Mario Carpo This essay originated as a ‘paper presented at the confer- ence “Architecture between Spectacle and Use” at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, in April 2005. The complete transactions will be published by the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in association with Yale University Press (2006). 1. “Architecuares non standard” Centre Pompidou, Paris, December 10, 200}- March 1, 2008, with an accompanying publication ofthe same tile, ed. Frederic Migayrou and Zeynep Meanan (Pais Edvions du Centre Pompidou, 2005), wwas followed by "Metamorph" the Sth International Architecture Biennale in Yenice, directed by Kure W. Forster, September 12-November 7, 2004, and toto conferences dealing with the subject: *Non-Standard Praxis, Emergent Principles of Architectural Praxis swith/in Digital Technologies” convened ae MIT September 24-26, 2094 (ard tecture.mit.edu/project/asp), and “Devices of Design,” organized by the Canadian Centre for Architeceure and the Fondation Daniel Langlois for Art, Science and Technology in Montréal londation-linglois.org/devicesofde- sign), cochaved by Mirko Zardi (ECA) and Jean Gagnon (Fondation Daniel Langlois), November 18-19, 2004 2. See Mario Carpo's review ofthe exhi bition, “Archicectures non standard” Journal ofthe Sciey of rchtectaral Historians 64/2 (2008): 234-1. 3. See Michael Speaks, “After Theory” Arhitectural Record (June 1005): 72-75 4. Gilles Deleuze, Difference et répéiton (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1968); se exp. chap. 4 “Syathive wale dela difference”: 218-5; Gilles Deleuze, Le pis Leibniz tle baroque (Pari Eadsions de Minuit, 188); se esp. chap. 2, Les plis dans ime,” 20-17; his was ‘anilated by Tom Conley as The Fold Leibnis andthe Baraque Minneapolis University of Minnesota Press, 1993), chap. 2, “The Folds inthe Soul,” 14-26. Tempest ina Teapot The theory of nonstandard architecture is the latest avatar to date of the digital revolution in architecture, now already in its second decade. Several major events that followed Frédéric Migayrou’s exhibition at the Centre Pompidou in Paris last year! have resulted in a certain degree of consensus about what nonstandard architecture might be. However, there is less consensus on why we might need it. European critics often characterize nonstandard architectural forms as a revival or a vindication of 20th-century organicism, but they fail to explain why organicism is a better idea now than it was a century ago. More ominously, in the United States at least, nonstandard technologies are sometimes advocated as the harbinger of new architectural values that are inher- ently antitheoretical, anticritical, proudly consumerist, hedonistic, and market-friendly.’ These number among the reasons some architects and theoreticians of an older genera- tion have taken a stance against all that relates to digital technologies in architecture and design. But the digital need not be seen as a Trojan horse for the commodification of design; neither is it true that all of the theoreticians and designers who have embraced computer-based design and manufacturing are neocapitalist zealots. In fact, I know some who are socialists. In its simplest technical definition, nonstandard seriality means the mass production of nonidentical parts. This implies a complete reversal of the mechanical paradigm, in which mass production generates economies of scale on the condition that all items in the same series are identical, as in the traditional assembly line. On the contrary, digital tech- nologies applied simultaneously to design and manufacturing can generate the same economies of scale while mass-pro- ducing a series in which all items are different, albeit differ ent within limits. On the eve of the digital revolution, Gilles Deleuze famously anticipated this technological shift in his studies of difference and repetition, and derived from his somewhat peculiar interpretation of Leibniz’s differential calculus the dual notion of objet and objectile,+ which still aptly defines the basic principle of a nonstandard series: one objectile in many objets — in a language that Aristotle would 995. towever, when one mabematical lan frag choven ter pci parame Se vironment far digil dvgn ou production it canbe argued tha ome Sachets enprencions are more ee rom than others and more clegae qutons ny beget more clans al farm. Ths objection wes pitted out 0 ime recenily by Greg Lyanyand would require lengthier dacusion than te hee prom diferent vantage points, tech blogs and abervrs ofthe prs visual environmen re coming fo similar Conlovons. Se Wendy Hui Ryong Shun, “On Sofware or the Perience {Wal Knowledge in ry Rav 8 (Weiner 2008) 27 More precy en and coffe service (Ale offer and Ten Tower) See Greg Lynn, "arom alee in ‘Arcbitctare nonstandard el Miggyrou dnd Mennan, 31h orginal projet inched 50,00 variation of which 99 wrere fabricated sion to three thors copes according commercial informacion farised by Ales Sp). 8. See Obj Cearck Beaued and Bernard Cache), “Yer une architecture toc in dciere on tended be have found more congenial, one form in many events; in the language of contemporary computer engineering, one algo- rithm in many digical files. A nonstandard series is not defined by its relation to the shape of any individual item in it, whether round or square or formless. What defines it are the variances or differentials between all sequential items in the series, regardless of any specific form, Te also follows that all items in the same non- standard series constitute a set, where each item has some- thing in common with all of the others. In technological terms, all items in a nonstandard series share some algo- rithms, as well as some of the machines used to process those algorithms and to produce the objects themselves. In visual terms, a nonstandard series comprises a theoretically unlim- ited number of items that can all be different, but must also be to some extent similar insofar as certain design parame- ters and technical processes that were used to make them leave a trace that is detectable in all end products. Similarity and resemblance, however, are not scientific notions, and they are notoriously difficult to assess and measure. The classical tradition, which is based on imitation, hence on similarity, has been trying to nail down a workable notion of similarity almost from the beginning of time, a precedent seemingly ignored by computer and cognitive scientists today. Algorithms, software, hardware, and digital manufac turing tools are the new standards that determine the general aspect of all items in the same nonstandard series, as well as which aspects of each item may change, and within which limits, randomly or by design.* However, unlike a mechani- cal imprint, which physically stamps things out, an algorith- mic imprint lets forms change from one item to the next in the series. Itis thus safe to say that all items in a nonstandard series share the same style, in the original sense of the term, which referred to the tool used for writing, not to the inten- tions of the writer. Today's stilus is not the style of the designer but the inevitable trace left by the software the de- signer uses — which, like Cicero's stilus, is man-made and produced by specialized technicians. Comparing two nonstandard series recently created by two of the most alert interpreters of the digital environment may help to illustrate this point. Greg Lynn's series of 99 teapots for the luxe Italian manufacturer Alessi? and Bernard Cache’s Projective Tables,* an open-ended series, both fea- ture items that are visibly different from, yer strikingly simi- lar to all other items in the same series. The peculiar “stilus” 1009. The opposition between “identical” and “differential” reproduction was posed by Greg Lynn, who relates the for- ‘mer to the modes of operating “simple machines” and the latter to “intricate ‘machines” in the introduction to his Folding in Arcbiteeture (London: Wiley, 2004), 12, frst published as 4D Magezine 16, no.}~4 Profile 102 (1993). 10. Mario Carpo, “Pattern Recognition,” in Metamorph, Focus: 9th Imernational Architecture Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia, e. Kurt W. Forster (Venice: Marsilio, and New York: Rizzoli International, 2004), 44-58. of each series derives in part from different technological platforms employed, but mostly from different adaptations of existing design software that were implemented by the two authors, each creating his own range of variabilites and his own set of self-imposed limits. Lynn favors software based on differential calculus, whereas Cache developed an interface based on projective geometry. Each choice can be justified, but neither was inevitable. In both cases, the figural result is distinctive: Lynn's differential calculus begets smoothness and continuity of surfaces; Cache’s projective geometry begets angular intersections of planes in three dimensions. The shift from mechanical to algorithmic production prefigures a parallel and equally crucial shift in our visual environment at large. We are leaving behind a world of forms determined by exactly repeatable visible imprints and moving toward a new visual environment dominated by exactly transmissible but invisible algorithms. In the age of mechanical reproduction, the identification — hence the meaning ~ of forms depended on their identicality. But in the new world of algorithmic or differential reproducibility,? visual identicality is replaced by similarity, which is far less easy to identify. It follows that our capacity to infer meaning and value (including market value) from objects made in a nonstandard environment does not depend on the identifica~ tion of visually identical forms, but rather on the recogni- tion of hidden patterns ~ a risky and unpredictable cognitive process.!0 To some extent, the ongoing discussion of the so-called crisis of indexicality in contemporary architecture may be seen as.a sign of the impending and much more momentous demise of identicality, upon which much of our architectural and visual environment depend. Most mechanically repro- duced objects and forms are indexical of the imprint that made them, but most handmade, premechanical, and algo- rithmically produced items are not. The erratic drifis of manual copies may distort or confuse the sign of the original archetype, and as a result conceal the identity of its maker; the unlimited variances of high-tech, digitally controlled differential reproduction may have the same effect, up toa point. Trademarks, coats of arms, imprints, logos, flags, uni- forms, passports, banknotes, photographs, and the like were indispensable signs of identity in an age when signs (and forms) were mechanically printed, and the identicality of the sign stood for the identity and the authority of its maker. But identical reproduction is often meaningless and worth- 10111 See the ecent exhibition “Trade Show" curated by Rebecea Uchil, Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Ary, January 29~May 3, 2005 Cmassmo- ca.ory/visual_arts/images/tradeshow/T radeShow Catalog pdf), 16-17. 12. There is also a certain logic tothe fer thar much of what defines our present digitally driven visual envionment may be characterized 35 Be reverse, or equal and opposite 1 some of the categories that Benjamin famously brought to ce forefront with his 936 essay "The Work of Artin che Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” tans. Harry Zoho, in Muninatons: Eeays and Reflection, ed. Hannah Arends (New York: Schocken Books, 1968), 217-5. 1, Robin Evans, “Translations from Drawing to Building,” 44 Fle 12 (1986) 3-18, subsequently published in Robin Evans, Tanslaion from Drawing to Buslding and Other Entaye (London: The Architectural Associaton Publications; Cambridge, Massachusetes: MIT Pees 1999), 194-95 14, With a diferent bia, similar argue teas are made inthe nedoctin to Digital Tecnico Neil Leach, Dad Taenbul and Chris Willams (Landon: Wiley Academy, 2008), 4-1 seep. #5 '5Or ales it came oe inthe course athe ith censarySigiied Giedion Famouly acd he beginnings ofthe ‘modern sembly line tothe andar zation of mana bicut-makingin England durig the Napoleonic Wars in theVicualing Office af the Navy a Depfor, an in Portsmouth, 104-10), anda shown how wguencing and rdiaaion ofthe atnanal gesture preceded the introduction ofthe st, Pitcesof machinery. See Mechencation Taber Command: 4 conrbution any. snus Bray (1998 rope, New York Norcon an Co 1969), The for real equencing of the five rues or ting 0 pint one phe inthe evolution modes of bere frag production, rom arian drinks lke wine to industrial ones suchas Cota Coa 16, Se, for example the ange of prod- ucts and sevice offered by Gehry Technologies, based in Lov Angeles gehryechacogiscom), Scores of Is fSinous companies around the world have already ily adopted negated CAD. CAM ethnlogjes fora vary af bie makes, from prelabricaed bul ing components, o sone cing, to ined devices less in a digitized environment, where recognition depends on more complex patterns of cognitive perception, and iden- tification is increasingly taken over by new technologies of algorithmic encryption. Authors and artists may not be aware of this incumbent and possibly epochal wave of change," but corporate lawyers grappling with the right of copy in the new digital economy have not failed to take notice. Identical copies were essential and mostly inevitable in the mechanical world, but they are accidental and mostly evitable in the digital world — just as identical reproduction was accidental and mostly avoided in the premechanical world. There is an ironic symmetry (even a vindication of sorts) in the fact that some of our contemporaries, baffled by the apparent randomness and illegibility of differential reproduction, now attribute to identical reproduction some of the nostalgic and “auratic” value that Walter Benjamin famously attributed to premechanical, handmade originals early in the last century, when art theory first embraced the logic of identical reproducibility.!? The rise of CAD-CAM technologies also heralds a new division of labor in the production of the built environment, one which reverses the trend the West has been witnessing since at least the 15th century. Alberti was the first to stipu- late that architects should stop making things and design things instead. In the centuries that followed, with a few notable exceptions, drawings were the inevitable bottleneck through which all architecture had to pass before it could be built: drawings had to be translated into buildings ~ once again, an instance of identical reproduction - and only that which could be drawn and measured in drawings could be built. And built by others: as Alberti mandated, that servile and mechanical operation is not the architect's business. CAD-CAM technologies have already changed this early- modern, then modern paradigm. Anything drawn with a CAD program is already measured in three dimensions, so it is geometrically buildable; in some cases, CNC milling machines or similar tools can automatically build these pla- nar drawings, printing them out, as it were, in the three dimensions of an X-Y-Z space. The whole technological sys- tem, from screen to manufacturing, or from file to factory, emulates the process of traditional hand-making, from con- ception to formation, including the various phases of feed- back and interaction between ideas and the qualities of the matter to be formed. Digital technologies act as an almost organic, rather than prosthetic, extension of the hand of the maker. Again, this may point to the forthcoming rise of new 102GREG LYNN, PRODUCTION PROTO: ‘TvPES, ALESSI COFFEE AND TEA ‘Towers, 2001. PHOTO: Gree LYNN Form, BrLow: TECTON (BERTHOLD ‘LupeTKIN), PENGUIN Poot, LONDON, 1934 17, For an account of Berthold Lubetkin’s dealings with penguins, and bis photo- {graphs of some of the original penguins Contemplating the model of the pool, sce Job Allan, Berthold Lubeekin Architecture and the Tradition of Progress London: RIBA Publications, 1992), esp. the image on 198, forms of digital artisanship, and for most of today’s digital avant-garde, the separation between design and production has already been breached."* Both Lynn and Cache are con- ceivers and makers, designers and artisans, industrialists and engineering consultants, and yet they are none of these, because in a digital environment, the traditional division of mechanical labor no longer applies, and some roles and tasks that were separated by the mechanical revolution are already being reunited by the digital one. However, in spite of our newly acquired technological abilities, variations for variation’s sake are not likely to stand the test of time. Much has already been said about the appar- ent frivolity of a technological revolution that culminates in a series of 99 slightly different and horrifically expensive teapots. One might argue that making good tea is a fairly standard procedure," and that if the function of making tea does not change, there is no reason why the form of the teapot should. One response would be that design experi- ments are typically performed at less than the scale of a building, and that more crucial objects of manufacture than a teapot may follow (and some already have, although in a less glamorous fashion). For the sake of analogy, we may remember that one of the most celebrated demonstrations of modernism’s use of reinforced concrete was built in London in 1934 for the exclusive benefit of a small community of penguins. Penguins are noble and elegant beings to be sure, but generally incapable of articulate feedback, and hence as a group, they are of modest sociological interest.” Modernism was not about penguins, and nonstandard is not only about teapots. These nascent nonstandard technolo- 10318, See Stanley M. Davis, Future Perfect Reading, Massachusers: Addison- Wesley, 1987), where the expression “mass customization” fist seems to have ‘curred; and Joseph B. Pine, Mate Gustomizaton: The New Fromier in Business Competiin, foreword Stanley M Davis (Boston: Harvard Business School ress, 1999). The vem was brought to theatention af architects and designers by William J. Mitchell in che late 190s, See also Daggnar Steffen, *Produire en masse pour chaciny" drcbiteeure 4 Aujaurd 383 Jay -Avsgust 2004): 102-07 gies may deliver mass production and economies of scale without the ironclad rules of product standardization that accompanied the industrial mode of production. Custom- made products at the same cost as mass-produced, standard- ized ones would mean better, cheaper, and more suitable products for many. When the form of objects must follow human functions, standardized mass production generally aims at the average user or customer, and neglects the statis- tical margins. When one size must fit all, users who don't fit the mold — whether physically or ideologically, by choice or by necessity — must pay more to have what they need made to measure. Nonstandard technologies promise to alleviate this tax on diversity. Nonstandard production may also appear to multiply the variety of some commodities beyond necessity, fostering artificial cycles of demand and consumption. Indeed, the concept of mass customization began as a marketing strategy before the advent of CAD-CAM technologies,!* and offering multiple options for the same product is an old gimmick of mechanical mass production, but the apparent multiplication of choice in a mechanical environment (often limited to cos- metic aspects, such as color) should not be confused with the scope of seamless nonstandard seriality in a digital environ- ment. Earlier this year, the latest generation of Objectile’s Projective Tables was shown in a Paris art gallery, and priced and sold accordingly. The exhibition included a computer station, where the customer was invited to set variables for designing the table of his or her choice; a digital file could later be emailed to the customer for further verifications at home (for example, to double-check the measurements) before the order was sent to the factory, and the table cut and made to measure, shipped, and delivered, either flat- packed or already assembled and ready for use. True, uncu- rious Parisian customers could simply buy one of the tables on display in the gallery and walk away with it. However, neither the factory nor the technology is fictional. When the whole system is put to use as planned, there is no reason for Objectile’s industrially mass-produced tables (a bookshelf is also in the works) to be more expensive than Ikea’s. Unlike Ikea furniture, each of Objectile’s pieces will be made-to- measure and one of a kind, yet like Ikea’s “Billy” bookshelf, a standard in millions of homes around the world, Objectile’s furniture, despite its differences, will be easily recognized by all who have seen just one piece. Ac the scale of architectural design, the tectonic implica- tions of nonstandard technologies are equally vast and easier 104Onjectite, Projective Tastes. to measure. When form must follow structural constraints, such as load and stress, standardization inevitably leads to oversizing and the waste of materials. Regrettably, this is perfectly rational within the economy of a mechanical envi- ronment. Take a beam, for example. Often only one section is subject to the greatest stress, and thus requires the maxi mum momentum of inertia, or simply the maximum size and strength, whereas all other sections could be decremen tally smaller. However, as beams with uniform sections are cheaper to mass-produce than beams with variable sections, and the savings in the cost of mass-producing standardized beams vastly offsets the cost of the material wasted in each beam, all sections in a beam are often made equal to the one that is subject to the maximum stress. This kind of wasteful- ness has characterized civil engineering for most of the sec~ ond half of the 20th century. But the pattern can be reversed with nonstandard technologies, which make it possible to envisage structural components that are both mass-produced and made-to-measure, thereby achieving economies in both 105ted this potential of nonstandard technologies in his dis- ‘cussion of some structures built in the 1990s by Shoei Yoh, in which eraditional building materials and craftsmanship swore merged with advanced digital tech- iologies. Greg Lynn, “Classicism and Vitality” im Shoei Yob, ed. Anthony Tannacci (Milan: L’Arca Edizioni, 1997), 15, See alto Lynn's “Odawara Municipal Sports Complex” in Shoei Yoh, 67-70; and “Shoei Yoh, Prefeetura Gymnasium,” in Folding in Architecture, 79 20. Manuel De Landa, *Material Complexity," in Digital Tectonics, 20-21. 21, similar isomorphism between Gothic visualiy and scholastic philoso phy was famously suggested by Erwin Panofsky in Gorbic Architerure and Scholasicim (Latrobe, Pennsylvania Archabbey Press, 1951). 22. Lewis Mumford, Technic and Civilization (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1938); see esp. chap. 8.1, “The Dissolution of ‘The Machine’ and chap. 8.2, ‘Toward an Organic Ideology,” 368-72, 2}, John Ruskin, The Seven Lamp of Architecture (London: Smith, Elder and Co,, 1849); se esp. chap. 5, “The Larmp of Life” XXI: 14; see also John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice CLondan: Smith, Elder and Co,, 1851-58), §: (1851), ILIV. 5,198, Manio Canpo 1s associaTE PROFES- SOR IN ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY AND ‘THEORY AT THE ScHooL OF ARCHITECTURE, PaRIS-La VILLETTE, AND CONSULTING HEAD OF THE Srupy CenTRe AT THE CANADIAN (CENTRE FOR ARCHITECTURE, MonrREAt. the processes of production and the use of materials.” Digital tools will also facilitate the use of materials characterized by nonlinear elasticity, such as plastics or ceramics, and even timber or stone, which, being natural and not standardized, include irregularities that make their structural behavior unpredictable.2 Nonstandard technologies could interact with such irregularities and adapt form and design to the variability of nature almost as easily as artisanal manipula tion always did. In short, structural design could again become an art form, as it was up until a century ago, when building material was rare and human intelligence abundant: for most of the last century, the reverse has been the case. Moreover, we are now aware, as the preindustrial world always was but the industrial world often wasn’, that most building materials are nonrenewable resources, and that their supply is limited. Ingenuity in structural design is no longer just a matter of pride on the part of the maker: it is a matter of social responsibility for all users. In sum, it appears that the rise of the nonstandard para- digm, based on digital technologies, implies the complete reversal of some technical, economic, social, and visual prin- ciples that have characterized the mechanical age for almost five centuries. It is a commonplace of media studies that the new digital environment is in many ways closer to the world of script that preceded print than the age of printing, which digital technologies are replacing. Digital technologies applied to design and manufacturing may prompt similar interpretations. Although projected into the future, this also points to a pre-Albertian technical and visual environment, a new scholasticism of sorts, based on algorithmically defined fixed genera and endlessly morphing species.” This is a world that one of the greatest moralists of the 20th century, Lewis Mumford, prophesied as forthcoming: a neotechnical age that would stamp out the paleotechnical, mechanical age that he decried as the source of all evil. This is also a world that the greatest moralist of the 19th century, John Ruskin, situated in the distant past, in the golden age of Gothic arti- sanship, before the slavish art of the Renaissance turned artisans into machines (Marx might have called them prole- tarians) and European architecture lost all light and all life, as Ruskin thought, forever. But the forthcoming neotechni- cal, nonstandard world cannot be described in Benjaminian terms, and many architects and critics trained in the 20th century would find it meaningless. Mies van der Rohe probably would not have understood it, and Rem Koolhaas probably won't. 106