Have you guys seen in the last Volume (17) the text on "Politics of the Envelope", by Alejandro Zaera-Polo? I thought that these guys did not give a damn about politics, but here there is something new: the former pragmatists seem to be turning towards politics! Not sure whether he is totally convincing but it is certainly something new going on. My American friends tell me that he is rumored to teach this stuff in Princeton soon.

Has anyone heard about this?

deliberated representation seems to be one of the most performative features of media-exposed cultures. propoganda airs on the most silent and the loudest of channels simultaneously. if propoganda can create opinion and market, why can't it create particular need for particular architectures? and why can't those particular architectures, as reified physical sediments, in turn be one of the channels, amplifying and reinvigorating the wave of propoganda...and ultimately, the authority behind it. can someone really explain, solely on the basis of purely architectonic grounds, why there is a need for AZP's architecture, as one single example, or any other now relevant architecture?

and how architectural relevance is justified merely by the purely architectonic and its local indexical aftermath that ergonomically can't be performatively subversive? horizontality or verticality...they would only be able to be performatively potent by virtue of being representationally valent. representation, then, is the gravity field in which mute performance can find its voices. imagination, then, is on the outside and the inside, on par with "reality".

did they claim relevance? i might have missed that.

I think by the very act of post-rationalizing his own built projects into this "theoretical" framework that yes he did...

aside

noctilucent, is any of what you wrote above closely related to "architecture as delivery of content"?

imaginative
scientific
fictive

Are there architectures that perform assimilatingly? metabolically? osmotically? electro-magnetically? ultra-frequently?

per..........form
re..........present
re..........enact



ars ludi

The arts/skill of public games :o ???

what's so scary about a theoretical framework that it deserves scare-quotes, namh? isn't it a good thing to reflect on your own practice and consider its political implications?

Wow! this is getting interesting. Welcome back noctilucent! As usual, your input is intriguing. I would agree with you that deliberated representation is an important performance in contemporary architecture, no matter how tricky it may sound. And that is how architecture may actually become relevant beyond providing some physical infrastructure for human activities. For example AZP's shopping in Istanbul could be an example on how a well tested and replicated envelope type (the IKEA box) can be challenged to produce alternative community performances. Or how the bamboo-clad social housing in Madrid may be a new form of representation for some local underclass... I do not think that either example amplifies the regime of authority behind the project. On the contrary, I do not know enough about the local situation but neither project strikes me as close to the conventional types... Hence their relevance, claimed or not.

What I mean by re-presentation is not necessarily some sort of iconographic resonance, or soma applied language of to the building, but what Aplomb and Emilio refer to when they write "we can see the difference between the way one architect or another facilitates or restricts the movement of bodies". True, the architect does not really dictate much of the program , and it may be that "the invention of the lock or the card reader system may have had more direct effect on restriction or control of access and thus on the politics of the envelope". That is part of architecture, but architecture is more: one of the most relevant roles we have is to determine the way in which security control, circulation or environmental performance are experienced by the people. Do we feel like a herd of sheep going into lanes is the airport, or do we feel as if we will be flying to the sky in a magic carpet?
Even if the general organisation of the building is "dictated by the building program and the entity or corporation or bureaucracy that inhabits and controls access to the structure and thus its inhabitants" and architecture has a limited capacity to privilege fleeting human encounters rather than protracted ones still has a certain power by "re-presenting" the performance. I do not deny the importance of the lock of the performance, but in the way we design them, we affect the way they are used and we make collective, political statements...

This is why I consider that 'affect' is also a form of representation, and why I believe that, following Latour, representation is not necessarily the construction of a fake world, a theater, but the way the real world is aprehended, and objects introduced into a political discussion... Re-presentation in sciences is the fidelity in which an explanation adjusts to the facts of reality...

The utopia of the pure "performance", is precisely the discourse "pragmatists" have been proposing for a few years, where facts, engineering etc entirely determine architecture, just like economy use to determine politics not so long ago. Now that we need to retrieve a way into politics, I find interesting that one of the pragmatists is looking at politics and representation, as a new edge to the discipline.

I wasn't claiming they weren't relevant, although i think that the discussion is a relevant one. Precisely because of present day concerns regarding performance and equity..

But agfa, you asked if they had claimed relevance
As for my use of the quotes around theoretical was due to the fact that i believe it is less a theory or theoretical framework than a post-rationalizing of their own work using poltics as a context..

you say post-rationalising as if its somehow a bad thing. theory doesn't always come before practice, you know.

That is part of architecture, but architecture is more: one of the most relevant roles we have is to determine the way in which security control, circulation or environmental performance are experienced by the people. Do we feel like a herd of sheep going into lanes is the airport, or do we feel as if we will be flying to the sky in a magic carpet?

Alba, I do agree with that, and it's why I did not portray the architect as totally a bystander in, as you put it, "re-presenting the performance": I would even say that what you describe is the true power of the architect. (It also reminds me of Vincent Scully's quote on the old and new Pennsylvania Stations in NY: “One entered the city like a god; one scuttles in now like a rat.”)

But at this point I should probably also read the Volume article by AZP...

Emilio. this is exactly what I mean by representation, and I believe this can be politically charged in a new way, although as everybody has already pointed, this is not the only political performance of architecture. I like your contribution very much.
I also agree with agfa8x that the fact that AZP developed this theory as a post-rationalisation of his own practice it is actually a merit. I means he is practicing and thinking at the same time. I have send you a copy of the log text Nam, I hope you have seen it and we can move out of AZP's lecture and into the real question, which is the formulation of an envelope theory.
I think that the texts underlines the problem, but I am not sure that the examples he is using are yet pointing a direction. I am not sure whether pointing in a certain direction is possible in a micropolitical approach.
I am missing the involvement of someone who can criticise this approach from a more radical perspective. AZP's formulation may still be too pragmatic, too neutral... Is it possible to make a more consistent approach? Where are the criticals in this debate?
Perhaps the best way of furthering this debate is to ask all of you involved in this debate to post examples of envelopes of different sorts that produce politcal effects of some sort. Shopping centers you know, city halls, train stations, skyscrapers, housing blocks... Performing as environmental devices, devices of social integration or exclusion and devices of political representation. It would be good to see if we can collect a few interesting examples to illustrate the debate.

agfa8x,
I am intrigued about your inclusion of the term "memes" in an earlier post. I guess this refers to Dawkins and the way a culture replicates itself... I have not come across this concept often in the architectural discourse, but I have an interest in it. Could you see memes as a possible function of re-presentation?

Professor Aplomb;

yes, delivery of content, associations, in the aspect of architecture as media.

namhenderson; I fail, or would fail to see this as being purely on architectonic ground. AZP's language and logic is rife with embedded figurative thought. in fact, much of this "materialist" thought operates on analogical grounds where "material" is the abstracted analogical deduction of material...thus allowing one of, (what is in the first-order an absurd) coinage of the "intelligence of a material".

albatross, there is always an authority behind anything authored. and this:
"we can see the difference between the way one architect or another facilitates or restricts the movement of bodies". is hardly representational as it is presentational. an index is the most self-oblivious of signs being the aftermath, the skidmark, of casuality. i'd say even that the index is the most ghostly yet paradoxically the most assued of signs, the sign of no deliberation, no knowing consciousness, but of necessity and law. it could be elevated to being representation by meshing it into the more open network of associations. this requires intermediacy, deference, transfer from one media to another...etc

noctilucent,
I wonder why do you believe that the "intelligence of material" is an absurd. I thought that materialism is precisely the recognition that there is an intelligence in materials that challenges hyleomorphism, the classical western idea of an inert material upon which humans impose a form. I think AZP's text is actually pointing towards the unleashing of this "intelligence of material". If you look at his description of the vertical envelope, you will see that the iconic high-rise is not what he is interested in. Some other descriptions such as the spherical and flat-vertical are much more bound to a sort of figuration of social structures, and there is where I believe it gets more tricky... I am not sure what I think about those parts of the text, but I like the attempt to bring the figurative and the materialist together.

As for your comment on the "presentational" vs "re-presentational", is an etimological question. I am using re-presentation in the Latourian sense, which is the sense AZP uses it, judging for the quotes. The problem of the "presentational" that you are proposing is that it looks as if the materialisation of the artificial, an architecture in this forum, seems to appear automatically, unmediated by opinion, politics, cultural context... this is what Latour refers to as "acheiropoietic", which is matter of fact, natural, scientific, unquestionable etc... That is the opposite of the idea of a "matter of concern" which Latour proposes and AZP applies to the building envelope.

In that sense I do not think that the indexical is external to an idea of representation. The difference between the index as a sign and an icon, is that in producing or reading a "thing" -to continue using the Latourian terminology- you may decide to use a figure or an image "of the dynamic object" (Peirce) or to select certain indexes whose choice is contingent to the agent of production or interpretation. To say that indexical operation is "self-oblivious...., the sign of no deliberation, no knowing consciousness, but of necessity and law" reminds me of the radically pragmatic positions that AZP himself, Lynn, MVRDV and Speaks used to support a few years back, where things emerged magically out of processes seemingly neutral and scientific, where the inputs of the market and the community converged magically into a seamless product that meant nothing.

I think that we we are seeing now is a correction of those trajectories in order to be able to claim a more powerful role for architecture...

as for the issue of re-presentation vs. presentation, I do not mind use whatever you prefer as long as we all know what it means. I suggest to keep to the Latourian discourse because is implicit in the text we are commenting, but we can go back to Kant, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Heidegger to try to elucidate the term. Another interesting reference in the AZP's text is to "non-representational theory" from Thrift...

from Volume 17
The Politics of the Envelope: A Political Critique of Materialism
Alejandro Zaera Polo

thanks PA

I said absurd in the first order, in the first instance. All anthropomorphisms are absurd in the first instance, syntactically with the reversal of conventional object and subject: intelligence being conventionally identified in the observed rather than the observer. Absurd need not carry a negative nuance for the intention of this statement was to underline the usage of figurative language (which is always conventionally absurd, in the first instance) built around the analogy (of course, convention itself might have been at one point an absurd reversal of a prior convention, such as the case with optics and reversal of subject and object of light), contrary to the scientific language built around the index which the tone of materialism certainly alludes to. The intention in calling it absurd, therefore, was to highlight the fictive, even theatrical (being that the stage/site of material patterns and laws becomes the stage of intelligence rather intelligence being embodied bodilessly and solely within the observing mythical- mythical not being used with its negative connotation-consciousness) conjecture of “intelligence on materials” and not to dismiss it per se. As such, ‘materialists’ combine the parallel bi-locational procession of inward procession of thought, a deliberate choice of operation, with the outer glamour, in the faery sense, of the imperative ipso facto appearance of matter. Perhaps when materialists start talking symbolism and “some sort of figuration”, its not an external contradiction, not an eccentricity, so much as a fissure of confession in the glamour and an owning-up gesture of belonging to the tradition of cultural and emotional avatarism.
RE: presentational and representational. Dictating body motion and reaction, as expressed in such a matter of causality, operates indexically by virtue of being an effect apropos a cause. What representational value this might have is besides your point i.e. restricting the movement of body, which presents itself as it is and not as it represents. Restriction of movement, rather than will or imagination (which manifests in representation), involves an indexical situation involving bodies in a field of physical limits and voids. To profess anything besides, and to link body to imagination while still carrying this imperative tone of causality, is actually simply to involve oneself,unwittingly (and that’s where it errs, in its lack of self-awareness) in figurative language, essentially mystical (and we’re not talking fiction=falsehood), which the materialists do whilst, on par, insidiously rejecting explicitly figurative thought. See the tension involved in a materialist description of what is beyond materialism…materialism itself being a discourse formulated in a language beyond materials? To deliberately con-fuse presentational and representational modes is merely a materialist way of interpreting the above mentioned fissure within materialism itself when encountering its own inherent, and not merely residual, symbolic modus operandi (an analogical one). Of course, boys always wear their wounds as their self-interpreted signs of their self-assumed strengths. To my mind, there is a justification and a need for representation to mean, simply and complexly, representation. A need to create avatars that, in spite of all neurotically secularizing tendencies, will always harken to the imagination’s right to mythopoeticize. Those who try to find their Answer through mimicking should at least recognize the religiosity of the act in which they still partake of rather than telling us that religiosity is in that, the object, which they mimic. Yes, that’s what pisses me off about ‘material praxis’ and all other self-mirroring manifestos, not material praxis itself but the unethical stance it has towards owning up to its own representational and symbolic proclivities. Once one owns up to such, then one can be liberated from that somber monomaniacal servitude to a subject matter and to one kind of rhetoric. One can truly then inhabit her own bilocationality without being so deadly serious about it.
Consequentially: The built environment might consequentially resonate representatively, Projectively: it might be birthed representatively; but it can never be simultaneous with representation. In spite of all the dust in our books and speckles on our webpages, the built environment falls into the same pit of anxiety from which we always try to re-emerge with a new philosophy, namely the epistemological anxiety of relating the thing to our knowledge of that thing and, in the more basic ontological vein, the anxiety of coming to terms with what it is to exist.
You may cite whomever you wish to cite, latour, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Foucault…what you do, from that standpoint is inconsequential to what I wanted to say above, rather than perhaps to what you want to say, and im not being bitchy but simply signaling a sensing of ridiculous impasse in this rhetoric of politics before architecture or architecture before politics or architecture as politics and the chicken as the egg. It’s the position you situate yourself in within language, culture, time and imagination before all of those as well as actually being a bit more case-specific. There is a far too secure limitation to this rhetoric of variegated sameness within difference materialist metaphysics of non-metaphysics that it draws around itself, a weird combination of optimism in self-annihilation, an odd cybernetic Catholicism, in style, worshiping Darwin, in content (which is, from another viewpoint, an inversion of the allure of the index cloaking the imperishable symbol mentioned above). This rush towards ‘morphogenesis’, towards ‘material praxis’, towards a positivistic quantification, is a rush towards the further atomization of selfhood until it is rendered completely isolated within its cloak of necessity and silence. That would be the expression of the most expressionless way of deferring the notion of ending and death. If I am simply an atom identified via its location within a field of other atoms and via its valence towards other atoms, then my death is simply unimaginable; I have exorcised all ideas of my death, the confessional imagination that is founded on the idea, understanding/misunderstanding, mythical avatars of death, I would have exorcised all such vestiges of my end, imagination itself really, and would henceforth be able to conduct my quantifiable producing/consuming self in a quantifiable capitalist machine of a society. And my growth and demise would be merely a matter of increasing and decreasing valence. If Futurism called for hell, Materialists are happy with Purgatory.
And another viewpoint: We enjoy a spinozatic god with intertwining braids fusing materialism, divinity, commonplaceness, technology, artifice and nature into One Self-Overflowing substance/soul….. fine, but there are other gods. More interestingly, what does it take to become, be formulated as, a god, the ritual?…again, the concern with that act of mimicking than the mimicked.

To sum it, ‘materialists’ material is as religious and semiotic as any other ruminating imagination.

nirvana of nuance,

actually i didn't take bilocationality from your site or your good self. i woud have cited otherwise. but its fun to coincide. for me, bilocational is [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-Xps7isi8M
]a personal matter of pathos[/url]

or a personal matter of pathos

tori: Lately I'm into circuitry, what it means to be made of you but not enough for you.
And I wonder if you can bilocate, is that what I taste, your supernova juice?
You know it's true- I'm part of you.

[sic]
To ERr with SuperGlue™
Bilocation Syndrome
Going into Eclectic Shock/Therapy
Surgical Double Theater
Waiting Room: Anxious, Reading, Liszt
Operation a Success; Patient Dead
Malpractice Case: Houses
Eternal Wrest



coda?
picky, picky, picky

Let me just respond to a few of your assertions, nocti, cause that’s what you say I do anyway…but frankly, I don’t have time to respond to all of your verbosity.

As such, ‘materialists’ combine the parallel bi-locational procession of inward procession of thought, a deliberate choice of operation, with the outer glamour, in the faery sense, of the imperative ipso facto appearance of matter. Perhaps when materialists start talking symbolism and “some sort of figuration”, its not an external contradiction, not an eccentricity, so much as a fissure of confession in the glamour and an owning-up gesture of belonging to the tradition of cultural and emotional avatarism.

Yes, that’s what pisses me off about ‘material praxis’ and all other self-mirroring manifestos, not material praxis itself but the unethical stance it has towards owning up to its own representational and symbolic proclivities.

But does material praxis and those who talk about it really do that? At this point, I'm going to bring in Marx, since we are in the arena of politics, and another concept besides bilocation: inversion.

(all italics mine)
"Thus, in contrast to Hegel, Marx argues that it is material praxis, the means and relations of production, that constitutes reality. Marx employed the concept of praxis to emphasize actual human experience and to solve the dilemma between the passivity of materialism and the speculation of idealism. Reality for Marx is created out of the things that humans do, out of their experience of production. But the perception of reality as been inverted since the time of primitive communism - the contradictions and oppressions within the different economic systems have been successively hidden through different ideologies. In the capitalist system, the market is a prime mechanism through which the inversion takes place and ideology is created. The ideology (read avatar) of the market is individuality, equality, and freedom; the reality of the capitalist system is class, inequality, and oppression."
"Marx thus posits a dual process of ideology. On the one hand, false consciousness is produced individually through alienated praxis; on the other hand, false consciousness is the result of not owning the means of ideational production. The first proposition identifies the location of the process of ideology within the experience of the individual and their conscious reflection on that experience; the second posits that the process is located in the superstructure of society" (hmm, maybe we are talking about bilocation after all...)
Kenneth Allen The Meaning of Culture

So materialists are already talking about "symbolism and some sort of figuration", and they are sometimes talking about them as inverted means of oppression. Thus, "...in Kant, praxis is the application of a theory to cases encountered in experience, but is also ethically significant thought, or practical reason, that is, reasoning about what there should be as opposed to what there is." (Philosophy Dictionary)

It would appear to me that (some) materialists do not insidiously reject explicitly figurative thought (reasoning about what there should be). They just want to know when this thought is being brought upon them, as oppressive as any religion, avatars being sneaked in through the back door.

I've started reading the AZP article, and already I feel good about bringing in Marx:

"It (the envelope) materializes the separation of the inside and outside, natural and artificial and it demarcates private property and land ownership (one the most primitive political acts)."

Also, as I suspected, AZP is using this notion of re-presentation, "the
ancient political role that articulates the relationships between humans and nonhumans in a common world."

or:

to be a delegate or spokesperson for; represent somebody's interest or be a proxy or substitute for, as of politicians and office holders representing their constituents,..."I represent the silent majority"

as opposed to:

typify: express indirectly by an image, form, or model; be a symbol

there can be a kind of 'materialism' of figurative thought, i think: foucault's discourse, deleuze's abstract machines. Latour's nonhuman assemblages explicitly include the figurative.

Difficult to get back in now... Too many questions and too little time.
I suspect that now there are some interesting differences in the debate.
I may be wrong but I believe this is nocti’s core message, despite the other tangents, and I believe that is shared by everybody, even if with different nuances. I am not sure though whether your comments refer specifically to AZP’s text or to the discussion here:
"Yes, that’s what pisses me off about ‘material praxis’ and all other self-mirroring manifestos, not material praxis itself but the unethical stance it has towards owning up to its own representational and symbolic proclivities."
“It’s the position you situate yourself in within language, culture, time and imagination before all of those as well as actually being a bit more case-specific. There is a far too secure limitation to this rhetoric of variegated sameness within difference materialist metaphysics of non-metaphysics that it draws around itself, a weird combination of optimism in self-annihilation, an odd cybernetic Catholicism, in style, worshiping Darwin, in content (which is, from another viewpoint, an inversion of the allure of the index cloaking the imperishable symbol mentioned above). This rush towards ‘morphogenesis’, towards ‘material praxis’, towards a positivistic quantification, is a rush towards the further atomization of selfhood until it is rendered completely isolated within its cloak of necessity and silence.”
Are you criticizing AZP’s text (I assume that is what you are referring to) for rushing towards quantification and material praxis etc, or for drawing on mimicking, representation and the imperishable symbol? I am intrigued by you reading of the text as a “combination of optimism and self-annihilation”. Let me think about that, I may end up agreeing with you… In what I certainly disagree is that we necessarily need an avatar, a parallel reality, -is that what you mean by bilocation?- in order to keep our demons alive. This is going back to the notion that we actually need a utopia, for the sake of our psychological and political sanity. It is actually the rejection of ideology and utopia as effective political tools what interests me more in the text; the possibility to redefine the politics of architectural practice beyond those two avatars. In the face of going back to utopias etc, I actually quite like cybernetic Catholicism… the braiding of artificial intelligence and images!
To be more case-specific: when you are designing an airport, there is probably very little you can dictate about body motion once the transport, logistic and security consultants have finished with their specs. However, it is very different if the roof is a curved shell, or a rectangular box with skylights, and there are several effects associated to that form, experiential, affective, political, symbolic… Those are the ones that have to be delivered by architecture “simultaneously” with representation.
I believe that this possible hybridization of materialist and figurative thought is what Emilio and agfa8x are both posing, with some interesting references. The question is, Emilio, do you see a role for ideology to play in the politicization of architecture today?

I am close to finishing the articles. Once done I will post some more thoughts an dtry and respond to the essays and posts made above more specifically.

true noctilucent, that is not a very sensitive reading of your proposal, but I am trying to understand waht do you mean by bilocation... Can you please give us a concrete example in the discipline, that we can understand?

a very explicit, and explicit as in very revelatory and not to oppose it to implicit (since to a large degree, i think the difference between explicit and implicit lies in the degree of the observer/thinker's intelligence, imagination and sensitivity), is the myriad of associations relating material to thought, bilocating one in the other and in itself; from the point of view of design intention: bilocating the architect's mind into parallel trains of throught; from the experiential viewpoint: bilocating the visitor in the mundane indexical world of the simple presence of concrete, glass, stone...and in the world of the virtual: associative, reminiscent, historical.

randomly, popularly and generally:

peter zumthor: an architectural syntax of materials 'echoes' (an appropriate word for his poetic, i think) is an imaginary refinement of nature. mineral, water, light, cave, trees...
he thinks in a bilocational manner, one location being in the constructing realm of creation and the other in the imagined realm of the created. mythopoetic, archetypal...he bilocates metaphorically

peter eisenman: his architectural syntax is an integration of human systems as they transform themselves into architecture, be they architectural, linguistic, scientific. he is as interested in the actual material (linguistic or visual) as he is in the internal process of form-ation. he bilocates both analogically in his methodology and metaphorically in his aim. the methodology is tailored to result in particular visual/syntactical/linguistic semblances and vice versa.

in actual fact, eisenman's internality of thought-building inscribed formally is an iconic precedent that paved the way for the solipsistic space of parametric design and for the conception of morphogenesis and phylogenesis. the notion of a mathematical and genetical differentiation of sameness within architecture cannot be fathomed without the preceding step whereby the eisenmanian "Crisis" between architectural form and its associative proclivities had to be resolved through architectural form stealing some very High-Art/High-Science associations for itself while outwardly decrying any outward associations. In other words, the resolution of the Eisenmanian track was through an architectural mythological hypocrisy dividing the stated explicit from the unstated/unstatabe implicit: the bilocation here is subliminally antagonistic: the analogy that favours methodology and therefore could give architecture a genetically and mathematically secure ground contra the shameful but really irrepressible metaphor that favours the gossamer fickleness of appearance, the seeming whimsy of it. now, i believe that the first instance between the created entity and the existing entity within the analogical association, the first moment of analogy (after the index of course), is metaphorical. there must be an intention to elicit some virtual kind of likeness, rather than an experiential sensible kind of likeness, in the mind of the author to appropriate and translate the method of the existing for the creation.

however, this particular post-eisenman lineage's prejudice against the metaphor is so pronounced, that all metaphorical tinges within the analogy are totally overlooked to the extent that the intention of the analogy is overlooked. for this party, the analogy loses whimsy and stops being fiction...fiction and fact collapse into each other and the history of analogy is lost. analogy, and therefore association, is then seen as inherent and not associative. architecture starts to have inherent 'genes' and 'formulas. this latter group bilocates as any other, but it cannot see that it bilocates.

and regarding utopia, of course the creation of utopia requires bilocation but the intention of utopia is not at all bilocational. it favours one location, the utopic ("no place"). a utopia realized is therefore phagocytic, eating away the messy real and replacing it with the ordered virtual. bilocation as it is, however, accepts the disordered, or varied, virtual. its a baroque and complex intertwining of narratives, myths, of the foundation of logic even prior to logic itself...

and when i said: "Perhaps when materialists start talking symbolism and “some sort of figuration”, its not an external contradiction, not an eccentricity, so much as a fissure of confession in the glamour and an owning-up gesture of belonging to the tradition of cultural and emotional avatarism."

i meant to say that this fissure is due to the necessary resurfacing of the irrepressible metaphor even within the minds of the anti-metaforests.

correction :his architectural syntax is an integration of human systems as they transform themselves into architecture

not transform, translate rather.

noctilucent, what you describe above relates more to schizophrenic situations, i.e., states characterized by the coexistence of contradictory or incompatible elements, rather than to bilocational situations. Perhaps even more schizophrenia-lite. [Or are schizophrenia-lite and bilocation-lite somewhat similar?]

Coexistence and bilocation are not the same thing.


Schizophrenia is a one split.
Bilocation is two of the same.

is bi-location enough locations?

bilocate: the same existing, acknowledgedly, in two different places.
schizophrenia occupies the same place but in two different, unacknowledging, understandings of place. i meant bilocation really. a mind pursuing a myth while pursuing the construction of reality, feeling orpheus as they design their underground spaces.

bilocate: the same existing, acknowledgedly, in two different places.
schizophrenia occupies the same place but in two different, unacknowledging, understandings of place. i meant bilocation really. a mind pursuing a myth while pursuing the construction of reality, feeling orpheus as they design their underground spaces.

actually you can also multilocate, beauty and the beast theme multilocates in countless hollywood movies.

Professor Aplomb;

I'm just seeing the mind as 'Virgil' guiding through the virtual and the tangible as two differently defined but interrelated places. when the mind start to fight itself, Virgil divided, then, yes schizophrenia sets in...as in the parametric instance

isn't bilocation (in noctilucent's sense) an unnecessarily binary concept? myth / reality is a fairly polar distinction. Multilocation starts to sound a bit more promising - it resonates with Peter Sloterdijk's propositions about 'air-conditioning': he suggests that we always need to ask where something takes place: what support systems must be maintained in order for any proposition or act to occur.

asexual reproduction isn't monadic, just efficient, and it is usually triggered environmentally (due to an abundance of nutrients, for example).

even athena erupts contextually.

isn't bilocation an example of the kind of philosophical idealism that AZP is countering with his speciation of architectural form?

well... agfa8x, that was also what I originally thought, but now that nocti has explained a bit further, I think he is actually holding a very similar position to most people in this forum; I personally quite like this one:

"and regarding utopia, of course the creation of utopia requires bilocation but the intention of utopia is not at all bilocational. it favours one location, the utopic ("no place"). a utopia realized is therefore phagocytic, eating away the messy real and replacing it with the ordered virtual. bilocation as it is, however, accepts the disordered, or varied, virtual. its a baroque and complex intertwining of narratives, myths, of the foundation of logic even prior to logic itself..."

I found two other pieces of information related to this thread, both in archinect:

1. AZP on "double agenda", on eikongraphia's thread.

link

May double agenda be a variation of bilocation?

2. GSD seem to heve got the recipe from AZP's text, and invited Sloterdijk and Latour together. I notice that agfa8x is already tuned in...

link

before things get too carried away here...

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02568a.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilocation#cite_note-mcevilley-4




"bilocation as it is, however, accepts the disordered, or varied, virtual. its a baroque and complex intertwining of narratives, myths, of the foundation of logic even prior to logic itself..."

Gosh, that sounds just like Quondam.

i have to confess i don't understand noctilucent's paragraph, albatross. 'utopia realised' is not a valid concept, and virtual/real is not a valid binary.

noctilucent, presuming that by 'real' you mean what deleuze calls 'actual', are you using 'bilocation' to mean simultaneously present in the actual and the virtual? But actual and virtual aren't worlds like heaven and earth that we could bridge bilocationally - they are enfoldings of one real.

noctilucent is just making it up as he goes along, or, more precisely, he reads my recent syndrome postings (and other posts) and then thinks hard about them and then writes something overintellecualized.

The real answers regarding bilocation selves evidently reside in two places.

And be careful not to confuse bilocation for duplicity.

can you just hold your self-promotion for five minutes? i don't care if noctilucent is using your definition or not. I just want to understand what s/he means.

i didn't use his definition, see above. and what a sporadic outbreak of per corellesque aut(ego)ism. one more ghostly dissipation.

agfa8x, its really there, stated and all. i don't understand what it is that you didn't understand. also, the fact that you can still name them implies that you can still conceive of their difference and segregation. simply endowing them with a poderous ontological unity does not undermine the more hysterical epistemelogical schism of duality. i guess epistemelogical wounds are like entropy; they can only get 'worse' rather than 'better'.

My posts here regarding bilocation have nothing to do with my ego; they have to do with usurpation and wrongful employment of the term.

i have stated before, i never did not come across the word either in your posts or your website. usurp your indignation.

"never did not" actually means you did. How Freudian.

actually means you're just being assholic now.

No, you're being a liar.

http://www.archinect.com/forum/threads.php?id=80313_0_42_0_C
for a start

u silly man, do you really think i actually read everything you write?
i said, i came across it in a pop song. now fuck off.

and, since its psychology bashing time,for an end

What's really sad (and childish) noctilucent is that you can't publicly admit that you in fact do read what I write, and that you will go to the lengths of even name calling to deny the fact.

Others may have diffuculty understanding you, but I don't have that difficulty.

whats "sad" is that an educated grownup man is pathetically clinging to his obstinance, calls someone a liar without evidence and refuses to register a simple response from my part that will make me no less nor more than who i am. i have no qualms about referencing whatever material i use (i've referenced your usage of plaincy before), i don't even use my real name or persona. noctilucent "fame" is futile.

not calling you qualifying names and pretending to be prim and calling something "sad", when obviously it doesnt make anyone sad at all, would be the childish thing to do. my thought is that you were being a paranoid megalomaniac asshole, a synecdoche working as an analogy (operativly: spewing shit)..thought expressed.

as for your difficulty in reading: read this! and this:

noctilucent: "u silly man, do you really think i actually read everything you write?"

regardless, a fucked up asshole you were, a fucked asshole you remain sitting up or lying down. if i get banned for this, thats also fine. the teeming masses indeed.

now, I will fuck off.

actually, moderators of this thing, do ban me. the shia blood in me covets martydom. you did it before...christ the mihdé (or maybe its just a sad, for real, procrastination of a fake truth..the end of times)

Actually noctilucent, you're the one that's pathetically clinging, where as I have a gigantic labyrinth to stand on.

yes, all assholes stand on a gigantic labyrinth. we know that already.

Is that "we" the bilocated you? And do you (two) know that already because the asshole has shit on you while you lost yourselves in the gigantic labyrinth?

"i never did not come across the word either in your posts or your website."
note 10/25/08 8:20 and 10/25/08 9:15

oops! that was a funny blip on the thread.
Frankly I could not care less about who said what first. It would be far moe interesting whether the term is used in the same way or not. I think that between you there are slight differences which may be relevant to the subject and I would rather concentrate on those...

Okay.
I have been meaning to post for a minute now.

Finally got around to reading the AZP articles. Thanks for the (PDFs), surprised by them (the essays vs previously seen lecture) more than the Latour and Sloterdijk lecture.
First re: recent points in the "discussion".

I think while we may "need" a utopia these essays call for a performative and political architecture (of the envelope) focused on the concept of agency as opposed to ideology.
There is a "political ecology" and "politics's of the envelope", which is AZP speaking of, questioning?

He does make clear however, that facade is not, envelope! Also, micro-politics vs political correctness and how either may, or may not, be more "discursive" than material operation.

Re: additionally, Latour and Sloterdijk. All three are seeking to "depoliticize ecology" it would seem.

Finally, while i think the "cellular/immunological" perspective has gained much attention in recent years, i find the focus "on operation function" more subversion...

Oh and in terms of bi-location...
Is "philosophical idealism" in the same category as ideology?

Probably not..

so - what does he mean by "envelope?"

Toast,
What does he mean by envelope?
Well he is clear not just facade. It seems that AZP concieves of envelope as being the entire surface/exterior (perhaps even shape at least metaphorically) of a structure including roof, portals et al.
I think the reason for distinquishing from facade is that facde by itself is almost to exclusive representational in it's politics as oppossed to AZP's interest in both Re-presentation and micropolitics.

ah - faciality? I'm still not sure how this has gone beyond yet another re-hashing of Deleuze and Guattari. It's like architectural theory culminated with "a thousand plateaus," and over the past 20 or so years we're just continually framing everything around this text as if it were the bible. Maybe it's time to start being a little more critical of the text itself? I have yet to see any substantial alternatives, though...

Still... I'm curious about AZP's articles - are there any online?

Toast there are links in the thread above..

thanks!

first impressions of the article - it's called "the politics of the envelope" and there is no reference of Terragni's Casa del Fascio? I'm guessing since he's referring to a multiplicity of typologies in the current context of capitalism/globalization, maybe this isn't relevant? I think it would be an interesting case study in this context, though...

envelope also includes the demarcation of environmental systems, levels of porosity, thresholds, some kind of implied thickness... not necessarily faciality.

so far pretty interesting, though... kind of all over the place... but interesting. I feel like I've heard most of this before, though...

Nam
Good to see you back! Do you mean that you thought the text was substantially better than the lecture?
In the meantime I tried to listen to the Latour-SloterdijkGSD talk. Funny that the two main references of the AZP text appear now like that. As Mostafavi says "there is something in the air".
What I could listen from the talk, which is basically the Latour bit, I found amazing! (Sloterdijk comes up as a bit of a jerk, although he is obviously being provocative with the politically correct audience at the GSD) I loved the way Latour describes modernity as the extensive space, the all-exterior, and globalisation as the all interior way of moving through the networks, where there is no life "outside"!
How utopia is associated to the lack of space in modernity and pragmatism and materialism become the new political realm of globalisation.
I disagree with you that these two and AZP's text -which is basically an attempt to apply their philosophical discourse to architecture- are about de-politicising ecology. I think that in fact they are trying to ground politics in nature and nature in politics... But you point at what I think is the most interesting point of AZP's texts: utopia has reached an expiry date and there is no need to create a utopia as a solution for the lack of space of modernity and we need to develop the technologies to address the construction of networks or foams that we could inhabit intensely. And those technologies are primarily within the realm of architecture and need to be politicised, like nature and ecology. Forget about utopia and ideology, they are useless to operate within the global world.
Why do you think that we need some utopia?

how can you have agency without ideology?

Alba,

I too really liked the poitn there is not outside anymore and the corresponding concept of "modernity as the extensive space, the all-exterior'

Yes, i thought AZP text(s) were better than the lecture...

I stand by the idea of de-politicising ecology , however to clarify i believe this means first they are interested in moving beyond eco-ideology, and in the case of Latour and Sloterdijk are seeking to emphasize a non-human centered definition of the term. This actually ties in with the discussion about utopia...

By decentering the idea of nature from an idea of a pre-human eco-utopia but to a nature and ecology of the now (human inclusive) one is able to better "politicize" but not ideo(lize) ecological as referencing no longer just how the "global world can be made habitable" but "habitable for billions of humans and trillions of other creatures, we mean a possible collective not nature or society".....

I personally am less interested in Utopia than in operative betterment.. Although, once can be a tool for the other.

social and environmental justice through architecture.

Something like that.. But non ideological?

Nam
I think that what these guys are saying is precisely that, in the global world, de-ideologisation does not mean de-politization but exactly the opposite. And that utopia and other all-encompassing statements such as "social and environmental justice through architecture" have lost their transformative function when everything has become an interior.
Toast's doubts are legitimate, but whether you suscribe to an ideology or not, as an architect you have agency by default. The question is whether you can easily attach this agency to a certain political ideology, and whether that matters at all. That is a doubt shared by Latour's and Sloterdijk's critics who often accuse them of being conservative.
the question is whether we are still living some form of inconclusive modern project where utopia is still effective as a transformative tool, or whether we are entirely beyond and the new global reality requires an entirely different form of politics.
I think AZP's example of Siza's housing in the Netherlands is an excellent description of a non-ideological political agency in architecture.

Alba,
Nice summation...

Perhaps I should have said that what is difficult at this point is whether your agency has positive or negative effects in terms of elevating and distributing material wealth, producing better social synergies, a more democratic decision making... This is where the problem becomes complicated. Hence the doubts.

alba - good points -

from what I understand is that they are treating the envelope as a medium for ideologies to play out - hence non-ideological.

the Siza example is a good example of agency through design, but it still has some traditional dutch elements on it's exterior and its interior is an expression of a non-duch ideology. I'm guessing since the envelope is now the medium where these two ideologies come into contact - this is what they are talking about?

It's dangerous when someone denies the existence of (or claims to be above) ideology(s) in their own thinking - it's like denying that one is the product of one's environment - or that one holds any prejudices. I think the criticism is based on the idiom that only those interested in preserving the status quo deny the existence of ideology. politicization isn't the opposite or absence of ideology. neither is philosophy (as foucault would have you believe).

Toast are you referring to the AZP line of reasoning...?

Toast,
I think what is dangerous is people justifying their architectural or theoretical work on the grounds of ideology. I think in the Siza example it is not so much a matter of ideology but a device to articulate two different cultures. In this case, the limit between public and private does not happen on the line of the envelope, but it is allowed to move inside to allow for the integration of multiple cultures, without taking an ideological position to the subject of gender definition between the Western and the Islamic cultures. It is precisely the lack of an ideological stance what allows Siza to produce a building capable of cultural integration, as opposed to the position of Hertzberger, which AZP associates with Chirac's ban or Britishness...
So, I think the proposal from AZP, derived from Latour and Sloterdijk is that, despite the dangers of losing direction, the agency of the discipline can no longer be grounded on ideology. Precisely because we are a product of our environment: we are part of the material world.
Frankly, I agree with that. I think ideology and utopia are over, part of an obsolete modernist paradigm that is no longer operative.

Even if Siza clames to be neutral, there's still going to be a subconscious favoring of one ideology/culture over the other. nothing is ever going to be completely even.

I see no substantial difference between ideology and culture - I think there's also levels of fluidity in ideology (there's no true either/or - black/white) - and it's difficult to prove that they can hold no influence over design. Hertzberger may have taken the hard-line approach, but AZP only sees ideology in hard-line terms (another conservative trait).

What I think is important is the ability to recognize and challenge ideologies in our own and others work. I do agree that grounding the field in a particular ideology is dangerous (the modernist utopia has been obsolete for several decades) - however it's even more dangerous to ignore that ideologies exist or that we can be free of them in our own work and discourse.

Toast
Siza does not claim to be neutral. His claim is that he wants to accomodate cultural behaviours of an immigrant population that are contrary to the uses in the west, and morally inaccepatable.
I think what they are saying is precisely that "ideologies" have become so fragmented that you can no longer see them. That is the phenomenon of the swing voters versus the partisan approach that we see happening everywhere. The opportunity AZP is pointing at is precisely that: in the absence of comprehensive political ideologies, there is an opportunity for architecture to take a central role as a political agency that does not simple implement political ideologies.
But the question is complex because we are used to talk about politics in a certain way and with a certain lexicon, and I do not think the article solves the problem of directionality yet... Let me think about this a bit longer...

In order for agency to exist, you need to be able to challenge ideologies. if ideologies have become so fragmented that we can't see them any more - then why do we need agency?

That's right. This is also what troubles me, as I can also see political ideologies at play. The neocons and the fundamentalists are a good example of that, and they are very much alive and well. In Europe there has been a surge of the radical left and the xenophobic, neo-fascist movements as a result of eocnomic duresse... However, it may be just wishful thinking but I believe that those are still segments of the population that are constantly decreasing to the benefit of an electorate that is increasingly bipartisan, made of swing voters... Maybe the downturn will eventually reverse the process of de-politisation and re-construct ideologies. But frankly I do not think this will happen. What is happening on a global scale is that the proletariat has been exported from the first world to the emerging economies, and that has elliminated political friction across classes, as they have been located in different compartments. True, in the UK and other European economies there has been an increase of inequality. And locally, emerging economies have also suffered from an increase of the class gaps. Will see how the downturn pans out. But even if there is a reversal into a radicalisation of politics, what is the role that architecture can play in the achievement of a more just and more democratic global society? Do architects remain the device that "re-presents" and therefore intensify political struggle or do we become the vehicle that enable a more integrated society, like in the Siza case?

I should have added: become the vehicle of a more integrated society at the risk to elliminate awareness of the political and consequently sanction the status quo, even involuntarily.
Pragmatists, with their flexibility and desire to ply to the existing forces run the risk of becoming an instrument rather than a legitimate social and political agency, and contribute to erase the political debate from the public's consciousness. On the other hand, agonists, ideologists and utopians, by emphasising or representing the political struggle may also contribute involuntarily not only to the consolidation of the status quo, but to its radicalisation. Even worst, to operate as vehicles of representation of the political struggle will most likely deprive architects from true agency.
If you look at the epilogue of the AZP text, there is a very messy attempt to propose a certain political directionality to the practice. Some of the ideas are in fact dangerous and volatile, but if we were able to locate political targets within the discipline, we would be able to retrieve some political agency.

Alba
"The opportunity AZP is pointing at is precisely that: in the absence of comprehensive political ideologies, there is an opportunity for architecture to take a central role as a political agency that does not simple implement political ideologies."

Then Lexicon is a performative one, correct? Which requires agency...

Nam
Sorry, I do not understand your question. Can you elaborate? This is not a rethorical question, I simply do not understand what performative one is. And why does it require agency...

Alba,
What i was trying to ask was that given (your above quote I cited), would the Lexicon of this sort of non-ideological political architecture be one based on the concept of a performative micro-politics?

If so, and to then tie in toast's point, agency would be assumed/required within such a construct(ed) architecture, because without it, how could it be political.

Or did I make it less clear? Basically i was arguing for the relevancy of agency un-connected to the existence of ideology...

perhaps the only reason there is no ideology is because we're stuck between a dystopia and a remedial prescriptive future...heaven is no longer an option, we know we're heading to hell and we're trying not to...but the moment of our own history is just flinging us there. what is sustainability but a remedial measure to save us from killing ourself.

the idea that there is no utopia simply because utopia is somewhat an unfashionable idea, or that its not conducive to a healthy politics, thats an insufficient reason. maybe we're bored by utopia because its just too ambitious, too projective (which is the name flung around by the pragmatists) and the banal run of our history (history running out of itself) cannot measure up to any other singular aim other than our mass death. it is natural and banal to die, it is not natural and quite spectavular to reach nirvana in life.

perhaps the only reason there is no ideology is because we're stuck between a dystopia and a remedial prescriptive future...heaven is no longer an option, we know we're heading to hell and we're trying not to...but the moment of our own history is just flinging us there. what is sustainability but a remedial measure to save us from killing ourself.

the idea that there is no utopia simply because utopia is somewhat an unfashionable idea, or that its not conducive to a healthy politics, thats an insufficient reason. maybe we're bored by utopia because its just too ambitious, too projective (which is the name flung around by the pragmatists) and the banal run of our history (history running out of itself) cannot measure up to any other singular aim other than our mass death. it is natural and banal to die, it is not natural and quite spectavular to reach nirvana in life.

perhaps the only reason there is no ideology is because we're stuck between a dystopia and a remedial prescriptive future...heaven is no longer an option, we know we're heading to hell and we're trying not to...but the moment of our own history is just flinging us there. what is sustainability but a remedial measure to save us from killing ourself.

the idea that there is no utopia simply because utopia is somewhat an unfashionable idea, or that its not conducive to a healthy politics, thats an insufficient reason. maybe we're bored by utopia because its just too ambitious, too projective (which is the name flung around by the pragmatists) and the banal run of our history (history running out of itself) cannot measure up to any other singular aim other than our mass death. it is natural and banal to die, it is not natural and quite spectavular to reach nirvana in life.

perhaps the only reason there is no ideology is because we're stuck between a dystopia and a remedial prescriptive future...heaven is no longer an option, we know we're heading to hell and we're trying not to...but the moment of our own history is just flinging us there. what is sustainability but a remedial measure to save us from killing ourself.

the idea that there is no utopia simply because utopia is somewhat an unfashionable idea, or that its not conducive to a healthy politics, thats an insufficient reason. maybe we're bored by utopia because its just too ambitious, too projective (which is the name flung around by the pragmatists) and the banal run of our history (history running out of itself) cannot measure up to any other singular aim other than our mass death. it is natural and banal to die, it is not natural and quite spectavular to reach nirvana in life.