454 EAAE no 35 Teaching and Experimenting with Architectural Design: Advances in Technology and Changes in PedagogyMaria Voyatzaki, Thessaloniki, Greece
Thank you, Neil. I am sure there will be plenty of questions for you.
Vana Tentokali, Thessaloniki, Greece
Thank you very much for the huge spectrum of the architectural paradigm of morpho-
genesis you gave us. I will explain firstly the starting point of my departure so that
I can be clear when I ask you the question that will follow. The starting point of my
departure is that in order to understand the reality you have first to describe it. In
order to describe it, you have to find if a certain kind of perspective is possible. If it
is a philosophical perspective, and if it stems from Deleuze, as you mentioned, how
can you describe this architectural paradigm of morphogenesis based on the nomadic
that Deleuze talks about? Let us consider what nomadic might mean. I understand
nomadic to mean not something that moves like an object or a subject, but that
moves like an idea. Keeping this in mind, and thinking of other notions or concepts
that were introduced by Deleuze, such as fold, and let us take first what fold means
for this kind of transformation within the architectural paradigm of morphogenesis,
what can you say in terms of the description of this paradigm? Do you think that
this is a literal transformation? I mean, fold does not mean a literal fold; it is not
something that is literally folded. My own perspective is that it is very easy for most
of these projects to perceive a kind of literal transformation or literal translation, if
I may use that term: what is your own perspective, philosophically speaking? Start-
ing from Deleuze, of course, because you mentioned him. Do you believe that the
translation of fold is literal or not?
Neil Leach, London, United Kingdom
I think that is a very interesting question, and I would say that I think a lot of philoso-
phers have suffered in some way from that kind of appropriation, especially Derrida,
whose main discourse is a discourse against appropriation. I find it astonishing how
his work has been appropriated according to a certain stylistic sort of world. Another
example is how the work of Martin Heidegger has been appropriated by someone like
Dalmon Maysly and turned into something that is a long way away from his thinking.
But that has always been the way, taking a philosopher and creating an aesthetic
that has nothing to do with his work. Now, I think the danger with Deleuze’s work is
precisely that people pick up on certain concepts that he treats, such as the Baroque
or indeed the fold, and literally trying to materialise those things; but that is not what
I am talking about. For me, as I think I mentioned the other day, Deleuze is someone
who talks about ways of thinking and not about forms. And I think that the crucial
way of thinking he was talking about was the Gothic spirit, which he contrasts to the
Romanesque or the Classical: in other words, thinking about things in terms of forces
and flows versus imposing a sort of aesthetic template on the world that might be
said to derive from Vitruvius’ understanding of proportion. That is the kind of dialogue
we find for ourselves – not that you can separate them, because they kind of fold
into one another. So I am not talking about folding literally. Now the folding, I think,
basically comes from the manipulation you can do with certain software programmes,
especially Maya; and that is another question, how it expresses itself. And I think
that in many ways there is a danger that Maya has come to dominate things; but that