Fi ete Ua acl its intellectual and sensory capacities are eet Taunt ee eR an een ga Perce ac ue n Cee ue ott Cee ae sc eee quently, architectural discourse has dealt with a static concept of the body, an Ee Re mi) eet ee ake] eae en cc Sc these traditional notions, the theoretical disposition of the collection posits that in a contemporary reading on the very ems me ed understand that there are many bodies individual, collective, mystical, corporate, onal, animal, even the prosthetic eT) eee oc) ~8 JUN 2012 25 SEP 2012 EP 1012 ili Ae occa ee Ca eee net ead Seem CUE hac The projects presented in the collection eee en een ete) SO Teed STO ues es Re Mn eee Preece Ra uCc a Sen oc ue Cty Soe eN en conse eet OO ee eR tally through the use of film-making Pees ee a RC DE ee cd Cie ecu us Dee eS ce Cer Re ty De eee ae et Te eu aes Anthony Vidler and Arie Graafland; an ee Ucar De ue ac) SS ste RL artist Dryden Goodwin. 7212 DsD The Body in Architecture The Body in Meee Lh ie Lele T eMC TCL PTT ae NAQ5C B668‘The Body in ArchitectureDaft School of Design Series on Architecture and Urbanism Series Editor ei Graafland Editorial Board I Miciol Hays (Harvard University, USA) ‘Akos Moravansaky (ETHZirich, Switzerland) Micha Muller (Braman University, Garay) Frank R, Werner (Univrsty of Wuppertal, Germany) Gord Zimmermann (Bashaus University, Germany) The Bod Architec Editor Deborah Hauptmann With contributions by Bart Akkerhuis, Stefano Boeri, M. Christine Boyer, Juanita Fonseca, Arie Graafland, Karsten Harries, Deborah Hauptmann, Eric Havadi, Patrick Healy, Leslie Jaye Kavanaugh, Rem Koolhaas, Scott Lash, Marta Mendonca, Michael Miller, Warren Neidich, Mark Pimlott, Camilo Pinilla, Stephen Read, Bettina Schiirkamp, Qiang Sheng, Heidi Sohn, Anthony Vidler, ‘Simon Wal 010 Pul ers Rotterdam 2006 yin ture8 Opening Statement Deborah Hauptmann Part I: Theorizing the 14 Introduction Arie Graafland and Deborah Hauptmann 26 The Body in the City: A discourse on cybers nce M. Christine Boyer 48 The Urban Image: Becoming Visible Stephen Read 66 Aestheticization as Mediation Michael Miller 82 The Task of Art in the Age of the World Picture Karsten Harries 94 The Ontology of Dwelling Leslie Jaye Kavanaugh 114 The Stoical Body Patrick Healy 130 The b-b-b-Body: Block, Blob, Blur Anthony Vidler 138 Looking into the Folds Arie Graafland 158 Monster Practices: The (r)emergence of abject writing Heidi Sohn 176 Live-Space Scott Lash and Deborah Hauptmann 188 Resistance is Futile: The Neurobio- politics of Consciousness Warren Neidich 212 Fluctuating Spaces: Dryden Goodwin's Video Testaments Simon Wallis 222 Camera Eye: A Machine for Projective Practice in Architecture Arie Graafland and Deborah HauptmannPart Il: Practice 256 Introduction Deborah Hauptmann 260 Glancing Movements and Projects Stefano Boeri 266 Being in Places Mark Pimlott 278 Urban Labyrinth: 19 everyday life in Beljing’s Baofang Hutong district Qiang Sheng ion: Virtualities and the market facility of Bogota Juanita Fonseca 308 Exchange Request: Urban interactions at Bogota’s Los Héroes Junction Camilo Pinilla 324 In-Between Spaces: Evora Portugal Marta Mendonga 336 ‘Everything is choreography?’ Experimental Dance House: A study on human motion Eric Havadi_ 352 Rethinking the Horizon: Paris and the olympic village as vertical city Bart Akkerhuis 362 New York, New York... Rem Koolhaas and Joseph Beuys — Two Europeans and Their Interventions in the 70s Generic City: Interview with Rem Koolhaas Bettina SchirkampOpening Statement Deborah Hauptmann VICTORIA UNIVERSITY OF WELLINGTON LIBRARY Central to the project of humanism was the organizing ofthe body, is most spectacular achieve- ‘ment being the creation of « mathematics of seing forthe eye through perspective. Edmund Burke was one ofthe firs thinkers to challenge the consequences for architectural practice of shat he would describe asa forced analogy, namely, the ideas of egularty, geometry and pro~ portion as deriving from the human body and being considered the ‘efficient cause’ for beauty in achitecture. In his Philosophical Enguiry into the Origin Of Our Ideas ofthe Sublime and Beautifid he remarks: know that it has been said long since, and echoed backward and forward from one writer to another a thousand times, ehat the proportions of building have been taken from those of the human body. To make this forced analogy complete, they represent a man with his arms raised and extended at fll length, and then describe a sore of square, as tis formed by passing Tines along the extremities ofthis stange figure. But it appears very clearly to me, thatthe han figure never supplied the architect with any of his ideas. For in the first place, men are very rarely seen in this strange posture; it is not natural to thems; nether is it at all becoming. Secondly the view ofthe human figute so disposed does not naturally suggest the idea of the square, but rather ofa cross as that large space between the arms and the ground, must be filled with something before it can make anybody think ofa square. Thirdly, several buildings ace by no means ofthe form ofthat particular square, which are notwithstanding planned by the best architects, and produce an effet all together as good, and perhaps a better. And eer tainly nothing could be more unaecountably whimsical than for an architect to model his performance by the human figure, since no two things can have less resemblance or analogy, than a man, and s house or temple, ‘The analogy however forced belongs directly to the dual planes ofa distinct ontology without Which the humanist project would not have been possible. An ontology which consisted of, firstly, a plane of nature, and secondly, a transcendent plane, functioning to organize and even socialize the first, and the special focus ofthat organization was the bods: The thinking subject ‘was set against the external world for instance in the work of Bacon sociability organizes the body as corporate itself an abstract body, and in Descartes the thinking I inverts the subject as ‘object. Renaissance architecture could only be scientific as fur asthe perception of realty (the «das ones Renaissance perspective) and the knowledge of space (cosmology) could be consi dealing with perspective as conceptual feamework thats implicit in the theory of perception and proportion. In other words, our theoretical notions of reality ae formative for our experiences: thus, what we consider important for experience of architecture is intricately related to our conceptual framesOur conceptual ames, the manner in which we approach questions pertaining to the body ae, ofcourse, not ony formative, but necessarily transformative at well For instance in contemporary criticism on Spinoza, reason othe power of thought cannot be sen asa transcendent or disembodied quality ofthe sou or mind. Rathe,eason, desire and knowledge are embodied and expres, the Brstinstance the quality and complexity of corporeal affects. In Spinoza, body/mind sulle and actin concert, and thinking isa mobilization ofan asem- ‘lage, a mater of place and oineures of movement and speed. Gilles Deleuze comments on this aspect of Spinoza in his interview with Clire Pumet:"When Spinoza says the surprising thing isthe body we do no yet know what the body is capable of, he doesnot want to make the body 8 model, and the soul simply dependent on th body He has subtle task He wants to demolish the pscudo-supetiorty ofthe soul over the body. There isthe soul and the body and both express one andthe same thing: an aturibute ofthe bodys also an exprened ofthe soul.” Asfor Spinoza, bodies are not defined by thee genus o species by their organs and ftnctions, but by what they can do~by the affects of which they are capable “in passion as wells ation and one always has the organs and functions coresponding tothe affects of which one is capable. Tn this view you have not defined an animal until you have listed affets. A body, in Deleuze, can be most anything; it ean be an animal, abodyof sounds, linguistic cozpus a social body; yet, a ody must be defined as unity of parts, parts held together «clatonaly and having a capacity to affee and be affected both ntemally and externally furthes, in this reading, its only Kinetic and dynamic differences that mark the individual body and that along ewo axes: on dhe kinetic ais here will bea characteristic relation of speed lowes, relative states of motion and rest that maintain the individual in existence ~ (ypokeimonan, substrate or perdurance)~ and on th dynamic axis degres of power, otis which affect and are affected least in archer, fom his reading ofthe stoic philosophers, Deleuze derives an infinitive ~a to walk, ato step, at fle, ato encounter, ot as he puts it verbs in the infinitive are limitless becomings. But in all the bodies and their actions and interpenetra tions, which Deleuze sometimes calls resonance and interference, there i also the incorporeal, which as forthe stoic ies in making a line of separation pass no longer between the sensible and the intelligible, or, between the soul and body, but where no-one had seen it before, that is, between physical depth and meta physical surface ~ these are the effects’ the infinitives, that result from amalgams, expressed as ‘tobe’ Issues surrounding the human body, is intellectual and sensory capacities are -ceurting themes in architectural discourse. In practice we are most often still, dealing with a etatie concept an ideal ‘whole’, for which sensory (end aesthetic) and intellectual capacities do not correspond to present-day research inthe sciences and aesthetic theories. Scientists like Donna Haraway, who studies the body from an evolutionary point of view, argue that the body is developing into hybrid creatures composed of organism and machine she calls cyborgs’, whereby the difference between natural and artificial body is dissolved. Body and mind are no longer the same; our machines ate ftighteningly ative as we have become more and more inactive, Such theories ace about collectivity and individuality, bue at the same time deal with biotechnology, miezoelectronics and the human body. Such thought models in archi- tecture and urbanism have yet to be explored critically: Questions pertaining to and bearing ‘upon notions of the body, its ability to simultaneously extend and delimit our understanding of| both physically constructed and socially perceived space belongs today to domains as seemingly diverse as architecture and the neurological and bio-technological sciences. In a contemporary reading on the very notion of body’ we agree with Deleuze in that itis necessary to understand tat there are many bodies: individual, collective, mystical, corporate, insticutional, animal, even the body of the world and the heavens. And so there isa kind of inde~ termination and non-sense required for there to be thought, processes of deteritorilization’ or “Fines of fight’: symptoms not codes, or spaces of affect understood in contrast to ‘effecting space’. However, what bodies may become, what new molar organizations take place ~ thats the ‘concept of organism or machine ~ depends on the event as understood fr scence. In the theory of science as evnementell, scientists are more and more concerned with singular events of an incorporeal nature which ar effected in bodies (for example protean folding), in sates of bodies, in completely heterogeneous assemblages. There are heterogeneous bodies and the events pass across ireducible domains, there ate lines that shoot berween domains ~ interregnum ~ and science and technology ate part of « new geography of relations in which terms are relational; thus the need for interdiscilinasty We find in Deleuze the recurring question of the need to experiment/experience; the question however remsins, how can we think with and instead of isinstead of thinking fr is? For Deleuze this question isthe only secret of empiricism, thus in the phrase‘body and soul’ the question is and what can a Body do?Introduction In this collection each author has been asked to respond to the opening statement presented above. Some contributors responded directly to specific theories asadéressed in the statement; others extended with zheir contributions less explicated, yet equally pertinent, cheoretial issues. All,in one manner or another, sought to unravel critical notions surrounding the transfor- ‘mations ofthe body, cf human experience, and ‘man’s ability to constinite self (both conceptually ‘nd materially) within the spatio-temporal condi tions ofthis new millennium. For the purpose of| ordering the seemingly diverse contributions to this publication we wil propose the following four ways of thinking the Body in Architecture GBA): as an expressed of the city, an embedded and embodied in philosophy, a spatial cosmology, and as transformative body constituted by relationships of temporal intensities BIA as an expressedof the city Here we will introduce the conteibutions of M. Christine Boyes, Stephen Read snd Michael Maller as the primary texts through which the body has been approached through adiscussion onthe city Boyer and Read, althcugh from very different directions, both address the body ofthe city, and for Read, perhaps the body athe urban in terms related to theories of emergence. While Mller presents variant readings of the city, each of which rely ona proposition based on a notion of difference, Boyers paper revolvesaround the exploration of hhow the body in the city relates to cybernetic ‘theories; and to this end she introduces a cross- lover between cybers -eand biotechnology suggesting that when cyber science and biology crossed paths biotechaology took fight. Her papers constituted in wo parts: it, she presents brie history ofthe esience of eybemnetie secondly, she extends this discourse into what she refers toas mutations (and th second cybernetics) in discussing the work of Rem Koolhaas among, others. ‘To explore how the body in the city relates to cybernetic theories Boyer discusses two eyber- netic models’~1) being the scence of ine’, whereby'(or orthodox eyberneies, the organic brain or mind is concepeualized as machine and thinking equated to computing’ 2) being the ‘network approach, holding to the mind 2s ‘com- ‘puting machine i differs in the way in which the ‘operating system'is conceived: ‘not sequentially and syntactically but through massive parallel processors. In the second system the mind is “thought to bea heterogeneous collestion of pro- «cesses, and behavior is thought to ‘emerge from Asystem of interactions between layers ofits sub- systems’ Ths second system utilizes the structure of feedback loops and i sel organizing and autopoieteit'ssumes that a system recreates itelf from ise’ Turning to the works of Norbert ‘Weines, Heine von Foerster and Gyorgy Kepes, she presents concepts such as‘Teedback, ‘purposive behavior, ieeular causality’ and equilibrium’ Boyer points tothe fact that the concept of eed- back, in particulas, was elaborated asa universal metaphor and utilized to describe the operational activity oF behavior’ of any process whatsoever. Subsequenty,a'machine' was seen as an appas- aus for transforming specific information, ie incoming into outgoing messages. This ases a problem ofboth directionality and privilege, hereby early cybernetic concepts fled in their account ofthe organizational logic inherent in any given system. Leading later thinkers, Boyer explains, to develop theories of the ‘self-organ- ization’ of complex, or‘autopoietic’ systems. Significant with regard to Boyer’s reading of Kepes, is that we see an argument directed at mari sensibilities towards image as pattern in terme of pattern procert’. Hlere we find that in seeing patterns ‘man does not refer to his internal subjective life, but traces out the interplay of cexternalized, disembodied processes in the world” “ere the reader might note theoretical corres- pondences with the contribution of Neidich, In theend it becomes clear that Boyer’ agenda is sot only with the brain and the body but withthe state of affairs found in certain architectural dis- courses. Her critical argument s that architects like Rem Koolhaas, Stefano Boeri, and Sanford Kowinter in their Mutations, product from Kool- haa’ Harvard Project on the City, have borrowed heavily fom the terminologies ofthe computer sciences, and often with no critical evaluation, She argues that such theories have developed a notion of the city asa self-organizing autopoietic system, where without plan of action laid out in advance, orders assumed to simply emerge over time; signaling a totalizing desce for omnipo- tence as a post: humanist fabricator of artificial life culminating in generic cities. This to her is what ‘second order’ emergence is ll bout ‘Understanding the contemporary city however is ‘ot an easy task. Reads paper offers a view on the contemporary problematic of the city, that which hae refers toas ‘urban world’ he takes his point of departure stating that‘(@)he problem for usa this point in time is not so much, as Lefebvre could still proclaim in the last century a problem of “the urban’ as a distinctively diffrent mode of existence, asi is simply a problem of existence itself and of our being in a contemporary world.” Read argues that the entire ‘substance’ ofthe urban has shifted from that which could once be defined by the city as object ~ which could be subjected to diserete forms of analysis toa field made up of processes which are multiple, diverse, and continuous. Referring o Bergson-Deleuze and Whitehead, he suggests tha realtime must bbe understood as ‘an engine ofa vital succession rather than a simple seale in succession of ‘event's arguing fora shift in perspective ‘from ‘object to process and from the visible to the “becoming-visible”in'an attempt to make con- tact with an order ofthe world which we are not ina position to observe directly’. Here the reader might recognize parallels with Lash & Haupt- mann, as well as Healy's eading of Deleuze. Read builds an intricate argument that passes through notions of network theory and the Vir- tual; distinguishing continually between that which is visual tothe analytic (discrete) mind and thar which occurs beyond knowing which is, nevertheless, graspable if we only begia to imag- ne the city and its ‘sentraites in new ways. Suggesting that in our presen situation the ‘moorings’ that have traditionally anchored the cicy asa human and social construction has been called into question; an issue which Michael Miller will also address. Read moves Buidly through the contemporary parlance utilized in Aistinguishing the city as it was conceived in the past and urban mutations as they are being eon sidered at presen. Referring to Lefebvre, he argues thatthe city has become something other than unambiguously social’, something more than unambiguously ‘artifact and instrument of our civie and technical deliberations. Irtouches ‘on ideas similae to Koolhaas’, that posit the city as a site of autonomous creation, and no longer simply a human product, a simple effect of cre-ative action, The city has become a creation and a czeator at the sume time, To approach the urban 8 force of nature isto approach the constitu- tion of the world differently. The urban, as Read explains it, may not be about one way of life, one mode of social organization over another, but rather about the way an urban phenomenon and experience of the scial emerges everywhere, and everywhere dfferetl’ ‘Michael Malle’ irtention to locate ‘difference’ asa spatial and temporal dimension in the urban comes close to Reads search for the global asa product that exists in th local. Maller is looking fora mediation forurban culture. To this end, he gives an in-depth analysis of Ambrogio Loren- zettis murals i the Sala della Pace (6r Sala dei [Nove) the council oom ofthe Sienese govern ment to explain bad and good government. Global and local in Read’s analysis are reworked ina new argument an how perception of differ- cence becomes possible through the city. The frescos are thematically aligned with Simmel’s “Verortung’ or locazation’, Miller explains Bot his historical analysis, as with Boyer, serves a contemporary goa whether there can be a mediation of difference of location and space today oriented towards the city a whole, despite ‘our current economic condition. Miller moves bie argument to a contemporary Las Vegas, 2 pictorial space combining reality and vision in a time-space compresion. But mediation no longer occurs in Las Vegas. Las Vegas cannot be reduced to copies ony; it actualy creates a new quality. The authenticity of Las Vegas is in its snon-authentciy. also tells us something about good and bad govesnment; itis financed by private means, linked witha regression of government policies and investment in urban space. Itwill be hard to speak in simple notions of true and false experience here; the difference is in'the dignity of the location’ Tris here where Finrape and the copies in Las Vegas are diferent it would be better to speak of an experience of authenticity ‘of the first and second degree’, Mlle argues. BIA embedded and embodied in philosophy ‘Two of the papers we will introduce here deal “with the philosophy of Martin Heidegger, both address the place of the body in relation to world; Karsten Harrie, from the postion of world pic ture’, Leslie Kavanaugh from the postion of ‘dwelling’ The third contribution in this section might be sai to stay the closest co architecture as atsick Healy deals dectly with the (corporeal) body in Viteuvian theory; he also elaborates the figure ofthe stoical body 2s well as providing for nuanced reading of Deleuze Dealing with two texts by Heidegger, Harries will argue that in an age ofthe image under the conditions of technology artis more important ‘than ever if man as spiritual being and material ‘body is to be embedded inthe ‘world picture’. Hs contebution begins by remarking on the tension between the shape of our modern world and what is demanded by a fll self-ffirmation presented in art today. He, as does Miles, offers a postion ‘on the Hegelian assertion on the role of art (or the absence thereof); yet Harries asserts a special challenge with regard to art as that which is cap able of recalling us tothe body as ground of all meaning. Harris proffers the question as to what extent we can understand the world a a picture’ ‘We can look at pictures but we cannot enter or leave them, ‘we cannot live or dwell in them’ he ‘writes, (hey are uninhabitable’ Nevertheless, Heidegger's world picture does not turn its back con reality Quite the opposite, i ims at a repre~ sentation ofthe world that ideally would include everything that deserves to be called rea. The ‘age of the world picture’ has its foundation in meta- physics which claims to comprehend the being of il that i; ht we eannat comprehend what is Aecting. Thus, Harties suggests, metaphysics tends to think being against time’. This issue of the leeting remains an important issue for many ‘of the authors in this volume as does the issue of technology. In Heidegger we understand that metaphysics reaches its apex in technology. This modern world picture, Harris argues, has to ‘carry the self-displacement that i a presupposition ‘of metaphysics back into ou ife-world: chat world comes tobe experienced ever more decisively as a world in which neither gods, nor persons, nor ‘values are tobe found’. And here we soe the problem for both Heidegger and Wittgenstein, ‘hich is that of meaningfulness and which for Witrgenstein must be sought ‘outside what the modern world takes for ‘elit’ “aries brings his discourse to the contemporary ideas of Jean Baudrillard, and his well-known, ‘desert ofthe real itself”. Baudrillard is here utilized to exhibit the utter filure of Descartes! vision of sciences mastery over nature. With Baudsillard even reality itslfis called into ques tion as image itself no longer reflects anything that can be associated with profound reality’; but calls forth the simulacrum as anew form of ‘purity’. Harries notes that the world in which most of us actually live, love, suffer, and di ‘remains quite distant from such postmodern fancasies. A similar notion we will find in the next contribution of Leslie Kavanaugh. Harries sug gests that even if we accept ‘Baudsilad’s distal prophecy’ of the world characterized by the image of the Mall of America'~ we ae still eft witha disturbing feeling. He then goes on to counter this Baudrilladian vision with a Heideggerian gesture towards earth’ but not simply as a nostalgic appeal, Harries argues that with Heidegger, the term ‘earth’ suggest tran- scendence in thought now asthe transcendence of matter’. Matter here understood not as ‘mute’ ‘material requiring man to endow it with meaning, ‘matter here is understood as already ‘charged with ‘meaning’.To replace the subject centered per- spective ofthe world, Harries concludes, we need art: to open windows to material transcendence. ‘This argument on the nature of matter as tran- scendent can be read against not only Miller's paper, but both Healy's and Lash & Hauptmannis papers as wel. Kavanaugh goes directly to the relation of body in architecture from the postion of welling’, or “dwelling-in-place’ her contribution develops this line of thought into the importance of Heidegger's concept of dvelling to say that we dwell, we already say that we dwell someplace, ic. localized in space and time. Kavanaugh uses the strategy of the palimpsest ro get at a reworking of the principles of containment, proximity, and dwelling She also approaches questions of ethos, whereby, she argues, that~ atleast according this cities = Heidegger’s notion of dwelling alongside’ is entangled in totalizing power structures. To inter- vvene in this interpretation Kavanaugh offers an account of Levinas and his notion of dwelling ‘with; she utilizes chs argument to suggest a ‘third ‘way’ between what she discusses as‘a systematic totality inherited from Western metaphysics, and an anarchy that seks to escape or resist tyranay and the epression ofthe individual’ Kavanaugh, in providing detailed commentary on Heidegger’s concept of dwelling, succinctly establishes boththe distinction and interdependence of his notions of earth and world. With this, she further dlevelops an argument which situates architecture, through the act of building, in the double figures of habitation’ on one hand and ‘domain’ on the other. This paper concludes by arguing for an understanding of welling that is relational, ot only the ethos ofthe “inner abode’, but one which includes a responsibilty to others. She writes that “(ae the end, we find not only the dichotomy of the "I" in here and the “Other” out there unsup- portable, but the “Us” on the one hand, and the “them” on the other is untenable in a world of interconnectedness and “belongingness"’ Add. tionally, her argument for the relational, or the interdependency berween beings and world, might be kept in mind when reading Graafland’s theory of ground? and Sohis development of the concept of abject Healy's contribution fuidly moves through thinking the body in relation to Vitruvius, the Stoics, and Deleuze; pechaps we should say this otherwise ~his essa thinks the relationship between the bodies of Vitruvius and the Stoics, whereby Deleuze, ontra to Heidegueris not involved with the problem of being in the world, but in the effectuarion of a universe (or several) This essay opens with reference to Indra Kagis McEwen’ work os Vitruvius and its emphasis on the corp archtecturae a it was related to Stoic principles. Arguing that itis thxough a Stoel understanding ofthe body and ‘the significance of their cosmological speculations, chat Vitruvius advances not only a writing of the body of archi- ‘tecture, bu fastens that metaphor ro the relation of social and power practice... Healy shows how itis that in Vitruvius the body is seen asa corpus of writing, not merely asa body of buildings denoted in drawing, Here, writing is related to memory, it is thtough inscription tha che body of architecture ie created, Continuing to argue on the importance of this point Healy discusses sys- tems of writing as they were instantiated in places (and polities) auch as Mesopotamia, Egypt and Greece. Then returning to Vitruvius and the importance ofthe human body, Healy writes that “a bodies were wholes and their wholeness as qualified matter depended on coherence."The paradigm for such a unity, as we can also read in Vidler's paper, was the buman body. The agent of coherence was ratio, and developing this further, “aly angus that for Vitruvius ‘raticinati with- cout fabricais useless, fabrica without ratiocinatio blind, or in more contemporary terms: theory swithour practice i useles, practice without theory is blind’. Healy's addeess ofthe principles of the Stoics is handled with detail and nuanced reading. Among other things, he provides an account ofthe Stoical view of matter and form, which cannot be explained by extension; but i relational, relying on action and developing through tensions Additionally, he explains principles of matter in terms not unlike those found in theories of elf organization”. On these points we advise the reader to matk parallels with the contributions provided by Lash & Hauptmann and Boyer. Healy’s analysis ofthe Stoical body ends in a eading of Gilles Deleuve, and his work Difernce and Repetition, He draws on the Stoic concept of the elton in order to further establish a position regarding words and things, or utterances and significations. Writing that in Deleuze the Lekton is taken‘ss a schema that clarifies words and things, and by considering even the word asa buy. For the Stois all hat exists is « body its Kepes found most ofthe visual patterns ~be they cities, houses, objects of use, printed images, clothing, even facial gestures ~ do not evoke the trace of primary natural events. Such confusion, feeding perceptual life dlls man's sensibilities »* Settling on objects man normally excludes processes. Therefore all of these {forms misguide him. They create a serious blindness to the logic ofthe processes of the sensible world. Such a distorted visual world robs man of the power to Vieualy, we judge our relation tothe surrounding world through the shapes, sizes textures and colors reflected into the retinas of our eyes. But we move and what is around us moves ~ advancing, etreating, expanding, contracting, growing, decaying, On the retina there isa uid pattern of changing shapes, sizes and colors: we are able to read these optical metamor- hoses... In Kepes' theory reading is likened to processing information, or toa computer receiving inputs that it acepts as a set of instructions, Yet man, Kepes argues, tends to see isolated objects and fails to develop a visual vocabulary of change and transmutation, of distortions and condensation, even though new scientific knowledge makes transformation a vital visual experience, Kepes suggests although transformation changes have not always been understood, nevertheless‘. the essence of symbol-making lies inthe transformation ofthe ceaseless flow of sense data into clearly defined pictures, words and concepts. Symbol-making is based on transformations, on the changing of substances or the changing of forms," These changing processes establish a} new vocabulary of visual thinking’ they focus on process and change and point out the funda mental significance of transformation# Reinforced by the idea thatthe brain isa computer, Kepes fell into the cognitivist rap, upload. ing the mind into a symbol-processing machine and forgetting the body or the embodied eye. Commenting on the collection of scientific images that Kepes had assembled in The New Land scape in Art and Science, Noshert Weiner explained they ‘excite a sensory interest in the eye of the observer, but do so precisely because they have a specific mathematical structure." While Ernesto Rogers, calling the image the architect's inalienable vision, would write in Kepes' Sign, Image Symbol vat ‘{ehe image is always, and of necessity, the work of an ordering will'* “Mathematical structures and an ordering will imply abstract schemata and subject-less processes they split the mind from the body. Mathema cs~ discourse on symbols and diagrams ~isa ‘tool for reasoning, thinking, predicting and imaging. It exist in some ideal realm independent ‘of the body's presence and is based on many false assumptions: that what we do does not guide ‘5 oN Four Thelma Aa rts nae Vieni SomThe Bay nth iy A cae on perce thought, thae knowledge ie not situated, that thinkingis not embodied, that the mind controls cognition from above rather than below as it bubbles up hesitantly from the body* ‘The cybernetic metaphor is now well recognized to have been a failure. The brain isnot like a computes, and the mind is not an information processing ‘machine. Giving priority to top-down cognitive functions in language and rea- soning led to a absolute dead end, Eventually, dynamic complexity would raise its head to thwart man’s desire co contol his physical environment. And order ‘would be re-conceptualized from the bottom up, emerging out of chaotic situ- ations, ot the top-down imposition of representational form. In addition there ‘were entropic systems, dissipating structures and disturbances of coherence that challenged the will to order. Concerned with ecological tragedies and disasters of potent technology, in nother volume entitled Art af the Evironment, published in 1976, Kepes began to considér the interactivity of biological systems. ‘The increasing magnitude and complexity of interacting ives must make us realize that our future depends upon an understanding and control of our common system ~ a self-regulating, interdependent, dynamic pattern that _moves from yesterday into today and ftom today into tomorrow: ‘We have begun to see that our extended body, our social and man-trans- formed environment, must develop its own self-regulating mechanisms to climinate the poisons injected into it and to recycle useful matter. Em mental homeostasis ona global sale is now necessary to survival<¢ Scientists recognize that in the most precise ranges of observation, the observer and the observed interact. When observed and measured with max- imum precision, the environment in both its largest and its smallest realism cannot be considered an independent objective world anymore. ‘While not entirely abandoning his belief in control mechanisms, nevertheless Kepes was rethinking the relationship that formerly uncoupled organisms from interactivity with their envionment. He was beginning to consider some of the features that constitute the second cybernetic revolution, Mutations and the second cybernetics: Architects are well known for changing styles every few years, buying new theories off the rack so to peak trying them on as metaphors or analogies rather than methods or tools. ‘They we woustatly i seach of the ‘wen, uaveling on the moment the strange and different become commonplace and over-worked. As the personal computer and informa~ son science have fused with architectural and urban theory, few architects have begun to study the complex density and uncontzollable growth of mega-cities from around the world asa new feld to explore and understand. In thei search, they have borrowed heavily from cyberscience, often with no critical evaluation of the appropriateness of the botrowed model or consistent argumentation of principles involved, Nevertheless, their statements redundantly accumulating in big books of architecture reflect the manner in which they understand or epresent urban complexity in the age of information, ‘The use ofthe term ‘complexity’ repetitively measures the amount of information that these would-be urbanist architects do not possess but would neéd ro make a complete structural and operation description ofan urban system, to illustrate the causal connections between its multi- ple parts, or explain how its dynamic processes interact/ Te is the uncertainty and indeterminacy | of urban systems that defines their complexity and fascinates the guze ofthese architects. In an | attempt to excavate some meaning or undercover an inner logic to the plethoric outpouring of| these architectural accounts, this paper explores one these books, Muations assembled by stu dents and colleagues of Rem Koolhaas at The Graduate School of Design, Harvard University and under the leadership of Sanford Kwinter at Rice University. (Cutting a path through the noise and redundancy of many ofthe statements and manifestations, a simple list of definitions of the city drawn from various pages offers an entry into just what has mutated, and just what they profess is the ‘new’ 1 The city is complexity itself, and thus there is no solution to its bigness, no beginning or end to its myriad problems, no cause and effect relationships to unravel. The city has lost its face, its identity and thus comprehending the multiple, the noalinear, and the interconnected become problematic for there is no totalizing overview. Thus the manner of approaching the object of study the city or the urban, must be redefined. 2 The contemporary city is an emergent city that speaks of discontinuity and rupture. Is"