Abstract
In recent decades, digital diagrams have taken on a greater role in architectural projects, permitting, in terms of graphic prefigurative artifacts, other creative, relational and perceptive possibilities in the process of conceiving and representing architecture, which is increasingly focused on topics of complexity, transformation, flexibility, versatility, interaction, imprecision, virtuality, etc. Alluding to the notions of diagrams, machinic and figural of Deleuze and Guattari, these diagrams are constituted as strategic-communicative-productive intermediate matrix-space among architecture, the architect and the digital machine, and between architecture and other disciplinary fields. Functioning as hypertexts and creative and affective interfaces between the human imagination and architectural form, they propose a new type of reality in a permanent becoming, integrating both order and chaos, intention and the unexpected, mechanical and organic, real and virtual. Diagrams are no longer simply a strategic-informative technique that represents, they have become a technique or poetic operation that, in addition to representing, also presents and evokes.
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Notes
- 1.
According to Deleuze, the figural realm lies somewhere between the figurative and abstract realms, where the figurative (associated with the illustrative, representational, incarnate and narrative) aspects are blurred to give way to an intermediate/in-between moment that is neither figurative nor abstract, but which entails/affects both at the same time.
- 2.
“Spacing”/“espacement”/“espaciamiento” is a term defined by the philosopher Jacques Derrida in reference to writing. Derrida distinguishes writing from architectural writing, claiming that the latter involves a condition of creative reading that did not previously exist. In other words, spacing is the implied, affective reading that a subject can make within the mental and corporeal architecture, not limiting itself to merely meandering through it. Spacing in architecture is opposed to forming/formal, just like Deleuze’s figural is opposed to the figurative. “In the context of architecture, spacing as opposed to forming begins to suggest a possible figure/figure relationship, which in turn suggests a new possibility for the interstitial. Spacing produces another interstitial condition. (…) now figure/figure is a figural condition that is no longer necessarily abstract. It is space as a matrix of forces and meaning. It is affective in that it requires both the body and the mind and the eye in order to understand it.” [2].
- 3.
The term “meta-” (from the gr. μετα-), according to the dictionary of the Spanish Royal Academy, means “next to”, “after”, “among”, “with”, or “about”. Therefore, for Eisenman, diagrams - both two or three-dimensional - are a meta-writing, an inter-writing/in-between-writing, a space-writing, a matrix-space, in terms of both orientation and inscription: they are more properly defined as the writing of writing, the language of the writing/architecture or the intrinsic reflection of the architecture, which Eisenman calls the "interiority of architecture". Thus diagrams are neither a methodology nor a mere process.
- 4.
For both Deleuze and Guattari, the machinic processes and systems function as interfaces and are articulated with one another as hypertexts, operating therefore as intermediate/in-between spaces between the mechanical and the organic, the will/intention and the chance/unexpected, reason and chaos (understood as something pre-existing the system, or any system) [3].
References
Deleuze, G., Guattari, F.: Mil Mesetas – Capitalismo y esquizofrenia (in Spanish), Pre-textos, Valencia (1994)
Eisenman, P.: Processes of the Interstitial. Notes on Zaera-Polo’s Idea of the Machinic, El Croquis 83, El Croquis Editorial, Madrid, pp. 21–35 (1997)
Nancy, J.-L.: El olvido de la filosofía (in Spanish). Arena Libros, Madrid (2003)
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Appendix
Appendix
The Manhattan Transcripts, B. Tschumi (conceptual-generative diagrams).
Virtual House, FOA (conceptual-formal and conceptual-generative diagrams).
Möbius House, ‘T Gooi-Utrecht, 1993–98, UN-Studio (conceptual-formal diagrams).
Above: City of Culture of Galicia, Santiago de Compostela, 1999, P. Eisenman. Virtual House, P. Eisenman. Below: L’huile Library, Geneva, 1996, Church for the year 2000, Rome, 1996, P. Eisenman (conceptual-generative diagrams).
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Vasconcelos, A. (2021). Digital Diagrams in Contemporary Architectural Design: A Creative Interface Between Human Imagination and Form. In: Charytonowicz, J., Maciejko, A., Falcão, C.S. (eds) Advances in Human Factors in Architecture, Sustainable Urban Planning and Infrastructure. AHFE 2021. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol 272. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80710-8_14
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