_ Towards A New Architecture Jeffrey Kipnis in his seminal essay “Towards A New Architecture’, Jeffrey Kipnis delivers a compelling and detailed definition of the characteristics of a heterogeneous space as a democratic space that is different from both the homogenous universal space of Modernism and the incongruous heterogeneity produced by Post-Modern collage. Furthermore, he develops a strikingly decisive discourse on the relation between critical spatial strategies, instrumental design techniques and the production of architectural effects. He delivers both arguments at a stunning level of careful argumentation, and description and comparison of exemplary projects that embody the characteristics of his five points towards a new architecture. Well, | stand up next to. a mountain, And I chop it down with the edge of my hand. Then | pick up all the pieces and make an island, might even make a little sand Jimi Hendrix ver the last few years, a few projects by a handful of architects have broached disclissions of a New Architecture. The themes of this discussion are only now coming into sufficient focus to allow for the preliminary efforts to articulate some of them in this volume. Before we turn our attention to that specific task, however, let us consider for a moment what is at stake in the endeavour. ‘A New Architecture’. Today one whispers this phrase with trepidation and embarrassment, perhaps for good reason. True enough, most New Architectures are so ill- conceived that they are stillbom or die a merciful death early in infancy. But the prognosis is poor even for those with the strength to survive their hatching, for the majority of these are killed by a well co-ordinated, two-pronged attack. There are several variations, but the general schema of this attack is well known: first, critics from the right decry the destabilising anarchism of the New Architecture and the empty egoism of its architects; then, critics from the left rail against the architecture as irresponsible and immoral and the architects as corrupt collaborationists. Sapped by this onslaught, the eviscerated remainders are quickly mopped up by historians, with their uncanny ability to convince us that the supposed New Architecture is actually not new at all and that it was in fact explored with greater depth and authenticity in Europe some time ago 97 Towards A New ArchitectureToday, historians and critics alike proselytise upon the creed that there is nothing new that is worthwhile in architecture, particularly no new form. Their doxology is relentless, “praise the past, from which all blessings flow’. Thus, we retreat from the new and have become ashained to look for it. | have colleagues who comb drafts of their work before publication in order to replace the word ‘new’ as often as possible; | have done it myself As a result, PoMo, whose quiding first principle is its unabashed and accurate claim to © offer nothing new, has become the only architecture to mature over the last 20 years. ‘Nonsense!’ it will be arqued. ‘During the same period a flourishing revival of the avant- garde has developed’ and fingers will point to MOMAs Decon exhibition and to the buildings of Eisenman, Gehry, Libeskind, Tschumi, Koolhaas, Hadid and others. Yet, upon dloser examination, it is not more accurate to say that these works have been executed under the auspices of an implicit contract of disavowal. In other wards, is it not the case that these designs are celebrated as auratic, signature buildings of interest only for their irreproducible singularity, rather than as sources of new principles for a general architectural practice. In that sense, the discipline of architecture has recognised them as exotic, precisely so as to suppress their contribution to a New Architecture. Yet within these disparate works are insights that might well contribute to formulating a new framework for a New Architecture: one that promises both formal vitality and political relevance. Consider the work of Daniel Libeskind, for example. From his Chamber Works to his recent projects in Germany and elsewhere, one finds a sustained, penetrating critique of the axis and its constellation of linear organisations. Considering the political, social and spatial history of the axis in architecture and urbanism, this is no minor issue. Yet, very little on the subject can be found in the critical literature treating these projects. Instead, Libeskind is configured as an avatar of the esoteric and the status and power of the axis in quotidian architectural practice, so thoroughly rethought in his projects, is left unquestioned. On the surface, our retreat from the New seems both historically and theoretically well informed. Towards its utopian aspirations, architectural Modernism sought to overthrow obsolete spatial hierarchies and establish a new and more democratic, homogeneous space. However well-meaning this goal was, in so far as its search for the New was implicated in an Enlightenment-derived, progressivist project, it was also implicated in the tragedies that resulted. The instrumental logic of architectural Modernism’s project of the new necessarily calls for erasure and replacement, of Old Paris by Le Corbusier, for example. In the name of heterogeneity, postmodern discaurse has mounted a critique of the project of the new along several fronts. It has demonstrated both the impossibility of invention tabula rasa and the necessity to celebrate the very differences Modernism sought to erase. Its own version of the search for the New, a giddy logic of play, of reiteration and recombination, of collage and montage, supplants Modernism’s sober, 98 Space Readerself-serious search for the Brave New. In Post-Modernism’s play, history regains renewed vespect, though on different terms. Rejected as the linear, teleological process that underwrites its own erasure and replacement, history is now understood as the shapeless well of recombinatorial material; always deep, always full, always open to the public. in Post-Modernism’s most virulent practices, those that use reiteration and recombination to insinuate themselves into and undermine received systems of power, a relationship to the New is maintained that is optimistic and even progressive, albeit not teleologically directed. In such Post-Modem practices as deconstruction, the project of the New is rejected. New intellectual, aesthetic and institutional forms, as well as new forms of social arrangements, are generated not by proposition but by constantly destabilising existing forms. New forms result as temporary restabilisations, which are then destabilised. Accelerated evolution replaces revolution, the mechanisms of empowerment are disseminated, heterogeneous spaces that do not support established categorical hierarchies are sought, a respect for diversity and difference is encouraged. Far from being nihilistic, Post-Modernism in this conception is broadly affirmative. Unfortunately, however, Post-Modernism’s critique of the politics of erasure/ feplacement and emphasis on recombination have also led to its greatest abuse, for it has enabled a reactionary discourse that re-establishes traditional hierarchies and supports received systems of power, such as the discourse of the nothing new employed by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher for their political ends and by Prince Charles, Roger Scruton and even Charles Jencks to prop up PoMo. | believe, therefore, that it is not Post-Modemism itself, but another, more insidious pathology, a kind of cultural progeria, that underlies our current withdrawal from the New. The symptoms of this disorder were first diagnosed by Nietzsche and have been thoroughly analysed more recently by Roberto Unger.” Briefly, it manifests itself as a rationale which holds that the catalogue of possible forms (in every sense of the word form: institutional, social, political and aesthetic) is virtually complete and well known. We may debate the relative merits of this form or that, but we will no longer discover nor invent any new forms. This position is far from the suppositions of Post- Modern combinatorics. Is it possible that “Westernity’ as a cultural experiment is finished and, put simply, that we are old? Only in that context could our current, excessive veneration of the received catalogue of forms be valid. Frankly, | cannot believe that in the short span of our history we have experimented with and exhausted the possibilities of form. It seems to me that every indication today is to the contrary; whether one considers the political transformations in Eastern Europe or the technological transformations that characterise today’s society, The building of the catalogue of available forms, aesthetic forms, institutional forms and of forms of social arrangement, has only just begun. 99 Towards A New Architecture| have already indicated some of the broader criteria for a New Architecture. If it is not to repeat the mistakes of Modernism, it must continue to avoid the logic of erasure and replacement by participating in recombinations. As far as possible, it must seek to engender a heterogeneity that resists settling into fixed hierarchies. Furthermore, it must be an architecture, ie a proposal of principles (though not prescriptions) for design, Finally it must experiment with and project new forms. The first two of these criteria already belong to architectural Post-Modernism. However, the last two criteria — the call for principles and the projection of new forms ~ detach fundamentally the theorisation of a New Architecture from Post-Modernism proper, however much it draws upon the resources of the latter. Indicative of that detachment is the degree to which some New Architecture theorists, notably Sanford Kwinter and Greg Lynn, have shifted their attention from post-structural semiotics to a consideration of recent developments in geometry, science and the transformations of political space, a shift that is often marked as. a move from a Derridian towards a Deleuzian discourse.” In these writings, the Deleuzian cast is reinforced with references to Catastrophe FReory ~ the geometry of event-space transformations — and to the new Biology. Not only are geometry and science traditional sources par excellence of principles and forms in architecture, but, more importantly, the paramount concer of each of these areas of study is morphogenesis, the generation of new form. However provocative and invaluable as resources these studies in philosophy and science are, it must be said that neither provide the impetus for a New Architecture, nor the particulars of its terms and conditions. Rather, these have grown out of architectural projects and developments within the discipline of architecture itself. One contributing factor to the search for a New Architecture is the exhaustion of collage as the prevailing paradigm of architectural heterogeneity. in order to oppose Modernism’ destituting proclivity for erasure and replacement, Post-Modernism emphasised grafting as the recombinatarial instrument of choice. The constellation of collage, in all its variations, * offered the most effective model of grafting strategies. From Rowe to Venturi to Eisenman,” from PoMo to the Deconstructivists, collage has served as the dominant mode of the architectural graft. There are indications, however, to suggest that collage is not able to sustain the heterogeneity architecture aspires to achieve. In lieu of the meticulous study necessary to support this claim, allow the suggestion of two of its themes, the first historical, and the second theoretical. First, Post-Modern collage is an extensive practice wholly dependent on effecting incoherent contradictions within and against a dominant frame. As it becomes the prevailing institutional practice, it loses both its contradictory force and its affirmative incoherence. Rather than destabilising an existing context, it operates more and more to inscribe its own institutional space. The only form collage produces, therefore, is the form of collage. 100 Space ReaderSecondly, and perhaps more importantly, collage is limited to @ particular order of semiotic recombinations. Each element in a collage, even in the aleatoric process-collage of Dada. must be known and rosterable in its own right. Thus, although collage may engender new compositions as well as shifts, slips, accidents and other chimerical effects, the long-term effect of collage is to valorise a finite catalogue of elements and/or processes. Collage is only able to renew itself by constantly identifying and tapping into previously unrostered material. Thus, collage can never be projective. The exhaustion of collage derives from the conclusion that the desire to engender a broadly empowered political | space in respect of diversity and difference cannot be accomplished by a detailed cataloguing and specific enfranchisement of each of the species of differentiation that | operate within a space, The process is not only economically and politically implausible, it is theoretically impossible.” If collage is exhausted as a recombinatorial strateqy — a matter still debated’ - then the problem becomes one of identifying grefts other than collages. The key distinction from collage would be that such grafts would seek to produce heterogeneity within an intensive cohesion rather than out of extensive incoherence and contradiction.® Ina lecture delivered in 1990 to the ANYONE conference in Los Angeles, the neo-modern social theorist Roberto Mangabeira Unger took issue with current Post-Modern practices in architecture, primarily in terms of what he saw as the “ironic distancing’ effected by PoMo and Deconstructivist architecture. At the conclusion of his lecture, he outlined five ciiteria that any New Architecture seeking to contribute to a non-hierarchical, hetéfogeneous political space must meet. According to Unger, such an architecture must be vast, blank, it must point and be incongruous and incoherent.” It is not clear from the lecture how Unger intended his criteria to be interpreted, but | was struck by the degree to which, with one exception, they lent themselves to a discourse on grafting alternatives to collage. Particularly interesting to me was how well these criteria read as generalisations of the spatial/formal project of Modernism outlined in Le Corbusier's points. Where Corbusier's points are directed towards producing a broadly democratic space by achieving homogeneity, Unger’s are directed towards a similar political goal by achieving a spatial heterogeneity that does not settle into stable alignments or hierarchies. | interpret and modify Unger's criteria as follows: (3) Vastness ~ negotiates a middle ground between the homogeneity of infinite or universal space and the fixed hierarchies of closely articulated space. Recognising the necessity of finitude for heterogeneity, vastness seeks sufficient spatial extension to preclude the inscription of traditional, hierarchical spatial patterns. Design implications: generalisation of free plan to include disjunction and discontinuity; extension of free plan to “free section’; emphasis on residual and interstitial spaces. (ii) Blankness — extrapolates the Modernist project of formal abstraction understood as the suppression of quotation or reference through the erasure of decoration and ornament 101 Towards A New Architectureto include canonic form and type. By avoiding formal or figurative reference, architecture can engage in unexpected formal and semiotic affiliations without entering into fixed alignments. Design implications: generalisation of free facade to free massing. (iil) Pointing ~ architecture must be projective, ie it must point to the emergence of new social arrangements and to the construction of new institutional forms. In order to accomplish this, the building must have a point, ie project a transformation of a prevailing political context. The notion of pointing shauld not be confused with signifying, and in fact is a challenge to the determined structure, whether monosemic or polysemic. The indeterminacy of pointing shifts the emphasis from the formation of stable alignments and/or allegiances to the formation of provisional affiliations. (iv) Incongruity - a tequirement ta maintain yet subvert received data, including, for example, the existing site as a given condition and/or the programme brief. Maintenance and subversion are equally important; either alone leads inexorably to spatial hypostatisation. Desiga implications: a repeal of the architectural postulates of harmony and proportion, structural perspicuity and system coordination (eg among plan, section and facade, or between details and formal organisation). (v) Intensive Coherence — in fact Unger stresses the necessity for incoherence, understood as a repeal of the architectural postulate of unity or wholeness. However, because incoherence is the hallmark of Post- Modern collage, | suggest as an alternative, a coherence forged out of incongruity, Intensive coherence implies that the properties of certain monolithic arrangements enable the architecture to enter into multiple and even contradictory relationships. It should not be confused with Venturi’s notion of the ‘difficult whole’, in which a collage of multiplicity is then unified compositionally. At the beginning of this essay, | noted that a handful of recent projects offer specific terms and conditions for a New Architecture. While, in general, these projects show a shift away from a concern for semiotics towards a concern for geometry, topology, space and events, in my view, they subdivide into two broad camps, which | term DeFormation and inFormation. DeFormation, seeks to engender shifting affiliations that nevertheless resist entering into stable alignments, It does so by grafting abstract topologies that cannot be decomposed into simple, planar components nor analysed by the received language of architectural formalism. The strategy for InFormation, of which Koolhaas’s Karlsruhe and Tschumi’s Le Fresnoy are exemplary cases, is to form a collecting graft, usually by encasing disparate formal and programmatic elements within a neutral, Modernist monolith. The resultant incongruous residual spaces are then activated with visual layering, programmatic innovation, technological effects and events. Although both evolve from the same problem, the architecture of DeFormation and Information are by no means simply collaborative. In general, both agree on certain architectural tactics that can be understood in terms of Ungers criteria (as modified), 102 Space ReaderBoth, for example, rely on such devices as box-within-box sections with an emphasis on interstitial and residual spaces (vast, incongruous); also, both deploy monolithic forms and avoid any obvious applied ornament or figurative reference (blank, intensive cohesion). Yet the tensions between them are pronounced. While DeFormation emphasises the role ‘of new aesthetic form and therefore the visual in the engenderment of new spaces, Information de-emphasises the role of aesthetic form in favour of new institutional form, and therefore of programme and events. The event-spaces of new geometries tend to drive the former, while the event-spaces of new technologies occupy the latter. One of the persuasive characteristics of Information is its unapologetic use of the orthogonal lanquage of Modernism. When Past-Modernist architecture first emerged, the formal language of Modernism was simply condemned as oppressive and monotonous ~ recall Venturi’s ‘Less is a bore’. Subsequently, that critique was deepened 4 architects and theorists demonstrated that, far from being essentialist, the language ef Modemism constituted a sign-system. Once the demonstration that architecture was ineducibly semiotic was complete, the essentialist justification for the austere language af Modernism dissolved and the door opened to the use of any and all architectural signs inany and every arrangement. information posits that the exhaustion of collage is tantamount to a rendering that is inelevant of all aesthetic gestures," The architectural contribution to the production of ‘new forms and the inflection of political space therefore can no longer be accomplished by transformations of style. Furthermore, Information argues that the collective architectural effect of the orthogonal form of Modernism is such that it persists in being Blank; often stressing that blankness by using the forms of screens for projected images. Pointing is accomplished by transformations of institutional programmes and events. For Deformation, on the other hand, architecture’s most important contribution to the production of new space and the inflection of political spaces continues to be aesthetic Far from being Blank, DeFormation perceives the Modernist language of InFormation as nothing less than historical reference and the use of projected images no more than applied ornament. Instead, DeFormation searches for Blankness by extending Madernism’s exploration of monolithic form, while rejecting essentialist appeals to Platonic/Euclidian/Cartesian geometries. Pointing is accomplished in the aesthetics; the forms transform their context by entering into undisciplined and incongruous formal relationships. InFormation sees the gestured geometries of DeFormation as predominantly a matter of ornament style. To examine the design consequences of these issues, let us look at a brief comparison of Tschumi’s inFormation at Le Fresnoy with Shirdel’s DeFormation at Nara. The National Centre for Contemporary Arts at Le Fresnoy offered a perfect circumstance in which to reconsider the graft. in his description of the problem, Tschurni was specific in outlining 103 Towards A New Architecturethe various possibilities, Since many of the existing structures were in disrepair, a retum to an erase-and-replace approach was perfectly plausible. On the other hand, the quality of the historical forms and spaces at Le Fresnoy also suggested a renovation/restoyation approach ala Collage. Tschumi eschews both, however, and envelopes the entire complex within @ partially enclosed Modernist roof to create a cohesive graft. The graft does not produce a collage; rather than creating a compositionally resolved collection of fragments, the roof reorganises and redefines each of the elements into a blank, monolithic unity whose incongruity is internalised. Tschumi sutures together the broad array of resulting spaces with a system of catwalks and stairs, visually interlacing them with cuts, partial enclosures, ribbon windows and broad transparencies. Wherever one 5 in the complex, one sees partial, disjointed views of several zones from inside to outside at the same time, Like the visual effects, the role of programming in this project concerns the production of space as much, if not more than, the accommodation of function. As far as possible, ‘Tschumi programmes all the resultant spaces, even treating the tile roofs of the old building as a mezzanine. Where direct programming is not possible, he elaborates the differential activation in materials/events. In the structural trusses of the new roof, he projects videos as an architectural material in order to activate those residual spaces with events. The fesult is a project which promises a spatial heterogeneity that defies any simple hierarchy: a collection of differentiated spaces capable of supporting a wide variety of social encounters without privileging or subordinating any. Le Fresnay undermines the classical architectural/political dialectic between hierarchical heterogeneity and homogeneity and points to a potentially new institutional/architectural farm. Like Tschumi at Le Fresnoy, Shirdel also uses a collecting graft to unify an incongruous box-in-box section in his project for the Nara Convention Center. Unlike Tschumi, however, he shapes the form and internal structure of the graft by folding a three-bar parti with two complex regulation line geometries. The first geometry involutes the exterior of the building into an abstract, non-referential monolith whose form flows into the landscaping of the site. The second geometry has a similar effect on the major structural piers that hold the three theatres (each one a box whose form is determined simply by exigent functional requirements) suspended in section. The internal and external geometries connect in such a way that ‘major’ space of the complex is entirely residual, an alley, so to speak, (delrived in the provisional links between two invaginated geometries, The residual-space effect is reinforced by the fact that ell of the explicit programme of the building is concentrated in the theatres and lobbies that float as objects above and away from the main space. In a sense, Shirdel’s attitude towards programme is the opposite of Tschumi’s, Although the building functions according to brief, there is no architectural programme other than function, no informing choreography 104 Space Readerfor any use of technology to activate space. Shirdel’s computer renderings of Japanese _ dancers performing in eerie isolation in the emptied, residual space underline the point. The entire issue of spatial heterogeneity rests in the aesthetics of the form and in the opposition between unprogrammed event and function. in passing, it is worth noting that the risk af proposing that the dominant (and most expensive) space of a building be nothing other than residual space should not be underestimated _ | pursue the development of DeFormation in greater detail below and will have occasion to return to the Shirdel Nara project. However, | believe that the brief comparison above is sufficient to indicate bath the similarities and divergences in the routes that are being mapped by inFormation and DeFormation towards a New Architecture. DeFormation’’ As is always the case in architectural design theory, DeFormation is an artefact, a construction of principles that have emerged after the fact from projects by diverse atchitects that were originally forged with different intentions and under different terms ‘and conditions. Thus, strictly speaking, there are no DeFormationist architects (yet), just as there were no Mannerist or Baroque architects. It is. a minor point, perhaps too obvious to belabour; yet as we move towards a development of principles and a technical language with which to articulate them, we must be cautious not to allow these prematurely to circumscribe and regulate a motion in design whose fertility derives as much from its lack of discipline as from its obedience to policy. If there is a Deformation, it has only just begun Much has been written and no doubt more will be written that consigns the work of Deformation (and Information) to this or that. contemporary philosopher, particularly Gilles Deleuze. It cannot be denied that a powerful consonance exists between the field of effects sought by these architects and various formulations of Deleuze and Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus or by Deleuze in Le Pli, The sheer number of terms that the architectural literature has borrowed from the Deleuzian discourse (affiliation, pliancy, smooth and striated space, etc) not to mention such fortuities as the shared thematisation of folding, testify to the value of this correspondence. However, for all the profitability of this dialogue there are costs to which we should be attentive. In general, obligating any architecture to a philosophy or theory maintains a powerful but suspect tradition in which architecture is understood as applied practice. In that tradition, the measure of architectural design is the degree to which it exemplifies a theory or philosophy, rather than the degree to which it continuously produces new architectural effects; as a consequence, the generative force of design effects in their own right are subordinated to the limited capacity of architecture to produce philosophical (or theoretical) effects. In his seading of Leibniz in Le Pli, Deleuze stages his meditation on the fold in part on an interpretation of the space of Baroque architecture, thus it might be assumed that 108 Towards A New ArchitectureBaroque architecture stands as a paradigm of the architectural effects of the fold. Such an assumption, however careless, would be fair and would underwrite the configuration of Deformation as nothing more than neo-Baroque. : Now, though Deleuze'’s reading of Baroque architecture is adequate to exemplify his thought on the fold, it is by no means an adequate reading of the architectural effects of the Baroque, Baroque architecture is no more able to realise the contemporary architectural effects of the fold than Leibniz’s philosophy is able to realise the contemporay — philosophical effects of Deleuze’s thought. In other words, Deleuze’s philosophy is no more (merely) neo-Leibnizian than DeFormation is (merely) neo-Baroque. a However much Deleuze’s philosophy profits from the generative effects of Leibniz’s text, its payoff, ie what it has new to say, does not rest on the accuracy of its scholarly recapitulation of Leibniz’s philosophy; rather, it rests primarily on the differences between what Deleuze writes and what Leibniz writes. On this point, | believe Deleuze (and Leibniz!) would agree. In the same way, the interest of DeFormation does not rest on its recapitulation of Baroque themes, but primarily on the differences it effects with the Baroque and its other predecessors. But perhaps, the dearest cost to which we must be attentive is the degree to which formulating DeFormation in terms of a Deleuzian language belies the independent development of the (constant ideas within) architecture. No doubt this development, more a genealogy than a history, lacks the grace and pedigree that it would obtain from architecture conceived as applied philosophy. Yet, the halting, circuitous pathways of DeFormation’s evolution — here lighting on cloth folds depicted in a painting by Michelangelo, there on train tracks, here a desperate attempt to win a competition, there a last-minute effort to satisfy a nervous client, and always drawing upon the previous work of others ~ not only bears a dignity all its own, but also materially augments the substance of the philosophy. Allow me then, to retrace some of these paths, collecting my effects along the way. Neither arbitrarily nor decisively, | begin with three contemporaneous projects: Shirde| and Zago’s Alexandria Library Competition entry, Eisenman’s Columbus Convention Center and Gehry’s Vitra Museum.'* For a number of years beginning in the early 1980s, Bahram Shirdel, in association with Andrew Zago, pursued an architecture which he termed black-stuff. Ironic as the term may first appear, black-stuff is quite an accurate name for the effects Shirdel sought to achieve Rejecting the Deconstructivist themes of fragments, signs, assemblages and accreted space, Shirdel pursued a new, abstract monolithicity thet would broach neither reference nor resemblance. Shirdel was interested in generating disciplined architectural forms that were nat easily decomposable into the dynamics of point/line/plane/volume of modem 106 Space Readerformalism. We will come to refer to these forms in terms of anexact geometries and non- developable surfaces, but Shirdel’s black-stuff set the stage for the DeFormationist principle of non-referential, monolithic abstraction we have already discussed. To generate these forms, Shirdel developed a technique in which he would begin with __on¢ or more recognisable figure(s) whose underlying organisation possesses the desired internal complexity. Then, in a series of steps, he mapped the architectural geometry of "these figures in meticulous detail, carefully abstracting or erasing in each progressive step aspects of the original figure that caused it to be referential of recognisable ~ a process Itermed disciplined relaxation at the time. Similar processes appear in the discussion of the Gehry and Eisenman projects to follow. The culmination of the black-stuff investigations was the Shirdel/Zago entry premiated in the Aexandria Library competition, a design that evolved from a disciplined relaxation of a painting of folded cloth by Michelangelo. In that figure of the fold, Shirde! found precisely the formal qualities he sought. Although the final form shows no obvious traces of the original painting, relationships among surfaces, form and space are captured in the architecture. Shortly after the Alexandria competition, Peter Eisenman entered a limited competition against Holt Henshaw, Pfau and Jones, and Michael Graves’? to design a convention centre for Columbus, Ohio. Because the City of Columbus framed the opening of the centre in terms of its quincentennial celebration of Christopher Columbus's first voyage, Eisenman’s initial strategy was to design a collage project based on the nautical architecture of the Santa Moria. With only three weeks remaining in the 12-week competition period, Eisenman learned that Graves, too, was basing his design on a nautical theme. Anxious to win the competition (he had only just opened his own office), Eisenman took the extreme risk of abandoning weeks of work and shifting to an entirely different scheme, taking a moment to send Graves a postcard of a sinking ship en passant. The new scheme was based on the notion of ‘weak form’ Eisenman had only just begun to formulate.'* ' Working from two oddly similar diagrams, one of a fibre-optics cable toss section and the other of the train-track switching system that once occupied the site in Columbus, Eisenman produced the winning design: @ monolithic box knitted out of vermiform tendrils. The likeness shared by the two diagrams is important to note, for in that weak resemblance, Eisenman first saw the potential of weak form. Although similar in many respects, the Eisenman weak form projects are different from Shirdel’s black-stuff in one aspect that is of fundamental significance to the principles of DeFormation. Eisenman also attempts to achieve an abstract monolith free of explicit teference. But while black-stuff projects were intended to be radically other, Eisenman’s notion of weakness requires the form to retain a hint of resemblance, so that it might enter into unexpected relationships, like the one that connects the two diagrams, 107 Towards A New ArchitectureTrue enough, once alerted, one is quite able to read both the train-track and fibre-optic diagrams in the convention centre form. However, the most surprising weak link occ when the scheme /s placed on site. As is to be expected, the design addressed many traditional architectural relationships to the site; such as reinforcing the street edge and negotiating a severe scale transition. On the other hand, almost as if it had been planned from the beginning, the braided forms of Eisenman’s project connected the mundane three-storey commercial buildings across to street from the complex highway system — interchange behind it. Though entirely unplanned, this connection has the effect of transforming the prevailing architectural logic of the site, Borrowing from Deleuze, DeFormation refers to these tentative links with contingent influences as affiliations, and engendering affiliations is the foremost mechanism by wich DeFormation attempts to Point. Affiliations are distinct from traditional site relations in that they are not predetermined relationships that are built into the design, but effects that flow from the intrinsic formal, topological or spatial character of the design. : Typically, one identifies important site influences such as manifest or latent. | typological /morphological diagrams, prevailing architectural language, materiel — detailing or the like, and incorporates same or all of these influences into a design,-often by collage. Such relationships are not affiliations, but alignments and serve to reinforce the dominant architectural modes governing a context Affiliations, on the other hand, are provisional, ad hoc links that are made with secondary contingencies that exist within the site or extended context. Rather than reinforcing the dominant modes of the site, therefore, affiliations amplify suppressed or minoy — organisations that also operate within the site, thereby reconfiguring context into a new coherence, Because they link disjoint, stratified organisations into a 4 heterogeneity, the effect of such affiliations is termed ‘smoothing’."°"” In order to complete our initial survey of affiliative effects, we must pick up a few threads from Frank Gehry at Vitra. Gehry’s design process, not unrelated to Shirdel’s disciplined relaxation and Eisenman’s weakening, involves incessant modelling and remodelling an initial figure or set of figures. Though he distorts and deforms the figures towarcs architectural abstraction, Gehry is even more concerned than Eisenman to preserve representational heritage in the design. Gehry’s Vitra commission called for ¢ site master plan, a chair assembly factory and a museum for the furniture collection. In the preliminary design, Gehry simply aligned the new factory with the factory buildings previously on site, while his museum, a geometers _ Medusa, stood in stark contrast. Though Gehry reduced the differences to some extent by surfacing in white plaster, so as to relate to the factory buildings, nevertheless, aa graft on the site, the form of the museum installed the familiar disjunctive incoherence! 108 Space Readerhave associated with collage. The client, fearful of employees’ complaints that all of the design attention was being invested in the museum and none in the workplace, asked Gehry as an afterthought to enliven the new factory building. In tesponse, Gehry appended some circulation elements that reiterated the stretched and twisted tentacles of the museum to the two corners of the new factory nearest to the museum. The architectural effect was dramatic, for like the Eisenman convention center, the _ aiiditions knit affiliative links between the factory buildings and the museum, smoothing the site into a heterogeneous, but cohesive whole. However, unlike the convention center, the staircases entered the site as a field rather than as an object ~ pointing to the _ possibility of intensive coherence generating a smoothing effect at an urban scale. From this perspective, the circulation additions contribute as much to the architecture of DeFormation as the museum itself. Because other genealogies tracing through other projects can also be drawn, it cannot be said that DeFormation is born from these three projects. Two of the key principles of “Deformation are in place. In summary these are: (i) an emphasis on abstract, monolithic architectural form that broaches minimal direct references or resemblances and that is alien to the dominant architectural modes of a given site; Gi) the development of smoothing affiliations with minor organisations operating within a context that are __ engendered by the intrinsic geometry, topological and/or spatial quialities of the form | However, before we examine the discussions that have developed around these issues, ‘the evolution of one last principle must be traced, ‘As Bahram Shirdel and | analysed these and related projects, we noticed that, for all of their other movements, they tend to leave the classical congruity between massing and section largely intact. Asa result, the skin of the building continues to be partitioned into the familiar pragramme-driven hierarchies of major, minor and service spaces implied by the massing. The issue, as we saw it, was to avoid both the continuous, homogenous space of the free plan and the finite, hierarchical space of more traditional sectional strategies. Several projects suggested different ways to approach the problem of section. Among the _ more influential of these were Eisenman’s Carnegie Mellon Research Institute, the Nouvel Starck entry for the Tokyo Opera House competition and Koolhaas’ Bibliotheque | de France. In the Eisenman scheme, essentially a chain of pods, a large sculptural object whose form was congruent with the pod floated concentrically within each pod, in effect sendering the primary space of the building interstitial. The striking Nouvel/Starck Opera House was noteworthy for the way its theatre was embedded as an incongruent object © jpto the urban object massing. In his competition entry for the Bibliotheque de France, a seminal example for InFormation, Koolhaas achieved an extreme detachment of sectional space from the massing. Bahram Shirdel, Andrew Zago and | formed a partnership in ‘order to continue to develop methods for generating affiliative, monolithic forms and, as 109 Towards A New Architecture.well, to develop these sectional ideas. Our Event-Structure entry for the Place Jacques- Cartier - Montreal competition, for example, called for a large DeFormed envelope within which three independently DeFormed theatres floated as sectional objects. As in InFormation, every surface, including the outside and inside of both the extenar envelopes and the floating theatres, was programmed. Our goal was to render ail of the spaces in the building interstitial and/or residual and to activate them into 2 non hierarchical differential structure. However, the formal similarity between the two systems, the envelope and the object-theatres, resulted in spaces that were less interstitial than homogeneous." Our subsequent design for the Scottish National Museum competition produced somewhat more interesting results. The typical section of such a museum partitions the space into well-defined compartments determined by categories of the different collections. In order to counter this alignment between form and programme, we devised a section and circulation system in which elements of differing collections would enter into various and shifting associations as ane moved through the museum. The effect of encouraging provisional weak links among the items in the collection was further augmented with a series of windows calculated to frame objects in the urban setting a if they were objects within the collection. Finally, two of the major lobes of the building itself stood as objects within the basement galleries. The section/circulation system was embedded within a three-lobed, articulated monolith. Though conspicuously alien to the classical language and other dominast architectural influences of the site, the geometry of the massing took good advantage of several subordinate organisations within both Edinburgh and the larger context of Scotland to extend the production of affiliative effects. A catalogue of over two dozen of these relationships generated by Douglas Graf, an architectural theorist specialising in formal relations, was included with the competition submission." As we and others worked on similar and other problems, the two major themes of DeFormation began to emerge. First, as far as possible, the section space of the building should not be congruent with the internal space implied by the monolith. Second, wherever possible, residual, interstitial and other artefactual spaces should be emphasised over primary spaces. Because the box-within-box section is effective at producing both of these effects, it is often the tactic of choice, though by no means the only one possible. The impetus to programmatic saturation so central to InFormation plays a much les significant role in DeFormation. With these sectional themes, the last of the preliminary principles of DeFormation is in place. Yet, we should not prematurely draw the conclusion that DeFormation is complete and that prescription for its architecture written. Indeed, though paradigmatic building projects such as Eisenman’s Max Reinhardt Haus” or Shirdel’s Nara Convention Hall can be identified, the internal debates among these and other related projects assure us that 110. Space Reader_ there are principles and projects to follow. The most interesting of these debates revolve around design techniques for producing smooth affiliations.” Because such affiliations fequire that loose links be made among dominant and contingent organisations operating within a context, some architects work by identifying examples of both types of organisation and then drive the design towards their connection, while others rely __ettiely on the intrinsic contextual affiliations engendered by the Eisenman convention cenier or the Shirdel, Zago, Kipnis Scottish National Museum are examples of the latter; _ in each case, most of the links were unplanned and occurred only after grafting the project to the site, Shoei Yoh’s Odawara Sports Complex, on the other hand, is a conspicuous case of the former. Shoei Yoh designed the complex’s roof by mapping a detailed study of a variety of contingent forces confronting the roof, such as snow loads, into a structural diagram. He fine-tuned the mapping by abandoning the coarse, triangulated structural geometries that generalise force diagrams, choosing instead to use computer-generated structural analysis that resolves force differentials at an ultra-sensitive scale. The unusual undulating form of ‘the roof resulted. This process enables Shoei Yoh to avoid the pitfalls of stylistic necessities ‘of the project. As camputer-aided manufacturing techniques proliferate, such approaches which maximise efficient use of material will no doubt enjoy favour. _ Undoubtedly, such an approach to contingency is attractive; yet, questions arise. At the very least, these processes threaten to turn DeFormation into a single theme architecture _ based on a search for contingent influences, much as Amnold Schoenberg's dodecaphonic _ thevries of atonal music composition resulted in a decade during which serious music composers devoted all their attention to finding new tone rows. As Greg Lynn quipped, ‘Spon we'll be designing form based on the air turbulence generated by pedestrians near the building’. More significant, however, is the degree to which such processes are actually aligning, rather than affiliative. It seems to me that by predetermining the contingent influences to be addressed, the process simply redefines the dominant architectural influences on site. The test of whether or not the results are DeFormative, therefore, will not depend on the success of the project in embodying responses to those influences, but on the other contingent effects it continuously generates. if embodying effects into the design a priori is problematic, then the central issue for DeFormation design technique becomes the elucidation of methods that generate monolithic, non-representational forms that lend themselves well to. affiliative telationships a posteriori. If all that were required was gesture and articulation, then the | problem would pose no particular difficulty and could be saved by employing familiar Expressionist techniques. Yet, the DeFormationist principle of minimal representation also prohibits explicit reference to Expressionist architecture, much as it criticises InFormation or its explicit reference to formalist Modemism. | have already mentioned a group of telated techniques that start with a complex figure or set of figures and then move these 111 Towards A New Architecturetowards non-representational abstraction while preserving the intrinsic complexity. These : techniques have stimulated investigations into a variety of methods for accomplishing that movement towards non-representation; for example, including the study of camouflage methods, experimenting with computer ‘morphing’ programs that smoothly transform one figure into another, or employing topological meshing techniques such as splines, NURBS, etc, that join the surfaces delimited by the perimeters of disjoint two-dimensional figures into a smoothed solid. Because these methods often yield anexact geometries and non= developable surfaces, other architects have turned their attention to these areas of study: Anexact geometry is the study of non-analytic forms (ie forms that are not describable by an algebraic expression) yet that show a high degree of internal self-consistency. Non- developable surfaces cannot be flattened into a plane. s As far as | am concerned, it is in the context of the development of architectutal technique rather than as applied philosophy that the issue of the fold in DeFormation is best understood. Clearly, the initial figure and transforming process in any DeForming technique does not in itself guarantee the results, nevertheless, both of these mainly contribute to the effective properties of the results. It has occurred to many architects that the fold as a figure and folding as a transformative process offered many advantages, long before any of these persons ever heard of Le Pli or paid any attention te the diagrammatic folds found in Lacan or René Thom’s Catastrophe Theory. Neither pure figure nor pure organisation, folds link the two; they are monolithic and often non-representational, replete with interstitial and residual spaces, and intrinsic to : non-developable surfaces. As a process exercised in @ matrix such as an urban site, folding holds out the possibility of generating field organisations that negotiate between the infinite homogeneity of the grid and the hierarchical heterogeneity of finite geometric patterns, an effect which Peter Eisenman employs in his housing and office park in Rebstock, Germany.” Finally, when exercised as a process on two or more organisations simultaneously, folding is a potential smoothing strategy. All of these aspects of the fold are related to architectural effects. Although they may be _ attracted to the underlying work, none of the architects who make use of Thoms fold diagrams, for example, make any claim, as fer as | know, to inscribe the four-dimensional event-space that the diagram depicts for mathematicians in the resultant architecture; any more than any architects claim to be inscribing the effects of Descartes’s philosophy wher they employ a Cartesian grid. And, fortunately, there do not seem to be too many persons suffering from a radical mind/body split walking around midtown Manhattan. In both cases, architects employ these diagrams for the architectural effects they engender As is typical of Eisenman, both the Rebstock Park and Alteka Tower are driven more by folding as a process than by any particular fold as a diagram or spatial organisation. lr the former, Eisenman inscribes an initial parti derived from the modern housing schemes 112. Space Readerof Emst May on the site. Then, operating strictly in the representational field of drawing, he projects both the extended site and the parti into the respective figures formed by the houndaries of these two sites. The resulting drawings create the representational illusion that these two organisations have been folded. This drawing, neither axonometric, nor perspective or fold, is then massed as the project. Through this process, he attempts to transform the modern, axonometric space characteristic of the original scheme into a visual space that hovers between an axonametric and a perspectival space with multiple vanishing points. The figure of the fold, a quotation of sections cut through a Thomian | diagram, appears on the top of the building to effect the weak, cross-disciplinary links of which Eisenman is so fond.” Similarly, the Alteka Tower begins with the high-rise type and folds it in a process reminiscent of origami in order to deform the type and to "produce multiple residual spaces Many diagrams such as those depicting Lacan’s ‘mirror state’ or the parabolic umbilic fold and the hyperbolic umbilic fold associated with Thoms Catastrophe Theory, have attracted architectural interest for several reasons. in order to avoid the pitfalls of Expressionist processes, such diagrams offer a level of discipline to the work. Using these diagrams asa _ source of regulating lines, so to speak, allows the architect to design with greater rigour. ‘As Le Corbusier writes, ‘The regulating line is a quarantee against wilfulness’ Moreover, as stated, such diagrams are neither purely figural nor purely abstract. They therefore hold the potential to generate weak resemblance effects. Finally, the multiple and disjoint formal organisation that compose these compound diagrams themselves have many of the _ desited spatial characteristics described previously on sections, Amore sophisticated use of these diagrams as regulating lines can be found in Shirdel’s Nara Convention Center. To better understand the role of the diagrams in this project, it is necessary to examine its design process in greater detail, Rather than beginning with a typological or formal parti, Shirdel initiated the design for the hall by grafting a "carefully excerpted portion of the Scottish National Museum project to the site. He chose - aportion of the museum where two independent lobes of the museum joined obliquely and were subtending a-constricted, interstitial space. Transferred to Nara, this graft had | the advantage of already being incongruent but coherent, an aftereffect of excerpting the connections between the two disjoint lobes. Shirdel reinforced this effect by using "the resultant interstitial space as the main entry-way into the new building. ~ Studying the famous Todai-ji Temple in Nara, Shirdel found the temple space dominated by three figures: a giant central Buddha and two smaller flanking attendant figures. Stimulated by this analysis, Shirdel decided ta encase each of the hall’s three theatres in " objects that would float in the section. The forms of these theatre-objects were determined simply by functional exigencies. Other than their painted copper cladding, chosen to link the sectional objects to the figures in the temple, the theatres were entirely undesigned. 113 Towards A New ArchitectureVisitors to the Todai-ji Temple encounter the Buddha figures frontally; a classic arrangement that emphasises the subject /object relationship between the two. Shirdel, the other hand, arranged his three sectional objects axially. Visitors entering the convention hall confront nothing but empty space - the enormous mass of the three — a theatres havering off to the side. In order to design the envelope of the hall and o configure the main entry as residual space, Shirde! used two folds. First, he reconfigured the massing of the original graft with a Thomian diagram of a hyperbolic umbilic fol extending this fold into the surrounding landscape so as to smooth the connection of t building and its immediate site. Then, he shaped the concrete piers holding up the three theatres and the lobby of the small music theatre according to the parabolic umbilic fold. a Asa result, the main space of the hail is the residual space between the topology of these. two folds, an effect that the constricted entry-way again reinforces. Shirdel’s scheme introduces into Nara an entirely new form in both the architectural and institutional sense, More interestingly, it effects its affiliations spatially as well as formally. At the level of the. building, it eccommodates the effects that the preliminary principles of DeFormation seek a to engender. | also believe that it meets the five criteria for a New Architecture, ie that Points, that it is Blank, Vast, incongruent and Intensively Coherent. Whether or not DeFormation and/or inFormation mature into a New Architecture remains to be seen. Certainly, the rate of realisation for DeFormation is not yet as promising as it _ is for InFormation and not sufficient for either to develop or evolve. Yet, | believe it can bbe said with some confidence that at least these architectures have broached the problem of the New and thus offer a measure of optimism. But, the critics and historians have not begun to circle them in earnest. Yet, Notes 1 Historians may note simianties in the work inchided in this volnme to the epatal character of Baroque architecture and/or to the formal character of German Expressionism. I predict their observations will conclude that none of the architects and theorists working in this ates are amie = of these similarities, Because the writings arid procs are not salled with analyses of Rorcomin. Guaranini and Berm or references to Finsterlin, the Tauts, Polzig, Haring, Mendelsohn, Scharoi Steiner, etc. it will be assumed the work is conducted in blissful ignozance of these sirnilarities, 7 ‘This firet conclusion is necessary to support the second, vamely that ihe similarities are fat more important than the differences. Thus, recalling Marx, they vill argue that the second instance is bul a parody of the tragic profmdty of the firs) (@ tautological argument. since the firet instance establishes the terms and conditions of similarty. By coincidence, this argument alao hapy suppor the capitalisation of their professional activities). However interesting and worthy of study” the similarities are, greater stakes are jound in the differences: historians will again mise the point 2 CERM Unger, Knowledge and Politics, Free Press (New York), 1879. EM Unger, Social Thecry, ‘Cambridge University Preas (Cambridge), 1987. : 2 Other pos structural theorists, oxably Jetmifer Bloomer and Robert Soma}, have appealed to the writings of Deleuze and Guatlan, though to diferent ends. 4 ‘Collage’ is used hore ax a convenient, it coarse; umbrella term for an entire constellation of practices, eg bnicolage, arsemblage aad a history of collage wilh many important distinctions and developmen, This argurient is strengthened by a study of the architectinal translasons of the varinus models of collage and its associated practices. Aa we proceed further into the discussion of affliative effects below, one might be inclined to argue that Surrealist collage, with its empliatalscu iiaete cermin ct 114 Space Reader