78 EAAE no 35 Teaching and Experimenting with Architectural Design: Advances in Technology and Changes in Pedagogy
A “differentiating” perspective
The “dif ferentiating” perspective is a term referring to the concept of “dif ference”,
perceived as a dynamic process of becoming. It is introduced here to describe the “non
standard” perspective of architecture that has already constituted its discourse which
became “differentiated” from its previous counterpart of the “deconstructive” discourse
(*). The fact is that its theoretical discourse has not been so much tossed about from
the deconstructive thought of Jacques Derrida, that it should be destabilized more from
the “differentiated” thought of Giles Deleuze.
The consequences of this tossing about for architecture were a lot. Some of the con-
sequences for its perspective were: to contract new alliances with new epistemological
fields, such as the “new sciences”; to absorb the theories of complexity and chaos, the
non-linear or topological geometries; to redefine its boundaries; to regain an energetic
role to the play of systems which constitute the built environment; to be twisted by the
challenge of the virtual. Some of the consequences for its content were: to be awaken
up from a “reactionary lethargy of inertia”; to be freed from “its passive relation with
the notion of time” and to be transformed to “an endless series of folding”.
From the perspective of “differentiating” architecture, only two basic notions directly
and/or indirectly related with the process of architectural design are going to be pre-
sented: the virtual and the topological.
The term “topology is accepted as a cultural and scientif ic resource of the folded,
curved, undulated and twisted architectures. Or in other words, the dynamic aspects
of topological geometry are dealing with the more general processes of continuous
transformation. Topological transformations are the more general continuous trans-
formations that maintain the geometrical properties of the connection and vicinity of
the points of the figure (so that near points continue to remain near and far-off points
continue to be far away)” (Di Cristina 2001, 7).
Another basic notion drawn from the Deleuzian reformulation of time and space
is the notion of virtual and its relation to the praxis of architecture. As virtual here
is considered “that which takes place outside the given identities of form, function
and place’” (Langer 2001, 31). Many of the properties and aspects of the virtual have
been discussed and explored exhaustingly by scholars of the field. A few of those are
mentioned here.
One of the properties of the virtual, explored extensively by Picon, is its “capacity
to actualization”: “Virtual is full of virtue, virtue being taken as a capacity to act....
According to the old philosophical distinction between capacity and act, virtual real-
ity is nothing but a potential awaiting its full actualization” (Picon 2003, 295). This
capacity of the virtual to actualization leads to a dynamic evolution and not to another
kind of resemblance, as M. De Landa explains, comparing the virtual with the actual:
“the distinction between virtual and actual does not involve resemblance of any kind.
Far from constituting the essential identity of a given structure, a virtual form subverts
this identity, since structures as different as spheres and cubes emerge from the same
topological point” (De Landa 30). The argument of De Landa’s position stems of course
again from Deleuze, when he explores actualization and differentiation and concludes
that the process through the virtual leads to the reality of a task to be performed or a