the downspouts themselves moving independent of the mutules at times.

Palazzo Nuovo. Trevor Patt.

Part 2 will parallel Eisenman's treatment of Bramante's famous reentrant corner at S.Maria della Pace and contrast it to Borromini's treatment of the same theme in the cloister of S. Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, continuing the theme of expanding architectural rhetoric beyond the simple interaction of two elements, easily isolated as a discrete sign, and unfolding the potential encompassing systems of rhetoric and representation.

1. Peter Eisenman. There Are No Corners after Derrida. Log 15. p111, 113, 114
2. Charles Sanders Peirce. The Collected Papers Volume 1 §2.339
the quoted passage is preceded thusly, "A sign stands for something to the idea which it produces, or modifies. Or, it is a vehicle conveying into the mind something from without. That for which it stands is called its object; that which it conveys, its meaning; and the idea to which it gives rise, its interpretant. The object of representation can be nothing but a representation of which the first representation is the interpretant. But an endless series of representations, each representing the one behind it, may be conceived to have an absolute object at its limit."
3. Paul de Man "Semiology and Rhetoric" in Diacritics v3.n3 p29
quoted in Eisenman's essay, p112.
4. Like the b/p phoneme the corner is a bit too easy to reduce to a cute, reciprocally determined pair
5. Preston Scott Cohen. Contested Symmetries and Other Predicaments in Architecture. p16-36.
6. This investigation was originally inspired by comments made by T. Kelly Wilson about the position of the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius relative to the centering of the piazza.
7. Paolo Portoghesi and Bruno Zevi. Michelangiolo Architetto. p486-87.
8. It is possible that, in fact that the central bay is wider than the side bays and this solution is similar to the 4th example in Eisenman's triglyph diagram. My analysis centers on alignment rather than measurement due to the obvious difficulty of accurately measuring the roof line of the Palazzo dei Conservatori. Regardless, this would remain a unique variation of the 'Parthenon' solution.
9. Portoghesi's drawings, though usually fabulously detailed, are inaccurate here. He depicts 8 mutules in the span between every column, in reality each span contains 9 mutules except the left-most bay which contains 8 due to the shift explained above.
10. Vicenzo Fasolo. Michelagniolo Archittetor Poeta. p27.
11. The continuity of the column line through the shifting entablature to the statuary above, for example.
12. James Ackerman. L'Architecture de Michel-Ange. p130-31.
13. Construction on the Palazzo Nuovo continued from 1603-1654, the Palazzo Conservatori was built between 1563-68, after Michelangelo's death in 1564, it was overseen by Giacomo della Porta.

On Assemblage

2010-03-21T10:43:00.000-07:00

This is something of an untimely post, I started writing it months after the PS1 2009 season had already closed but at the time the 2010 competition was heating up and I found myself defending MOS' Afterparty quite a bit. I think it's actually a project with significant lessons beyond its short-lived exhibition status, and it highlights a characteristic of MOS' work I've enjoyed for awhile, which is never being as dumb as it looks (1).

Afterparty. Photo by Trevor Patt

First of all, and with apologies to Jason Payne and Heather Roberge, Afterparty marks the first time hair has been convincingly employed in architecture. Not merely a simple novelty, the hairiness of the pavilion is distinctly unique enough to represent an entirely new category of material possibility. Instantly giving the impression of biomorphic or organic metaphors (despite the project's avoidance of any animal iconography) neither the tectonics nor texture of hair can be reduced to anything in the architectural precedent. Hair has its own formal and aggregative problems and significantly the material used – ijuk, an Indonesian palm thatch - was not divided into strips, shingles, or panels but applied with respect for it's wavy, all-over nondirectionality. The inherent material properties of hair will contribute to the final two points as well.

Afterparty. Photo by Trevor Patt

Second, the project does an amazing job of responding to the brief with a minimum of elements and a fully-rounded architectural solution. That is, the pavilion, in spite of its poverty, provides interiors and exteriors, space and enclosure, thresholds, apertures, material layers and depth, exceeding a simple canopy or furniture solution. Probably the last project to offer such a breadth of architectural solutions was SHoP's Dunescape, the inaugural winner. I've written before about a particular kind of space entirely continuous and continuously heterogeneous. Afterparty also falls into this category, its ground plan is defined by a few point connections and nothing more; without walls, doors or dead ends. It is, if anything, simply a series of interconnected conics careful whenever possible not to disturb the horizontal plane.

Afterparty. Photo by Trevor Patt

Competing with the horizontal continuity, the individuality of each cell delimits room-like enclosures. This is reinforced by the emphatic vertical direction of the forms, an uncommon element which dominates the interior experience. The set of architecture spaces with such a prominent z-axis –the Pantheon, the side aisles of St. Peters, Guarini's SS. Sindone, Sir John Soane's Lincoln Field's Inn, Wright's Guggenheim, James Turrell's Sky Spaces, vertiginous Portman lobbies, come to mind—are dominated by an otherwise small list of projects which feature oculi.

Afterparty. Photo by Trevor Patt

In this sense Afterparty can be compared to the Soane House in that it sets out a nonlinear sequence of verticals without hierarchical order (2). The cones twist and lean and even when staring directly up through the oculus (the character of light call to mind Turrell's Sky Spaces – the optical trick of the circle of sky appearing in front of the oculus) and imply dynamism more than stasis, a neat trick for such a centralizing element.

Afterparty. Photo by Trevor Patt

The exterior appearance of a heavy, dark (some have said itchy-looking) construction belies the lightness and freedom of the interior. The material contrast of the shiny, metallic mesh is not the only cause, from the interior one can see that the thatch is not so thick afterall, but is thin enough to allow light to pass right through. More significantly, the seamlessly amorphous exterior is contrasted to the literal delineation of the form on the interior.

The real contribution of Afterparty is that it forces the discourse to acknowledge the false opposition of 'Parametric' and 'Projective' as they've maybe been called, or as Robert Somol terms them (3) digital intricacy and graphic expediency. Over and against the assumed tenents of parametric design (4), the project does not shy away from simple Platonic primitives, nor is it interested in hyper-articulation of systems, discretization, or accentuation the variety of constructions, but buries them all under a blanket of ijuk. Effectively, it takes the strategies of making “the disparate indifferent” (3) that is germane to the graphic logo. In fact one could check off all of the points mentioned in Somol's Green Dots 101: proliferate one thing, eliminate scalar coding, develop a precise but vague silhouette, saturate with a monotone, cut holes.Yet underneath it all and at the heart of the formal language is indisputably a parametric model.

Image copyright mos-office.net

Video copyright mos-office.net and velluminous

Returning to the hairiness, the use of ijuk was an inspired choice that created the possibility of entirely erasing the joints between the conic sections and eliminating the reliance on discretization techniques, but without the expense of reducing the entire design to a logo. Similarly the parametric model was constructed in such a way that it was not reliant on notational articulation but was able to maintain its specificities even as the pavilion seems to forget where they came from.

Afterparty. Photo by Trevor Patt

Perhaps these seem like minor points, but I think they go to the heart of the current debates of representation by providing concrete counterexamples that parametric design is not beholden to any particular style, nor is post-critical design compelled to reject parametric strategies on account of their indexical inclination. On the whole, I find that I agree with the basic aims of the 'projective' model of architecture but feel like the methods have been selected prematurely (more on this to come). Afterparty then involves the deployment of technological solutions in the service of their own indifference. Far from a negative quality, this prevents the overliteral translation that is the unproductive legacy of indexicality, and provides a spacing for new collective actions (or actors) to occur.

This resistance to literalization is also apparent in MOS' Intermission Videos for the Venice Biennale. As the title suggests these are not the usual glossy fly-through renderings; they are not the 'feature' presentation, but neither are they addenda. They are not epilogues or footnotes, but located right at the middle of the feature, even interrupting it. Watching the videos, one cannot help but notice the extent to which designs that would typically be read as systems, unitary in their execution and orientation (the Ordos House, Ballroom Marfa Drive-In, Transformation of a Necklace Dome), are composed of components, actions, and narratives that are irreducible to the final architectural product.

Transformation of a Necklace Dome. Photo by Ryan Culligan

Transformation of a Necklace Dome (5) makes this shockingly explicit; the narration leads from a Richard-Serra-like 'verb list' of instructions--"place, hold, bend, rotate, bend..."--into the statement: "You will be working closely with others. You are no longer alienated." These are Somol's speech acts (3), suddenly constituting the formation of a collective of people, computer, and aluminum, yet without destroying or devaluing the singular 'you' to which the instructions are directed. Neither are the aluminum rods subsumed by the systems, subassemblies, and repetitions that are enacted on them.

Deleuze wrote about the self, "We are habits, nothing but habits--the habit of saying 'I.'" (6) In a similar way the expectation of the primacy of form or structure one brings as a critic is revealed to be little more than a habit, and a silly, reductive one at that. How else to respond when Ordos 100 Lot 6 tells us "this is X watching TV. Feeling guilty, X decides to take a swim. X imagines having to take an important phone call during his swim. How out of breath he will be" (7). The house is quickly implicated in media, recreation, business, economic, social, and cardiopulmonary networks while we look furtively for the evidence.

What is noteworthy in the films is not only that architecture does not actively respond to its poetic occupants, but the extent to which this indifference succeeds in focusing our close attention on the architecture itself.

Ballroom Marfa Drive-In. Image copyright mos-office.net

I want to stress here that I am not particularly interested in the creation of narratives or the projection of a fictional lifespan, but the use of co-incidental actors and activities, to create a new attention within architecture. This is not a negation of formalism, in fact all of the above examples are heavily dependent on their specific forms. In this I see parallels to the visionary architecture of the 60s and 70, not the technical particularity of Archigram, but the more generic futures envisioned by Archizoom and Superstudio. In these designs, it was the ubiquitous embedding of the diagram (No-Stop City) and technology (Continuous Monument) which enabled the singular formations and the hypothesizing of their habitation.(8)

Archizoom. No-Stop City, 1968
Superstudio. Continuous Monument, 1971-73

1. At first blush this might sound like faint praise, but its immensely better than not being as smart as it looks. See Michael Meredith “Complex / MoMA P.S.1:Young Architects” in PRAXIS no7, 2005.
2. In contrast to the centralizing Pantheon or the linear hierarchy of St. Peter's this is the rarer case. Apart from Afterparty and Lincoln's Inn, I can only call to mind the Puebloan kivas as another possible example.
3. R.E. Somol “Green Dots 101” Hunch 11. p31-32,35
4. Patrik Shumacher “Parametricism: A new global style for architecture and urban design” AD v79 no4 p16-17
5. in the interest of full disclosure I should mention that I worked on a possibility for this installation that was not realized and more successfully, MOS' Desert Island No2 for the Matters of Sensation exhibit.
6. Gilles Deleuze “Empiricism and Subjectivity” x
Levi Bryant's argument for the mutability of the subject as “the microstructures of assemblages, how they are disassembled and reassembled through interactions among agents” is relevant here.
7. It's worth pointing out in a footnote that all of the activities narrated in the Ordos 100 Lot 6 video are habits - eating breakfast, reading the paper, exercising - but the narrative is not treated as the passive, kind of calcified habits that are typically used to discuss program - this is where ... is done. X and Y are not reduced to habits assumed by the architecture.
8. I'm not trying to equate the politics of Archizoom and Superstudio with those of MOS, only for the moment, to note a similar detachment/complicated-involvement of form and its collective audience.
On this point see also Iñaki Abalos and Juan Herreros "Tower and Office"

TPE 2.0.2: Platform

2010-01-27T09:11:00.000-08:00

TPE 2.0.2: Computation and the Urban Generic

My thesis project was selected for the GSD's platform exhibit and publication (it has since also been chosen for exhibition in Histories of the Present). With the benefit of last year's example and a little more lead time for the editorial team, I felt this volume was conceptually much stronger than the first, and managed to clean up a number of the graphical problems as well.

p240-241 (from Actar's promotional material)

Within the book we were only give forty words to describe our project and its relation to the chapter theme - in my case Authorship. I find it difficult to say much of anything in forty words, and my copy speaks more to the general basis of the project hinting a bit at the representational issues I dealt with.
Authorship,though, I think is one of the best themes the project could have ended up in, especially given the company (Marrikka Trotter and Quilian Riano being two of the people I discussed my project with at great length).

Certainly the idea of producing these buildings and projections in a black-box way, letting the programs innards make unmediated decisions, is about questioning the need for "the human hand" in design and definitely challenges the practice's current model of authorship. As is the genericity of the production; my goal was never a sort of stylistic "parametricism" that was obviously computer-generated, but stealthily embedded, an auto-generated design that might pass the turing test, something which could potentially be passed off as typical generic tower/cluster development designs. This is one of the reasons I spent so much effort ensuring that the design engine resolved any intersections or inconsistencies. Every design was fully-formed from the moment the code updated.

On the other hand the intense specificity of the internal mechanisms is an argument for reclaiming more operative authorship from powercopy-ish software (generic authorship as Mario Carpo calls it). Because I was dealing much more intimately with the code I was able to embed a number of idiosyncratic moments and interfaces within the genetics of the design and find ways for them to implement differently within different configurations.

Authorship text by Platform editor Felipe Correa (photo by Quilian Riano)

One aspect I wish I had been able to express better, however, was the extent that misrepresentation (of data, of the parametric process, of its own image) played in so many of the design decisions. After a certain number of iterations, the code makes a claim to authority simply through expert design generation, however after very many tests, the impossibility of reading the logic through the artifacts begins to undermine the claim. Rather than smooth variation, very similar inputs typically produce vastly different outputs. This play with resolution, information sampling, and data forgetting I coded into the process were all responses to issues of self-similarity or the literal translations of "data-scapes" into boring indexical maps. The result, a possible cause for doubting the "objectivity" of the software, of course also draws attention to the location of my own "subjectivity" in the process. Yes, it is an authorial composition: not "signature" architecture, but not automatic architecture, either. It is authorial, but in a new kind of way.

I'd also like to thank publicly at this moment: Scott Cohen, my thesis advisor; my final jury, especially Wes Jones and Robert Levit for their animated discussion; Michael Meredith for his critiques; my thesis production team; and everyone on the 5th tray who was willing to have a discussion with me about the project.

TPE 2.0.2: Thesis Diagrams

2009-10-26T04:17:00.000-07:00

Design engine: interrelationship of parameters and geometry

Linearized diagram of parametric engine

TowerMaker: flow chart of tower design isolated from urban and context aspects of the parametric logic

Illustrated outline of TowerMaker flowchart:
1. Base point for individual towers, slant, and friendliness given, height and count derived from site fitness calculation.
2. Axis subdivided gathered together when within set distance, and lean apart to rebalance. Additional shift to provide view of/from closest urban epicenter.
3. Profile curves based on footprint, proportion, and tapering, potentially n-gon (though in later versions like this one, I've stopped including the parameter). Oriented to superblock at base, toward focus point at zenith.
4. Massing through profiles can be either 0:stepped, 1:bent, 2:smooth (shown here, bent)
5. Core transfers establish mediated condition between tendency for continuity and deviation of massing geometry.
6. Cores sized appropriately for floor area. Cores beyond 30 floors are stacked and include additional express elevators.
7. Required elevator calculator, floor area and height determine number of passengers, expected stops, winding cycle, etc...
8. Core location is extracted at each floorplate
9. Pseudo-convex hull operation captures cores which are not directly connected to a floorplate.
10. Tower intersections are resolved to prevent overlap
11. Floorplates converted to slabs, transfer floors are created on a separate layer (limited application of program sorting).
12. Stairs added to emergency stair cores.
13. Glazing added between floors (more complicated than you'd expect since each floorplate has a different number of vertices-as a result of the pseudo-convex hull-and is drawn in a different order-as a result of tower intersections.
14. Structural diagrid at facade
15. Facade cladding, increased transparency with elevation.

TPE 2.0.2: Computation and the Urban Generic

2009-10-22T09:04:00.000-07:00

A long overdue post following the completion of my thesis. So much of the documentation produced was in expectation of always being accompanied by a live parametric model that I may be some time yet getting the project into portfolio shape.

Rendering, Section 1 Sinhai Rd. and Wunjhao St.

TAIPEI 2.0.2: Computation and the Urban Generic
Taipei 2.0.2 is a "black-box" interface which projects parametrically computed urban futures at multiple levels of resolution. Tower clusters are produced fully-formed and complete (down to emergency stairs) into an environment itself inflected by their existence and anticipating their expansion.

The thesis is bound within a twofold existence: undertaking a project so large as to be almost unavoidably iconic and, at the same time, embodying precisely the noniconic fabric of the city. Thinking the masterplan in reverse, the design engine reflexively projects new context and urban legislation based on the proposed towers. Architecture then becomes a tool and agent in urban analysis.

Based on analysis of Taipei's paradigmatic urban form and development patterns, the thesis rewires the supertall project, now stripped of its signature, iconic status and repositioned as an anonymous "many".

Generative Components transaction file

The parametric model operates simultaneously in three model spaces-Tower, Block, City-which, while all representing the same project, do so to varying degrees of resolution, each also able to read only certain sets of data.

Dynamic data mapping
Dynamic development intensity diagram
Certain of the data being referenced by the design engine represents persistent urban form and data (the position of the river and major superblocks), while other information is recalculated dynamically alongside the proposal of the tower (such as land value, and various zoning regulations).
Tower cluster and metro connection, section.

Context alignment and generation, animation stills.
Acknowledging the scale of development involved in supertall construction, the design engine reconstructs new context in the adjacent superblocks (typically ~1km in diameter) based on their area, position in the city, preexisting program usage>. MRT stations, and their access points are reconfigured, linked with the tower podia around which new urban fabric is reconstructed.

Urban projection and realignment, animation stills.

Depending on the choice of site (yellow dot) and the details of the towers, the model (reflexively) projects new incentivized zoning for further supertall and highrise development (majenta bars), reconfigures existing typical zoning (white bars) and recalcuates projected land prices (green bars).

Rendering, street level.

0414-09 Tower Sketch

2009-04-14T03:49:00.000-07:00

thesis sketch
thesis sketch
thesis sketch
thesis sketch

link to flickr set.

0313-09 -trpatt- MagnetiqueField_multi

2009-03-18T12:53:00.000-07:00

0313-09 -trpatt- MagnetiqueField_multi
Originally uploaded by trevor.patt

Everyone seems to be interested in these multipoint reaction fields, they've become a sort of standard touchpoint for parametric design--the new 9-square grid, maybe. Regardless, they run up against one of grasshopper's biggest weaknesses: the inability to store information in matrices or kind of compound 'list-of-lists.' The script components in grasshopper are indispensible for any kind of dynamic multiple input, previously one could only duplicate operations and sort the lists out through brute force. Unfortunately documentation for scripting dotNET in grasshopper is fairly scarce compared to the number of references dedicated to .rvb scripting.

This definition uses two VB dotNET scripts, one to calculate the translation vector, and another to sort the resultant points into lists from which to make multiple polylines (or interpolated curves).

0313-09 -trpatt- MagnetiqueField_multi - .ghx definition

0313-09 -trpatt- MagnetiqueField_multi

definition written for epfl MxD: thickness with Nathaniel Zuelzke.
.ghx definition available here.

Taipei and Urban Form

2009-03-17T13:46:00.000-07:00

Taipei: urban form,1877-1935.

The historical development of Taipei's urban form involves a process of continual reorganization, moving first from a binuclear system to a centralized form with the creation of the walled city. Between 1895 and 1907, the grid of the walled city was developed along a rotated, rectangular grid. As the spce between the three poles of Taipei was further developed, this rectangular grid was extended into the older areas of the city, until 1936 when the Japanese colonial government developed a gridded framework of superblocks for the extension of the city which has served to guide development in Central Taipei to the present.

Taipei: Mass Rapid Transit expansion.

Taipei's development in the future will be strongly affected by the planned extension of the rapid transit system. The current system, completed in 2000, is projected to triple in size over the next 6 years from 74.4 km to 221.7.

Taipei: urban form,1877-1935.Taipei: reach of mrt systems to a five minute walking distance.

Taipei: voronoi analysis evaluating collection area of mrt station, in sq.m.

The expansion also provides a shift from a fairly centralized, branching-cruciform system to a radically dehierarchical scheme which can be seen in the diagram of walking distance to stations. The voronoi analysis shows the flatness and equality of access across the entirety of central Taipei. Additionally, the system will be decentralized by increasing the number of transfer stations sixfold from 7 to 42.

Taipei: transfer stations in present system (black) compared to future expansion (green).

On Iconic

2009-02-27T04:31:00.000-08:00

"I’ve always been interested in what gets left out... I’m interested in the tension between what is represented and what isn’t represented, between the articulate and the silent."(1)

Taipei Noniconic. Trevor Patt.

The recent attacks on criticality in architecture, perhaps more accurately described as a feeling of discontentedness(2), stem from a feeling of constriction. A sense that the methods now available to a critical practice, having been established, are closed, and are closing in on the designer. The architect is “exhausted”, “belabored”, “governed” by criticality. Not only are the methods--textuality, resistance, legibility, index, process--known from the beginning, so, it seems, are the results.

Inasmuch as criticality has constructed architecture as a question of representation, so does postcriticality address itself to representation, but representation and what to do with it. In an initial moment of backlash the postcritical movement has coalesced around ideas like shape, mood, graphic, and atmosphere–in their words, strategies of cool easiness. The distinction that has been drawn, then, seems to deal with the amount and prominence of content. While critical architecture presses the imperative of legibility, projective architecture would like to be recieved as mere appearance. Such an easy distinction is not sufficient, however, for “ultimately, the content of art always consists in mere apearance,”(3) How does the postcritical practice address the content still within its appearance?

In the middle of this debate, and significantly muddying the waters, is Charles Jencks’ advocay on behalf of “the Iconic Building.” This broadly drawn category occasionally seems to have similarities with both critical and projective positions, and certainly claims buildings from both camps under its umbrella. The benefit of this indiscriminate inclusiveness is the necessity of revisiting representation in its specific forms in order to sort out the differences in ideology. As a middleground which is not aknowledeged by either postion, the iconic also provides us with a surprising platform on which to reconstruct the relationship between the critcal and postcritical.

Dinocrates; Colossus of Mount Athos, Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach, 1721.

The definition of an icon cited by Jencks (as well as Eisenman and Somol) is based on the one given by Charles Pierce, in his trichotomy of icon, index, and symbol. Icons are such signs as “serve to represent their objects only in so far as they resemble them in themselves,”(4) that is, signifiers which possess a visual semblance to their signifieds. Having given this definition, however, Jencks returns to a usage closer to the one used in common speech, sometimes allowing the inclusion of signs more closely associated with symbolic and indexical types.(5)

Though Jencks favors an “I-know-it-when-I-see-it” approach to the definition of an icon, he does establishe a few guiding rules from which to begin:
to become iconic a building must provide a new and condensed image, be high in figural shape or gestalt, and stand out from the city. On the other hand, to become powerful it must be reminiscent in some ways of unlikely but important metaphors(6)
In this short passage, Jencks sets up four preliminary qualifications for iconicity. First, speaking to consumption, the building must be new and condensed. Second, in terms of recognizability, it must have a highly figural shape. Third, it must stand out from the city; it must be identifiable. Finally the icon should fulfill the textbook definition of an icon, an invocation of visual metaphor.

These categories, and their apparent ambivalence, illustrate the complexity of situating the icon in the critical/postcritical debate. Robert Somol proposes similar modes for architecture which he bases on graphic expediency. In fact, the how-to list provided in Green Dots 101, Somol suggests that this architectual logo “makes things” rather than describing them, and recommends employing “a precise but vague silhouette,” stressing the need to “always condense.”(7) Furthermore, just as one trait of the icon is its ability to scale down to graphic scale without losing its identity, the logo is also agile enough to scale up from graphic to building and into urban organization.

Despite, these similarities, the icon and logo split ways at Jencks’ third rule. While the logo does emphasize an identity, Somol stresses the need for it to always be neutralized or backgrounded. This stance, ironically, is a direct opposition to the critical project’s use of opposition as a strategy for resistance.(8) This is a minor disagreement, however, the real point of contention–for both the critical and the postcritical– is the fourth rule.(9)

Though seemingly the most straightforward, the most precisely categorical, the relationship of iconic signification to the ‘Iconic Building’ is where Jencks and most of his critics have the greatest difficulty. At first reading, when he writes that the power of the icon is generated by being “reminiscent in some ways of unlikely but important metaphors,” it seems clear that the function of the icon is didactic. This story is familiarly Platonic; the ‘good’ iconic building is one which would point us toward truer forms of truth. Jencks flirts with this construction, and suggests that iconicity can “allude to nature and the cosmos” but then oversteps and claims in his conclusion that “if you scratch an iconic buildng hard enought, it bleeds such meanings... rhythmical growth forms of plants and galaxies. These patterns of nature are the not-so-hidden code of the iconic building,”(10) The iconic building is not simply a mimesis, but, Jencks suggests, embodies truth; it “grows from the inside to the outside and takes up its new metaphors from this growth”(11) This would move the iconic away from a Platonic conception of art, what Badiou calls ‘didactic’ and into the ‘romantic’ tradition.(12)

However, both conclusions find themselves at odds with much of The Iconic Building’s argument. The successful icon, Jencks central thesis claims, is not about a clarity of representation at all, but employs something called the “enigmatic signfiier.” Explicit meaning produces one-liners, whereas the enigmatic signifier is a sign whose dissimilarity to any particular referent allows it to support multiple referents. “Better to be ambiguous and hide behind generalities that transcend time and party than declare something specific.”(13) Abandoning, claim to any truth-content, the icon slips more comfortably into a classical schema. Badiou characterizes the classical conception of art as:
incapable of truth. Its essence is mimetic, and its regime is that of semblance... This incapacity does not pose a serious problem... because the purpose... of art is not in the least truth [but] involves the deposition of the passions in a transference onto semblance. Art has a therapeutic function, and not at all a cognitive or revelatory one.(14)

Taipei 101. Trevor Patt.

A classical schema maintains the role of resemblance, but replaces meaning with performance. This understanding of the iconic building allows us to understand statements by Jencks such as: “a great icon need not be a great work of architecture, but it must be a captivating one.”(15) Not necessarily great, because it need not tell us anything, but necessarily captivating because the real purpose of the icon is to provide a locus in which the public can project an emotional collective. The important role of enigma for Jencks is the implication of an uncertainty that garners enough attention, that forces the formation of a consensus through the naming of a sign. Quite simply, an uncaptivating architecture would not generate enough attention to extract collective emotion from the postmodern subject. Throughout the book he makes it quite clear that the iconic building stems from–and is even, he claims, the inevitable result of–the loss of a global, unifying iconography. As a classical form we can finally define the iconic building then by its intention to enact a cathartic construction of collective identification in an age marked by this loss of collective iconography.

Beijing Province Pavilion, EXPO 2010. Trevor Patt.

1. Said, Edward. On Late Style. xix
2. Baird, George. Criticality and its Discontents.
3. Adorno, Theodore. Late Style in Beethoven. p566.
4. In cotrast, an index refers to its signified not by resemblance but only by real connection while symbols require neither resemblance nor real connection, but established convention or habit.
Peirce, C.S. A Sketch of Logical Critics. p460-461
5. his usage is at least partly justified by the complexity of Peirce’s division of signs, a framework which virtually elimantes the possibility of any sign existing in a pure state of only one type of classification.
6. Jencks, Charles,. The Iconic Building: The power of enigma. p23.
7. Somol, R.E. Green Dots 101. 29, 35, 35.
8. Hays, K. Michael. Reproduction and Negation: The cognitive project of the avant-garde.
9. “the diagram was not iconic, that it, it did not have a visual imageable similitude, a sameness between the object and diagram”
Eisenman, Peter. The Post-Indexical: a Critical Option. p21.
and “to differentiate them from ‘icons’ ... associated with and generally exhausted by metaphorical displacement”
Somol, R.E. Green Dots 101. p33.
10. Jencks, Charles. The Iconic Building is Here to Stay. p60.
11. Jencks, Charles. The Iconic Building: The power of enigma. p203.
12. “In this respect, it is art itself that educates, because it teaches o fthe power of infinity held within the tormented cohesion of a form... it is incarnation.”
Badiou, Alain. Art and Philosophy. p3.
13. Jencks, Charles. The Iconic Building: The power of enigma. p51.
12. Badiou, Alain. Art and Philosophy. p4.
15. Jencks, Charles. The Iconic Building: The power of enigma. p54.

0222-09 -trpatt- SUNCHART approx- DEF

2009-02-22T17:26:00.001-08:00

0222-09 -trpatt- SUNCHART approx- DEF
Originally uploaded by trevor.patt

grasshopper definition for dynamically determining sun angle in Rhino
definition written for gsd1202

ghx definition available ~~here~~
UPDATE: reuploaded here

though I would recommend looking at Ted Ngai's work for a more sophisticated model

GRASSHOPPER sunchart

2009-02-22T17:11:00.001-08:00

0222-09 -trpatt- SUNCHART approx- DIAGRAM
Originally uploaded by trevor.patt

grasshopper definition for dynamically determining sun angle in Rhino
definition written for gsd1202

On Emergence

2009-02-18T16:48:00.000-08:00

The connection of performance to movement, and particularly to time is important for understanding just what is meant by “oblique” or “tangential” actions. How do we think the forgetting of knowledge by the performer? Brian Massumi writes that “when a body is in motion, it does not coincide with itself. It coincides with its own transition: its own variation. The range of variations it can be implicated in is not present in any given movement, much less in any position it passes through.”(1) This means that the movement of the dancer cannot be deduced from the choreography of the dance alone.

Firenze, Trevor Patt

To use another illustration, real motion is decidedly unlike the simulation of motion by animation. Traditionally, the lead animator working on a particular scene would draw only the key frames of the scene. The remaining frames would be interpolated by the junior members of the animation team. The term “keyframing” survives in digital animation; the animator positions the digital model by hand only for a set of crucial poses and the animation software calculates the transition from one set position to the next.

The operation of stop-motion animation coincides with and even extends a Platonic model of art as a mere representation. Each intermediate cel is a more or less imperfect representation of its attending keyframes; it mediates between them, but never mobilizes them. The animation can increase its accuracy by adding frames, but will never succeed in being anything more than an illusion of movement. Compared to animation, the dancer can not be said to be performing any less when she is in between choreographed positions. Rather the entire performance is spent “in-between” positions. Not only are these positions illegible to the viewer, they are never occupied for more than an instant before they are moved through. The choreography simply does not have the determining effect that animation cels do, though forming the base of the dance, the information is forgotten by the performance.

Henri Bergson, explaining away the fallacies of Zeno’s paradox writes, “though we can divide at will the trajectory once created, we cannot divide its creation, which is an act in progress and not a thing.”(2) Any attempt to read movement as a sequence of points can only be done after the fact as a backplotting of rationalism. The powerful implications of this theory are the “range of variations,” the “plurality of centers,” and the “coexistence of moments” which are present in every movement. As a relation to its own indeterminacy, movement cannot be determinately indexed. Applied beyond dance, the singularity of duration and the multiplicity of movement provide the possibility for systems of emergence.

"Multiplicity must not designate a combination of the many and the one, but rather an organisation of the many as such, which has no need whatsoever of unity in order to form a system."(3)

Though forgotten material is no longer accessible in the construction of meaning, forgetting is not simply getting out of the way. We must remember the extent to which a theory of forgetting is a radically creative process. If a dynamic system is defined “by the ensemble of interactions in which it is involved,”(4) then forgetting is a catalyst that prevents stabilization and opens the possibility of meaning. More importantly, forgetting is not simply an operation (and cannot be reduced to one; operations operate through memory and memorization) and so resists settling into a predetermined form. A more deterministic process, any formalized process, becomes predictable and produces conformity with given conditions.

The illegibility of the work shifts its interaction with the subject from one of meaning to one of affect. How is the audience affected, what new performances have been created? Forgetting suggests a media “high in participation or completion by the audience”(5) Deleuze defined the subject as habit, “we start with atomic parts, but these atomic parts have transitions, passages, “tendencies,” which circulate from one to another. These tendencies give rise to habits... We are habits, nothing but habits–the habit of saying “I.”(6) Forgetting is quite simply the absolvement of these habits, non-identical repetition, less of the meaningless same, the movement of the subject through new developments. As with any other movement, these displacements may only be identifiable in retrospect, unrecognizable in their formation, but then recognition was never the point was it?

"And when wonder overtakes them, it is never in themselves but in the void surrounding them, in the space in which they are set, rootless and without foundation.The fictitious is never in things or in people, but in the impossible verisimilitude of what lies between them: encounters, the proximity of what is most distant, the absolute dissimulation in our very midst."(7)

1. Massumi, Brian. Parables for the Virtual. p4.
2. Bergson, Henri. Creative Evolution. p309.
3. Deleuze, Gilles. Difference and Repetition. p182
4. Verstegen, Ton. Tropisms. p60.
5. McLuhan Marshall. Understanding Media. p36.
6. Deleuze, Gilles. Empiricism and Subjectivity. pX.
6. Foucault. Michel. Maurice Blanchot: The Thought from Outside. Foucault|Blanchot. p22.

On Identity

2009-01-18T23:13:00.000-08:00

FORGETTING SELF
"Eternal return means that each thing exists only in returning, a copy of an infinity of copies which allows neither original nor origin to subsist. That is why the eternal return is called ‘parodic:’ it qualifies as simulacrum that which it causes to be (and to return). When eternal return is the power of formless Being, the simulacrum is the true character or form–the ‘being’– of that which it is."(1)

Taipei. Trevor Patt

Susan Sontag claims in Against Interpretation that “to interpret is to impoverish, to deplete the world – in order to set up a shadow world of ‘meanings.’”(2) It should be clear that the essentialist overtones in her statement are not a part of this argument, despite the fact that a theory of forgetting may seem to be argue against interpretation as well. Sontag, in defining the act of interpretation within a framework of mimesis must then find her solution within presence, form, plasticity, effects, sensation, even a phenomonology.(3)

I would, however–with some important qualifications–tend to agree with Sontag that “to interpret is to impoverish.” Not because of the production of simulacra, the construction of simulacra is productive (as a creation of meaning). Rather, the impoverishment is a result of the tendency, and Sontag here is an excellent example, to assume interpretation must point backward to Identity, and to equate Identity with an Eidos.

The main stumbling point here is an assumption that identity is necessarily derived from an object’s semblance, a reduction of an object's identity to its characteristics. This is born, of course, out of legibility’s reliance on visual phenomena interpreted as representation. Arguing, instead, that identity is, at best, an unstable definition constructed in the differential interface between signs is to say that the fault is not necessarily in the act of interpretation (to interpret is also to enrich) but in the provision of a true or necessary interpretation.

Following Deleuze’s description of an actualized virtual or Badiou’s plurality of infinities(4) frees us from a reliance on semblance. The actualisation of the virtual always takes place by difference. Actualisation breaks with resemblance as a process no less than it does with identity as a priciple and original as superior to copy. For Deleuze and Badiou, the important qualification is the production of concepts, forms, ideas, events be irreducibly creative. A reliance on the similarity of objects to an essential Form ensures that everything that could come into being has been preconcieved as an Ideal.

Taipei 101. Trevor Patt

"Hence the necessity of converting reflexive language. It must be directed not toward any inner confirmation—not toward a kind of central, unshakable certitude—but toward an outer bound where it must continually contest itself. When language arrives at its own edge, what it finds is not a positivity that contradicts it, but the void that will efface it. Into that void it must go, consenting to come undone in the rumbling"(5)

The dancer’s forgetting of identity is an act by which she subtracts herself from constitutive knowledge, namely the knowledge of self as an Identity. The dance is thus not a representation of the interiority of the dancer, such a dance would not permit that “miraculous fogetting of her own knowledge of dance.” Badiou follows Mallarmé in referring to the dancer as an emblem: “an emblem is above all opposed to imitation. The dancing body does not imitate a character or a singularity. It depicts nothing.”(6) It depicts nothing because it recognizes and relates to itself as a sign without positive meaning and because it is not in the production of truths but their possibility. This separates dance from theater, theater which is always representational–actors imitate characters, the characters often referring to types, sets recreate locations, the entire production is a re-presentation of a pre-existing script–is never anonymous but always specific. Theater cannot afford to forget either its identity or its constitutive knowledge, quite the opposite, the success of a play relies on the actor remembering his lines.

What does it meant then this subtraction from self, this self-forgetting? Earlier we defined forgetting as “undifferentiation... disarticulation which makes there be no longer a separation.” Forgetting one’s self would seem to mean rebecoming ground, thus not dancing and especially not performing. For now, let us accept that Deleuze’s ontology provides for a becoming-figure which does not articulate that which it distinguishes itself from(7) as does Badiou’s use of Set-Theory.(8)

We will continue to define the perfomance of dance as precisely this forgetting. From here on the term ‘performance’ will take on a specific usage as an opposite of ‘operation’. Operations will be defined by their causality, a focus on production and the effectivity, as indicated by its etymology. The Latin operatus(9) means “engaged, busy” to the purpose (ob-) of effecting practiced skill (peritia) and the production of finished work (opera). Performance, in contrast, is an act moving through, along, and over (per-) form or figure (forma). Performance is an act, irreducibly temporal while operations often refer to a preestablished process or set of instructions, such as mathematical or military operations. Operations are judged mimetically by the precision of their adherance to these instructions.(10) Performances–moving through, along or over–are oblique actions, and refer only tangentially to the information (technical, immense, and painfully acquired, remember) which both its matter and support. Performance is related to the performative speech act “where the action is executed in the statement itself”(11) whereas constantive statements operate as representations (or misrepresentations) of truths.

1. Deleuze, Gilles. Difference and Repetition. p66-67.
2. Sontag, Susan. Against Interpretation. Against Interpretation and Other Essays. p3
3. Curiously, this is also the conclusion (for now) of the advocates of projective or post-critical architecture. Richard Anderson casts them as having “unwittingly... revived a sensationalist theory of architecture.”
Anderson, Richard. Tired of Meaning. Log 7. Winter/Spring 2006.
4. The distinction made by the two thinkers is significant and will be taken up later, for the time being we will use Deleuze’s terminology.
5. Foucault, Michel. Maurice Blanchot: The Thought from Outside. Foucault|Blanchot. p22.
6. Badiou, Alain. Dance as a Metaphor for Thought. Handbook of Inaesthetics. p64.
7. See Deleuze’ discssion of the ground risen to surface and the abstract line in:
Deleuze, Gilles. Differences and Repetition. ch1 “Difference in Itself,” especially p28ff.
Peter Eisenman also employs this notion as a way out of legibilty and representation “The post-indexical concerns frustrating the reader for information; its search is for figures, in the Deleuzian sense of figure.... which are neither indices nor represent or illustrate personal expression.” in:
Eisenman, Peter. The Post-Indexical: A critical option. Hunch 11. Winter 2006/7. p19.
8. Badiou, Alain. Breifings on Existence: A short treatise on Transitory Ontology. ch13: "Group, Category, Subject" p143ff.
9. All Latin definition come from:
Simpson, D.P. Cassell’s New Latin Dictionary.
10. It is worth mentioning that “Dance as a Metaphor for Thought,” the title of Badiou’s essay, comes from Nietzsche, who sets opposite dance gymnastics and military parades, dismissing them both as “long legs and obedience”
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. p210. and
Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Case of Wagner. p180.
11. Somol, R.E. Green Dots 101. Hunch 11. Winter 2006/7. p29.
Somol offers his own escape from legibility and representation against Peter Eisenman's: “Talk is performative, and is thus a useful alternative to the representational obsession (and high, often ineffective, seriousness) that afflicts a practice that has anologized itself for too long to writing and text.”
Somol, R.E. Pass it on. Log 3.Winter/Spring 2004.

On Signification

2008-12-11T20:44:00.000-08:00

FORGETTING KNOWLEDGE

"the 'true' dancer must never appear to know the dance she dances. Her knowledge (which is technical, immense, and painfully acquired) is traversed, as null, but the pure emergence of her gesture. “The dancer does not dance” means that what one sees is at no point the realization of a preexisting knowledge, even though the knowledge is, through and through, its matter or support. The dancer is the miraculous forgetting of her own knowledge of dance." (1)

Peter Eisenman argues convincingly, following Edward Said, that we currently find ourselves in a late period. Late periods repeat the marginal, esoteric, and flamboyant apsects pushed aside by the orthodox. They are complex, ambivalent, undecided. But these marginalized traits, given space to develop, provide the stepping stones for the early guard. A theory of forgetting aims to provide this spacing.

Clearly, forgetting as I will use it does not mean a complete separation from historical theory, nor advocate for pure unmediated genius were either of those even realizable possibilities. “The abandonment of the category of ideology does nothing so much as to insure the perpetuation of an ideology that does not know itself as such”.(2) Forgetting is not a theory of ignorance. Rather, like Badiou’s (and Mallarmé’s) dancer, historical and disciplinary knowledge is both the matter and support of such a practice.

A theory of forgetting repositions this knowledge relative to the thinking of new concepts; yes, given knowledge provides the support and material, but the attendant relationships, external to their ideas, are allowed to be forgotten in order that new forms can emerge. In this sense forgetting is a radical empiricism(3). “Every genuine instance of thinking is subtracted from the knowledge in which it is constituted... from every preexistence of knowledge.”(4) In Badiou, the dancer possesses technical knowledge of dance as well as a knowledge of the choreography, however this knowledge does not surface in the performance of the dance but is traversed “as null” in the emergence of the gesture.

Where would one place a theory of forgetting? For the dancer, forgettting is a refusal of signification. Badiou enumerates at least three locations where this refusal takes place:
forgetting of identity, of knowledge, and of desire.

Forgetting can be said to be an effacement of difference, though not as an erasure or subtraction actions which leave a legible trace. Maurice Merleau-Ponty urges us in The Visible and the Invisible, “understand perception as differentiation, forgetting as undifferentiation... not a destruction of a psychic material, which would be the sensible, but its disarticulation which makes there be no longer a separation, a relief. This is the night of forgetting.”(5) By unraveling differentiation, the operation of forgetting removes itself from the traditional categories of semiotics.

Hadrian's Villa, Tivoli. Trevor Patt.

Yet it would be a mistake to ignore the connection between forgetting and signification. Badiou’s refusals clearly show the need to position a theory of forgetting in relation to representation.

"in language there are only differences without positive terms. Whether we take the signified or the signifier, language has neither ideas nor sounds that existed before the linguistic system, but only conceptual and phonic differences that have issued from the system."(6)

Why a sign without positive meaning? Jacques Derrida has expanded and intensified Saussure’s assertion as a spacing that is “the precondition for meaning as such, and the outsideness of spacing is revealed as already constituting the condition of the ‘inside.’”(7) We should not think of difference merely as the distinction of one sign from another, but as the actual locus–a temporal and conceptual spacing–within which meaning is possible, the opposite of a meaningless sameness. It should be immediately apparent that there are many more potential differences, more constructable linguistic relationships, than there are possible signs. A semiotics whose signs had inherent meaning would be limited from the beginning. Such a a system could only create an impoverished representation,(8) never quite reaching a perfect semblence of the signified. Meaning which exists only by difference, in contrast, is an enriching representation, one which does not despair over the absence of the signified object/concept and the unfortunate necessity to re-present it, one which does not strain for versimmilitude, but constructs something in the space opened up.

Moreover, it means that forgetting does not void a sign of its intrinsic meaning. At the same time as it removes the difference which constitutes an accepted meaning, forgetting maximizes spacing by opening the sign to possibility for new, less established meanings to be constructed. Forgetting temporarily makes every sign a shifter(9) allowing it to signify anything by virtue of its emptiness.

Roland Barthes argues that only by forgetting its utilitarian justifications–among them “aerodynamic measurements, studies of the resistance of substances, physiology of the climber, radio-electric research, problems of telecommunication, meterological observations, etc”(10)–was the Eiffel Tower able to become the resonant sign it is now. “Beyond its strictly Parisian statement, it touches the most general human imagerepertoire: its simple primary shape confers upon it the vocation of an infinite cipher.”(11)

As an infinite cipher, Barthes contrasts the Tower with the panoramic prospect of Paris it creates, which exists precisely to be deciphered. For Barthes, the panorama is an image in which one seeks to connect the visible signs to memories of places as experienced, a process of recognizing, remembering, and reattaching. The Tower is a shifter capable of signifying many meanings, even contradictory ones. Its code has no “solution.” We might more accurately say that the Eiffel Tower provides the possibility of meaning.

This is precisely Badiou’s conclusion: “Dance is not an art because it is the sign of the possibility of art as inscribed in the body.”(12) For Badiou, art is the arrangement of knowledge to produce truth. Forgetting as a process does not produce truth, forgetting cannot be called a truth-procedure, but it does show the possibility of arranging knowledge, remember knowledge (technical, immense, and painfully acquired) is the basis of forgetting as a practice. Again, this forgetful-arrangement is made possible only through the externality of meaning from signs, and of relations from ideas.

1. Badiou, Alain. Dance as a Metaphor for Thought. in Handbook of Inaesthetics. p66.
2. Hays, Micahel. A++ forthcoming
3. Boundas, Constantin. Translator's Introduction. Empiricism and Subjectivity. p6.
“A more helpful definition of empiricism, in Deleuze’s estimate, must respect the irreducible dualism that esixts between things and relations, atoms and structure, perceptions and their causes, and also relations and their causes. Viewed from this vantage point, empiricism will be the theory of the externality of relations, and conversely all theories which entail the derivationof relation from the nature of things would be resolutely nonempiricist.”
4. Badiou, Alain. Dance as a Metaphor for Thought. in Handbook of Inaesthetics. p66.
5. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. The Visible and the Invisible. p197.
6. de Saussure, Ferdinand. Course in General Linguistics. p118.
7. Krauss, Rosalind. Photographic Conditions of Surrealism. The Orignality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths. p106.
8.For an discussion of the extension of Platonic essentialism to mimesis and didacticism see: Badiou, Alain. Art and Philosophy. Handbook of Inaesthetics.
9. Jakobson, Roman. Shifters, Verbal Categories, and the Russsian Verb. Russian Language Project.
10. Barthes, Roland. The Eiffel Tower. The Eiffel Tower and Other Mythologies. p6.
11. Ibid p4.
12. Badiou, Alain. Dance as a Metaphor for Thought. in Handbook of Inaesthetics. p66.

On Image

2007-05-18T20:56:00.000-07:00

"Landscape and image are inseparable. Without image there is no such thing as landscape, only unmediated environment" (1).

Highline 2007. Trevor Patt.

On their website, Diller Scofidio + Renfro describe their design for Chelsea's Highline as being "inspired by the melancholic, unruly beauty of the ruin today, where nature has reclaimed a once vital piece of urban infrastructure" and drawing on the transformation from infrastructure to wilderness and now to parkspace in order to challenge "the very categories of 'nature' and 'culture' in our time." This would be a tricky ordeal, even if one accepts the interpretations put forward by DS+R. However, casting the Highline as wilderness requires one to ignore the extent to which it has been constructed. In reality, the Highline is only projecting an image of a wilderness, which because of its lack of 'landscaping' (and its off-limits status) seems to recall the truly wild zones of Tarkovsky.

Highline 2007. Trevor Patt.

It is this very imagability which transforms the Highline, however, into a landscape. James Corner, of Field Operations (partnering with DS+R on the masterplan), does not emphasize the uncultivated Highline, but compares it to "a secret garden in the sky," emphasizing its current role as an illicit destination for urban explorers and photographers toting digital cameras like so many Claude glasses.

In Zoomscape, Mitchell Schwarzer discusses the unique images created by trains, particularly the 'panoramic perception' looking out the side window in which human perception combines with the speed and movement of the the train, the blurring of the landscape, the frame of the window itself, and of the surrounding buildings. As rail lines have a tendency to organize their surrounding environment linearly, "the rail view deemphasizes the vanishing lines of perspective in favor of the horizon line and the parallel lines of the train tracks, telephone wires, and station platforms" (2). Though no longer functioning as a rail line, the Highline has become an infrastructure of image: offering views of Manhattan while maintaining the diagram of the 'panoramic perception.'

Highline 2007. Trevor Patt.

The views are, first of all, set within a frame. Like traincar windows, the neighboring buildings, their backs pushed up close to the tracks, conceal the city, establishing only particular, highly formalized views while removing themselves and the immediate context from the image. These views are strictly oriented perpendicular to the direction of motion along the Highline, so that the combined experience is like moving through a zoetrope or montage ("the continuous connecting of shots, each one, or the majority of which, could perfectly well remain fixed"(3)). Like Le Corbusier's design for Rio de Janiero, in which each apartment unit looked out over the city like a frozen version of the traincars rattling above, the Chelsea blocks architecturally echo the organization of the rail line within them.
"The strip... is a movie strip, on both sides" (4).

One of the most notable characteristics of the 'panoramic perception' is the removal of the middle ground from the visual field through the blurring effect of speed, which "intensifies the sense of a separation between rail viewer and outside space" (2). On the Highline, the middle ground is removed from the view as a result of the vertical displacement of the line. This technique was employed in another of Le Corbusier's designs, the Beistegui apartment, where the landscpaing is configured such that "the street cannot even be seen from the apartment," but only specific, controlled prospects of the distant icons of Paris, "the 'reality' of Paris as depicted by contemporary postcards" (4). In all three examples, the separation afforded by the ellision of the middle ground emphasizes the artificiality and constructedness of the view. This separation allows the viewer to perceive the view as an image external to his or herself

Le Corbusier. Beistegui Apartment towards the Arc de Triomphe.

However, removing the middle ground also gives a surprising immediacy to the distant view. In fact the framing mentioned earlier combined with the perpendicular stacking up of parallel planes on and around the rail line also contribute to a sense of shallow, compressed space, the space of Cezanne and the Cubists.

Highline 2007. Trevor Patt.

The 'panoramic perception' differs from the images which the Highline creates of itself. The multiple montagic viewpoints of the cubist space contrast with the single, centered view down the length of the tracks. This is an image of such deep space that it hardly changes as the viewer moves along the length of the line. The image contains the full spectrum of fore, middle and background, and yet this spectrum is empty. The lines of perspective travel all the way to the vanishing point without any interruption to distinguish the middle ground from the fore or back. While the perpendicular view presents great amounts of visual information in spite of its compression concealment, the long view pushes all visual information to the foreshortened edges of the image. The image of the Highline as a wilderness can be explained by the emptiness of its own self-image in comparison with its image of the other.

Highline 2007. Trevor Patt.

An interesting parallel with the Lacanian model of desire develops here. One could compare the end of the Highline's functioning industrial life as a sort of mirror stage in which the Highline was separated from the city (its big Other) and recognized its own identity, while the current transformation is a submission of its undefined charms to the Law of the Entertainment-Commodification Complex, and an accompanying codification of attractions. Tempting as this is, I feel that an equation of its current state to 'the Real', gives too much credence to the belief that the Highline exists now as a 'wilderness'. Additionally this suggests that it has undergone a significant operational transition and is about to again. I hope that I have explained how, at the level of the diagram, the Highline's imaging function has remained consistent despite an operational transition. So when the first phase of the Highline park opens, only a fence will separate that cultivated half-mile from the uncultivated remainder, in actuality the Highline will function for the flaneurs just as it behaves for the stalkers.

1. Corner, James. Eidetic Operations and New Landscapes, in Recovering Landscape. p153.
2. Schwarzer, Mitchell. Zoomscape. p50, 52.
3. Deleuze, Gilles. Cinema 1. p24.
4. Colomina, Beatriz. Privacy and Publicity. p323, 318.

On Continuity

2007-04-10T23:47:00.000-07:00

"Thus throughout this house [Le Corbusier's Villa Garches] there is that contradiction of spatial dimensions which Kepes recognizes as a characteristic of transparency. There is a continouous dialectic between fact and implication. The reality of deep space is constantly opposed to the interference of shallow space; and by means of the resultant tension, reading after reading is enforced" (1).

Academic Study. Trevor Patt. Fall 2006, Critics: Toshiko Mori, Thomas Schroepfer.

Last weekend's MMFX symposium a hosted by Ball State University raised a number of interesting discussions--profession v. craft, experience v. design, and automation v. labor--but one of the most vexing questions was how one ought to judge the quality of the projects shown. Which, if any, of them were good? Most of the panelist struggled to define the characteristics of a good project in a non-self-referential way. In fact, too many parametrically designed projects are satisfied with simply realizing their own definitions.

In the context of this discussion it was asked whether the new 'non-standard' architecture had lost touch with traditional ways of understanding and interpreting architecture. Does the tendency to produce objects, ignore the potential for multiple readings afforded by Rowe and Slutsky's literal and phenomenal transparency?

ReD. Coneplex part of the M.City exhibition, Graz Kunsthall.

I think that the question is being posed too narrowly. In ReD's M.City exhibit design for the Graz Kunsthaus, for example, one would find difficulty constructing "multiple readings" of the cones or even of the floorplan, sections, or elevations. However, analyzing the exhibit with regard to a three dimensional spatial experience yields a number of ambiguous readings. First, the architects preserve the existing space of the gallery, a clear span shallow dome. This universal space is specifically marked off by careful preservation of the ground, untouched and unbroken. At a certain height, however, the cones do indeed separate certain localized spaces, circular and centralizing, from the gallery at large. Within these 'rooms' the orientation of the projection screen then establishes an axis and gives these local spaces directionality, which creates a larger procession when it interacts with other cones and the encompassing space of the gallery.

Within a spatial (and temporal) experience of the space, these systems set up a series of progressive differentiation: symmetry-breaking (and remaking) operations. The affects of the space rely on both the lack of definable boundaries--the continuity of the effects--and the dynamic unfolding of information within time. Notably these are the qualities which architectural drawings, being synchronic and defined entirely by hardline boundaries, are especially incapable of conveying.

That being said, I don't believe that critical tools developed on 'traditional' architecture are invalid, at the level of their own diagram they are still implementable. But they need to be actualized in new ways. They need to gain an independence from the mechanisms of plan, section, and elevation (one of the strong, unspoken themes of the symposium was the uselessness of 'architectual' drawings for almost all of the projects shown, and in fact the poverty of representation, whatsoever, in comparison to the physical, material experience) which tend to reinforce definition through reference to architectural typologies. Such an essentialist perspective not only strips the invention from a building like S.Carlo alle Quattore Fontane, but also strips the importance of any element which does not conform to one or another historically established model.

Academic Study. Trevor Patt. Fall 2006, Critics: Toshiko Mori, Thomas Schroepfer.

Few contemporary projects conform to typological models, or even aspire to. In fact, many significant projects, like dECOi's Hyposurface, possess a complexity which has no historical precedent within its typology to which it might be compared. Rather than differentiating between external models, designs are increasingly interested in creating internal differentiation. The strategies of today's architects--seams, osculation, inflection--are all ways of working within, but also against, a universal continuity, establishing and ambiguous relationship between global and local space. So too, is an individualizing deformation within a set or pattern of topologically identical elements (another weak point of architectural representation).

If not method and if not reference, what then is the useful kernel which we can pull out from the traditional modes of analysis? The diagram for this investigation is the "continuous dialectic between fact and implication." (1) In the examples above, the dialectic might be between the effect of continuity created by the composition of discontinuous parts, the effect of discrete identity within a mass of continuous material, or the effect of a procession within an undirected, smooth space. Regardless of the particular discussion, the analog experience (of either representation or material effects) is important for the formation of those multiplicities at the foundation of "that which is clearly ambiguous" (1).

1. Rowe Colin and Robert Slutsky. Transparency. Perspecta v8 1963. p51, p45

On Spring Break

2007-03-27T10:21:00.000-07:00

Girls und Krise. Trevor Patt. 2007.

"In the postwar era when prosperity appeared limitless and which could scarcely conceive of unemployment, the Girls were artificially manufactured in the USA and exported to Europe by the dozens. Not only were they American products; at the same time they demonstrated the greatness of American production. I distinctly recall the appearance of such troupes in the season of their glory. When they formed an undulating snake, they radiantly illustrated the virtues of the conveyer belt; when they tapped their feet in fast tempo, it sounded like business, business; when they kicked their legs high with mathematical precision, they joyously affirmed the progress of rationalization; and when they kept repeating the same movements without ever interrupting their routine, one envisioned an uninterrupted chain of autos gliding from the factories into the world, and believed that the blessings of prosperity had no end." (1)

1. Kracauer, Siegfried . Girls und Krise.

On Surface

2007-03-20T15:45:00.000-07:00

Robin Evans writes that “the close resemblance between wall surface and paper surface has never been entirely overcome in architecture” (1). This surface, plain and undifferentiated, was traditionally conceived as a neutral ground on which “architectural objects” were placed. The surface of the facade as an analogue of the paper drafting sheet meant that the surface did not have a claim to such objectness, itself. “The similarity between wall and paper was emphasized, moreover, by the common practice of using a close-textured, monochrome facing material such as marble or stucco for monumental buildings, the very color of which resembled paper” (1).

Despite declaring “the column first and foremost as decoration” (2) and regardless of his reputation as an architect of the wall, Alberti’s facades place all of the “architectural” design within a set of familiar architectural signs—columns, pediments, moldings, roundels—from the classical vocabulary, that is entirely within the realm of decoration. As an architect, Alberti is renowned for the “fusion of two systems incompatible in antiquity,” (12), the temple front and the triumphal arch. Yet this accomplishment relies on the fact that both of these systems are themselves based on the assumption that the surface is a neutral ground which exists only insofar as it supports a system of decoration.

As long as this archetype persisted, the surface remained a backdrop: abstract, inert, immaterial, a datum which signified only the limit of visual penetration.

S. Francisco Rimini, Alberti

This model, however, proves insufficient for analyzing the facades of Borromini, lacking an explanation for the strong figural presence of the surface. That Borromini approached the surface in a different way, from his peers is borne out in his drawings, characterized by a strong hatching which gives the surface an insistent presence, separating it from the page, and giving it a material presence from its very conception.

A close analysis of Borromini's drawings for the facade of S. Carlo alle Quattro Fontane show a disjunction between the geometry of the interior and the generative geometry of the facade, even to the point of being displaced from the central axis! Though a relationship does exist between the interior and exterior, one cannot draw a cause-effect arrow from the interior space that “pushes” on the surface of the facade. Rather, there is an affinity between the surface of the exterior facade and the surface of the interior elevation. S. Carlo exhibits a “severing of the facade from the inside, of the interior from the exterior, and the autonomy of the interior from the independence of the exterior, but in such conditions that each of the two terms thrusts the other forward” (3).S. Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, Borromini, autograph sketch Albertina 175 (4)

Borromini not only gives the surface presence, but actually treats it as the generator of the formal organization. This approach is most apparent in S. Maria dei Sette Dolori because the suppression of ornamentation allows one to see the influence of the surface more directly.

S. Maria dei Sette Dolori, Borromini

At ground level, one is able to clearly see the division of the facade into seven bays, also marked by shallow pilasters. However, after rising two-thirds of the height of the building, the basic bay structure is disturbed. Bay B incorporates the same space on the facade that once were bays 2 and 3, similarly, bay D unites bays 5 and 6. The pilasters defining bay B at the top third of the building are continuous with pilasters defining bays 2 and 3 in the bottom two-thirds. Yet there is an interposed pilaster dividing 2 from 3 which is identical to the pilasters on either side. This combination of heights, which caused Alberti so much trouble, is executed by Borromini with a single order of variable height, and a only simple string course to mark the occasion! Such a solution could never have been derived from a system based on the deployment of classical orders. Instead, Borromini has prioritized the surface, whose flexibility through its elevation allows him to solve the issue quite elegantly.

The surface as driver is particularly interesting in the way it redefines the ontological basis of the facade. The Baroque goal of the “bel composto” becomes more fluid and organic, more natural, but also more complex, unifying into one entity without homogenizing or compromising specificity. The composition is determined less by syntagmatic or pragmatic relationships than by the relationships intrinsic to the surface. Seams, bifurcations, variation of curvature, inflection points, or cusps do not rely on external references or even an external coordinate system; they are intensive properties of the surface: a truly baroque surface (5).

S. Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, Borromini

For this reason quantitative or metric readings, beloved by Wittkower, are less informative than qualitative analyses of convexity and concavity, for example. Notably the aspects which define Borromini’s surfaces are the results of transformations rather than objects. The formal organization refers “not to an essence but rather to an operative function” (3). The dynamism of the composition originates in the dynamism of the function. Thus the formal basis of this architecture is definitive without requiring reference to a vocabulary of signs for justification. But why then are the columns, moldings, pilasters and pediments in Borromini's designs so insistent?

Stylistically, Borromini’s architecture can be characterized by an exaggeration of ornament. Incredibly deep and pronounced entablatures, intricate rhythms of columns which are almost detached from the surface behind them, anthropomorphic and zoomorphic elements, all of the things which would seem discarded the system outlined above. Borromini clearly did not propose to discard these elements. However, what he did was to separate them from the process of form generation, and highlight their ornamentality. By increasing the physical superficiality of these these elements, literally moving them as far beyond the face as possible, he revealed the superficiality at the definition of ornament, affirming Alberti's definition of ornament as “something attached or additional” (6). Borromini also emphasized this characteristic by subjecting the ornamental elements to the deformations of the surface.

S. Ivo alla Sapienza, Borromini (4)

The result is a clear and very rational separation between the organization of the formal aspects, performed by the surface, and the organization of semantic aspects, performed by the ornamental elements. In Borromini's designs the division is so complete that a point of singularity on the surface, an inflection point, cusp, or bifurcation, is marked by a column, pilaster or molding which exists to convey the significance of the point while allowing the surface to remain silent on all non-formal matters. Perhaps the mute disposition of the surface explains its absence within Borrominian scholarship, while great effort is made to explain the iconography and syntactical compositions. Such attempts to continue finding formal justification for Borromini’s designs within the properly semantic sphere of the design will only continue to produce the beastly “chimeras” of his oeuvre which his contemporary detractors found.

1. Evans, Robin. The Projective Cast: Architecture and Its Three Geometries. 1995. p116.
2. Wittkower, Rudolf. Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism. 1988. p41, p56.
3. Deleuze, Gilles. The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque. 1993. p28, p3.
4. Portoghesi, Paolo. The Rome of Borromini: Architecture as Language. figX.
5. "Gauss realized that the calculus, focusing as it does on infinitesimal points on the surface itself (that is, operating entirely with local information), allowed the study of the surface without any reference to a global embedding space. Basically, Gauss developed a method to implant the coordinate axes on the surface itself (that is, a method to implant the coordinate axes on the surface itself (that is, a method of 'coordinatizing' the surface) and, once points had been so translated into numbers, to use differential (not algebraic) equations to characterize their relations. As the mathematician and historian Morris Kline observes, by getting rid of the global embedding space and dealing with the surface through its own local properties, 'Gauss advanced the totally new concept that a surface is a space in itself"
DeLanda, Manuel. Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy. 2002. p11-12.
6. Alberti, Leon Battista, Joseph Rykwert, Neal Leach and Robert Tavernor, tr. On the Art of Building in Ten Books. 1988.

On Slowness.

2007-03-13T20:11:00.000-07:00

Gordon Matta-Clark. Tree Dance. 1971. (1)

In preparation for the Whitney's exhibit on Gordon Matta-Clark, I did some wandering along the Highline, one of the few places in New York that still retains something of the wildness (for the time being, if only for half of its length) that I feel in the city of Day's End. Coincidentally, as the Highline's south end starts right by the former pier 52, I passed the site at least five times.
Much of the work on exhibit was familiar, (even the anarchitecture scribbles have been published by this point) though it was enjoyable to watch the films again. Each has its own character: Splitting, sublime; FreshKill, epic; Clockshower, humor; Day's End, elemental. I especially enjoy Tree Dance, which is actually quite beautiful and mesmerizing to watch. The first time I saw it I was fascinated by the way the space was not defined through material, but through occupation. Once the dancers entered the piece the limits and definitions of the space became immediately clear. I overlaying in my mind the vector fields of movement, for climbing, for rocking back and forth, for reaching and stretching. But it was a fantastically slow vector field.

Which brings me to my favorite pieces in the exhibit, the Untitled (Arrows)--my favorite, in part, admittedly, because I had never come across them before (2). In the exhibit layout they are separate from Tree Dance, but the connection is obviously supposed to be made through the Energy Tree sketches positioned next to the video, (some of the poorer Energy Tree sketches can be seen at the Zwirner and Worth site), but these ring false. The Energy Trees are streamlined and resemble traffic patterns more than anything. They lack the freedom and transformation of either Tree Dance or the Untitled (Arrows). What I really like about the Arrows is that they aren't actually vector fields--The distribution is definitely not a field condition--but that they seem to describe a process. A process with a beginning whose trajectory unfolds over time into different actualizations, and one which hints at qualitative transformation.
I'm trying to resist an overly Deleuzian interpretation, because Gordon Matta-Clark seems like he would sit unevenly within such an interpretation; and yet, there are strong currents of becoming, virtuality and immanence in his work (not to mention hints of manifolds and attractors and all that lot here in these sketches).

Gordon Matta-Clark. Untitled (Arrows, Notebook). 1974. (3)

Gordon Matta-Clark. Untitled (Arrows). 1973-74 (3)

In any case, what immediately came to mind were images like Leonardo's Sketch of a turbulent flowing fluid, and other thoughts of speed. A conditioned response to arrows, I suppose, but one which made it difficult to compare to the rest of the exhibit. Matta-Clark was definitely an artist who worked with transformation, but he always accomplished it through slowness. Think of the cautious lowering at the center of Splitting, growing his hair for a year, or growing mushrooms under 112 Greene Street, digging Descending Steps for Batan, the camera's lingering on beams floating away from Pier 52, and not least, the leisurely rhythm of Tree Dance.

Leonardo da Vinci. Sketch of a turbulent flowing fluid. (4)

But if one can get past the equation of arrows with quickness and can slow these sketches to the speed of a viscous, rather than turbulent, flowing fluid, something of the algorithmic appears. Trajectories have the time to move, settle, interact, be disrupted to a new settled position by some arriving force, to bifurcate, and to transform.

Gordon Matta-Clark. Untitled (Vectors). 1973 (3)

1. Image from New York Times
2. For more, look for Gloria Moure's Gordon Matta-Clark: Works and Collected Writings. 2006.
3. Images from Zwirner and Worth
4. Image from essentia.cz

On Ambiguity:

2007-03-06T21:02:00.000-08:00

"The object here is manneristic, not essentializing:
it becomes an event." (1)

Agra, mausoleum of Itimad al-Daula, Agra exedra detail above, portal relief detail below (2).

Ambiguity in this case is created by the superposition of a number of gradients, and particularly the relationship between the characteristics of these gradients which are independent and those which are contingent on one another. The superposition and interdependence creates a much more complex gradient than a simple A-ab-B. The first apparent gradient is one of scale. As they move from right to left the entire pattern decreases linearly in scale. However, the decorative tracery which crisscross these cells follows a different pattern. Their scale transformation is less dramatic, but because they depend on the primary cells for their outer boundary, they compensate for the disjunction by decreasing in number. As the residual space in the primary cells shrinks to the scale of the tracery, the subdivisions become more pronounced and, at the far left, form the actual primary divisions themselves. This creates a gradient of density within the pattern as a whole.
The densification gradient is disrupted by a third gradient of the interstitial spaces. These are of two kinds. The pentagonal elements are nearly constant and so the crease elements maintain their width, though their length shortens with the diamond-shaped cells. Additionally, the orientation of their faces rotates. At the right it is aligned with the primary cell to the point that it is nearly incorporated within the cell, while further to the left the planes have become autonomous from the larger cells.
The pattern of the relief might be described thus:

B Ba Ab A
B b a A
A A A A
B AB ab a

A systematic analysis, difficult to compare across columns, but hardly ambiguous. The reduction of the pattern points at the poverty of the real in comparison with the actual. This transcription is also disappointing in its failure to produce a hint of a system which seems implied by the patterning.
A closer look reveals why this is. The system is not actually a system of cells, but a system of lines which trace from intersection to intersection forming the borders of the cells.
The lines follow procedural maps--"protocols or formulas for negotiating local situfations and their fluctuating conditions"(3)--which allow for variance while still maintaining a coordination which creates a net of pentagonal nodes. It is worth mentioning that the nodes are not predetermined, static, attracting, or defining the behavior of the lines but emerge dynamically from the behavior of the lines, allowing the system to develop algorithmically within time.
The cells and the orientation of their faces, the decoration and the surface of the portal are interferences, but because of our tendency to seek out geometric wholes, are forefront in our perception. The attempt to integrate these disruptions with the impression of systematicity creates images that "accumulate in an unprogrammed way, in a way that intensifies, creating resonances and interference patterns" (4). The overlap of images allows us to see the topological and the virtual where the lines alone only offer access to the quantitative possible.
Ambiguity, therefore, occurs in the differentiation of affect which is the result of attempts to create comparisons in a multi-variable system. That is in the analog process of reception, the creation of meaning through analogues. A process that is necessary (and automatic) before pattern can be perceived.

1. Deleuze, Gilles. The Fold. 1992. p19
2. image originally seen in: Fusaro, Florindo. La Citta Islamica.
1984. p111 (similar portal at al-Daula visible at flickr)
3. Kwinter, Sanford. Architectures of Time. 2001. p98
4. Massumi, Brian. Line Parable for the Virtual (On the Superiority of the Analog). in:Beckmann John. The Virtual Dimension. 1998. p310.

Preface.

2007-02-27T22:23:00.000-08:00

On the title:

John Rajchman, in reference to Gilles Deleuze's book Le Pli has already articulated an affinity between complexity, or plex- words and folding, or plic-words, in the Deleuzian paradigm of 'perplexing perplications' and 'implication'. The plexed and the plied can be seen in a tight knot of complexity and pliancy. Plication involves the folding in of external forces. Complication involves an intricate assembly of these extrinsic particularities into a complex network. (1)

The biggest pitfall of 'the fold' as architectural reference is the ease of the formal metaphor and the possibility that the form is actually working against the conceptual intent (as int Diller+Scofidio's othewise great Eyebeam design). The same danger exists of fetishizing the -pli -plic -plex as words and relying on them as an uncritical source of authenticity. However, finding them unexpectedly reminds one of the unfolding of meaning which words themselves undergo. 'Plic' in 'applicant' is no longer operating the same way as in 'supplicant' or 'replicant'. 'Fold' returns as a verb, an action, or event and the convergences and divergences it creates focus the reader on the implicit, but ever-varying, relationships between words. The characteristics of a noun-fold ossifiy into essentialism (and the trap of form), but a verb-fold has no specific traits, the characteristics of the fold are created anew each time by the elements entering into the relationship

1. Lynn, Greg. 'Architectural Curvilinearity: The Folded, the Pliant and the Supple', Architectural Design. No 102, 1993. p11