Architecture’s Allagmatics

Abstract

The chapter addresses the topic of architectural intelligence whose sole purpose is to create affordances and make experience ‘stand on its own’, apart from architecture and distinct from the architect. The principles of sensation constitute the principles of composition of an existential niche whose structure reveals the genetic conditions of real experience. The argument is unpacked across three sections by reference to the Simondonian concept of allagmatics defined as the theory of operations. The first section ‘Ticks and Cats’ argues in favour of inserting an interval between the input and output, with the aim of debunking the mechanicist allegiance to linearity and promoting the concept of quasi-causality. In the second section ‘Ducks and Rabbits’ the affordance theory meets contemporary neurosciences to revamp the concept of metastability and plasticity. Its goal is to reframe the subject as the effect of (architectural) affect. The concluding radical empiricist section ‘Zebras and Flies’ revisits the lesson of the Leibnizian Monadology to tie sense to sensibility and matter to manner. The overall ambition of the chapter is to contest the philosophy of representation through the concept of difference and multiplicity.