ZAHA RADm ARCHITECTS, BEUING CENTRAL BUSINESS DISTRICT COM.docx

ZAHA RADm ARCHITECTS, BEUING
CENTRAL BUSINESS DISTRICT COM-
PETITION PROPOSAL, 2010. STUDIES
OF FORMAL MUTATIONS. ALL IMAGES
COURTESY ZAHA RADIO ARCHITECTS.
Patri!? Schumacher
Editor's Note: This text is
excerpted from a lecture Patri!?
Schumacher gave in Los Angeles
at SCI-Arc in September 2010.
Pararnetricisrn
And the Autopoiesis
Of Architecture
It's great to be at SCI-Arc. I had two great days to see what's
going on here, and I think what I have to say speaks, to a
certain extent, critically to what is going on here. The lecture
is a variation on a lecture I have been giving this year. I've
added an element that relates to my forthcoming book, The
Autopoiesis ofArchitecture, which is an attempt to create a
comprehensive and unified theory of architecture, and which
features parametricism as the last chapter of volume two. The
argument is that parametric ism continues the autopoiesis of
architecture, which is the self-referential, closed system of

communications that constitutes architecture as a discourse
in contemporary society. The book is in two volumes. Volume
one, a new framework for architecture, is coming out in
December [released December 7,2010] and then a new agenda
for architecture appears in volume two, probably four to six
months later. It is difficult to summarize, but just to raise a
bit of curiosity about this, I will make an argument for
a comprehensive unified theory is of interest.
A comprehensive unified theory of and for architecture
is important if you are trying to lead 400 architects across a
multiplicity of projects, touching all aspects and components
of contemporary architecture in terms of programmatic
agendas and at all scales. With a unified theory one is better
prepared to manage the different designs, designers, and
approaches that run in different directions, fight each other,
contradict each other, and stand in each other's way. I am also
teaching at a number of schools, the Architectural Association
Design Research Laboratory [AA DRL] being one of them, an
expanding group that is now 150 to 160 students. Here again
there is an issue in trying to converge efforts so that people
don't trip over each other and get in each other's way. The
need for a unified theory is first of all to eliminate contradic-
tions within one's own efforts - so one doesn't stand in one's
own way all the time. If you go around from jury to jury,
from project to project, you one thing here, another thing
there, and further ideas come to mind; by the third occasion
63
you might be saying and doing things that don't gel, don't
cohere. You might be developing ideas about architecture's
societal function. You might be concerned with what is
architecture, what is not architecture, to demarcate against

art, engineering, etc. You might think of yourself as pan of
something like an avant-garde and try to develop a theory of
the avant-garde. Or think about design media, the role of
media theory; about design processes and design process
theory. You wonder about aesthetic values and whether the
notion of beauty is still relevant. Or you try to develop a
theory of beauty, an aesthetic theory. And you're concerned
with phenomenology. Then there's perception - how do you
perceive space, subjects in space? Then it goes on. The concept
of style: Is it still relevant? Then you try to develop a theory
of style. You try to read the history of architecture in a cer-
tain fashion ... and you do all this to position yourself with
respect to contemporary architecture. These are the compo-
nents that different authors, different thinkers, might un-
dertake and spend half their careers on. Some of us might do
two or three of these. At a certain stage it makes sense to ask
whether these things can be brought into a coherent system
of ideas where they forge a kind of trajectory that has to do
with guiding practice. You can only lead a coherent practice
with a deep and comprehensive theory.
No one has attempted a unified theory for architecture
since Le Corbusier, and perhaps the book The International
Sryie, and perhaps the work of Christian Norberg-Schultz.
But for a long time it has been nearly taboo even to start
thinking about such an idea. I find it very interesting that
the concept of style, like the International Style, returned
after it had been abandoned by most of the early modernists.
Modernism - the International Style - dominated the trans-
formation of our built environment for 50 years and gener-
ated an unprecedented level of material freedom and plenty,
aligned, of course, with the growth of industrial civilization.
In the 1970s it became clear that the principles and values that
had defined modern architecture for half a century were no
longer the principles and values through which architecture
could facilitate the further progress of world civilization.

Modernism experienced a massive crisis, was abandoned.
Everything had to be questioned, rethought, which led to free
rein, freewheeling, browsing, and brainstorming. This also
brought forth a new cast of characters, a sense of pluralism,
and a sense that all systems (grand narratives) are bankrupt.
That doesn't mean that aU attempts to cohere a unified theory
are to be dismissed forever. After a period of questioning,
brainstorming, and freewheeling experimentation, new pro-
visional conclusions must be drawn, decisions must be made
on how to move a project forward in a clear way. The neces-
sity of this cannot be denied.
So, to raise some curiosity about this idea, let me discuss
the chapter structure of volume one. After the introduction
there is a chapter on architecture theory, which is put for-
ward as an important, necessary component of architecture.
It actually marks the inception and origin of architecture
with Alberti 500 years ago in the early Renaissance. That's
where I say architecture starts. Everything before that was
not architecture, it was some form of traditional building.
Most of the book is an attempt to observe architecture and
its communication structures, key principles, distinctions,
methods, practices. It's a comprehensive discourse analysis
of the discipline, and from that develops a normative agenda
of selecting, or filtering out, the pertinent tendencies, the
permanent communication structures, and the variable
communication structures that have been evolving. All this
is elaborated in order to forge a statement and position on
how to move forward. To make this more digestible I extract
poignant theses from the theory, and I will just read a few.
Thesis one is that the phenomenon of architecture can be
most adequately grasped if it is analyzed as an autonomous
network or auto poetic system of communications. So I am
not talking about architecture as simply a collection of build-

ings. I'm not talking about it as a profession or a practice. I'm
not talking about it only as an academic discipline. Rather, I
am concerned with how all of these activities are joined to-
gether to create a system of communications.
Thesis four states there is no architecture without theory.
Thesis six contains the notion that resolute autonomy, or
what I call self-referential closure, is a prerequisite of archi-
tecture's effectiveness in an increasingly complex and dy-
namic social environment. The notion of a self-enclosed
autonomy of the discipline means that we as architects, and
as a discourse as a whole, need to define the purposes that
guide us, the conceptual structures and modes of arguments
that are legitimate and meaningful to us, the tasks to focus on
and how to pursue them. The kind of network of communi-
cations that we constitute determines this. In contemporary
society there is no other authority we can appeal to which
would instruct architecture with respect to the built envi-
ronment and its evolution. Neither politics, nor clients, nor
science, nor morality. We have the burden as a collective to
determine the way forward. That's what I mean by autonomy
64
Winter 2011 65
- the autonomy to adapt to an environment and to stay rel-
evant in it. And that is not
I also discovered that only by differentiating the avant-
garde as a specific subsystem can contemporary architecture
actively participate in the evolution of I believe that
institutions like SCI-Arc and the AA, which seem to be one
step removed from the burdens of state-of-the-art
solutions here and now, are a condition for archi-

tecture to rethink and upgrade itself continuously.
Thesis ten suggests that in a society without a control
center, architecture must regulate itself and maintain its own
mechanisms of evolution in order to remain adaptable in an
ecology of evolving societal subsystems. These subsystems
constitute society according to the notion of society underly-
ing this discourse. There can be no external determination
imposed upon architecture, neither by political bodies nor by
paying clients, except in the negative, trivial sense of disrup-
tion. Yes, they can stop your project. Maybe they can clamp
down and deny permission, but they obviously cannot con-
structively intervene. The same occurs with other so-called
subsystems of society, like the legal system, science, the arts,
etc. They are all self-regulating discourses.
Thesis 16 suggests that avant-garde styles are designed
research programs. IfI talk about style or use the concept of
style I am not necessarily alluding to all its connotations. I
am making an effort to redefine style as a valid category of
contemporary discourse, because to just let it drop to the side
would be an impoverishment of contemporary discourse.
The notion of style is one of the few ideas that is meaningful
beyond the confines of architectural discourse. For the world
at large it's the primary category of understanding architec-
ture, and we need to engage with that. All avant-garde styles
are design research programs. They begin as progressive
design research programs, and parametricism is now in that
phase. They mature to become productive dogmas, which
happened with modernism. And there is productivity in the
ability to routinize insights for rapid dissemination and ex-
ecution. And obviously all styles end up as degenerate dogmas.
That is their trajectory.
Thesis 17: Aesthetic values encapsulate a condensed
collective within useful dogmas. Their inherent

inertia implies that values progress via revolution rather than
evolution. Aesthetic values obviously shift with historical
progress. You need to relearn your aesthetic sensibilities to
for moral sensibilities. I am arguing, for instance, that mini-
malist sensibilities have to be fought and suppressed because
they don't allow you to adapt to contemporary life.
Thesis 19: Architecture depends on its medium enor-
mously. Parametricism is also a product of the development
of the medium of architecture. Architectural communication
is happening primarily within the medium of the drawing,
becoming the digital model, becoming the parametric model,
and the network of scripts. Architecture depends on its me-
dium in the same way the economy depends on money and
politics depends on power. These specialized media sustain a
new plane of communication that depends on the
of the medium, which remains
able to inflationary tendencies. If you overdo make-believe
reality, there is a
but without this
comoel1lng medium you would never be able to convince
or anybody to project complex, large-scale
find those that are productive and viable and that allow you to
exist and be oroductive in contemporary life. The same goes
66 Log 21 Winter 2011
projects into a distant future, or to coalesce the enormous
amount of resources and people needed to support and believe
67

ZAHA HADID ARCHITECTS, BEIJING
CENTRAL BUSINESS DISTRICT COMPE-
TITION PROPOSAL, 2010.
ZAHA RADID ARCHITECTS, BEIJING
CENTRAL BUSINESS DISTRICT COMPE-
TITION PROPOSAL, 2010. STUDIES
OF FORMAL MUTATIONS.
in a coordinated effort. Architecture, of course, with its
increasing complexity of tasks and agendas, also needs to
upgrade its medium, just as money did. Money is no longer
just coinage; it became paper money, became electronic
money. Administrative power is also benefiting from the
microelectronic revolution in terms of administering,
controlling, connecting, and directing. Each of these social
subsystems has a specialized social medium. All these media
evolve together with the tasks they take on.
One more thesis, Thesis 23: Radical innovation presupposes
newness. Newness is first of all just otherness. The new is
produced by blind mechanisms rather than creative thought.
Strategic selection is required to secure communicative conti-
nuity and adaptive pertinence.

***
Now I want to talk a little about the theoretical sources that
allow me to work out a comprehensive unified theory of ar-
chitecture with confidence and conviction. To do that, one of
the key things you have to grasp is the societal function, or the
raison d'&tre, of architecture in the world why it came into
being, why it took certain forms and moved toward certain
developments, and what the best bet is for staying relevant
and continuing to play an important role. This requires some
sense of the overall social process and its workings. For the
first decade of my architectural life, beginning in the early
68 Log 21
1980s, I looked at Marxism and historical materialism as the
kind of overarching theoretical edifice through which to
think what is going on in architecture. When I went into ar-
chitecture at the University of Stuttgart, I was joining the late
modern period. People were still convinced of modernism.
There was still hi-tech - Norman Foster and Richard Rogers
were still the prominent going tendency. I was into it, but one
or two years into my studies, I discovered postmodernism
in the writing of Robert Venturi and in charles jencks's The
Language of Post-Modern Architecture. And so I changed, and,
in fact, the university changed. And a few years later there
was a radical shift to deconstructivism. It seemed that in the
1980s, every two or three years there was a revolution in style,
in paradigm, in outlook, and in values. I think that period left
a mark on some people's general philosophical outlook. Soon
there was a pluralism of styles. It seems that since then the
kind of monolithic, cumulative trajectory of modernism is
a thing of a past era and that we're now living in a world of
continuous flux and splintering, fragmenting trajectories and
ever-changing values, but that it is a historical illusion.
In my search for a credible theory of architecture and

theory of contemporary society I discovered Niklas Luh-
mann's social systems theory. Luhmann's fundamental prem-
ise is that all social phenomena or events depend on systems
of communication. He steps back from Marxist materialism
to a kind of abstraction, but one that I think is plausible. You
always have to abstract to theorize. To focus on communica-
tions is interesting, because if you think about everybody's
life process - where the bottlenecks are, where the crux of
your problems is, your issues - you are always coping with
social systems, your ability to communicate within them, to
find a position within them. Even the physical world only
gets to you through systems of communication. For example,
if you're struck by illness your main problem will be whether
you have health insurance, whether you have people you can
communicate with, whether you are embedded in a system of
communications with rights and the ability to speak. If you
want to traverse physical space your issue will be whether you
have money, an airline ticket. The bottleneck will be traffic,
other people's attempts to travel, security controls at airports,
etc. You are protected if you have the ability to buy a hotel
room, an apartment, switch on the heater, pay the bills. Com-
munication structures everyone's interface with the physical
world and our relations with each other. If you think about
architecture as an inverted commerce, we construct projects
only through communications, whether through drawings,
69Winter 2011
contracts, phone calls, emails: communications, upon com-
munications, upon communications - that's what runs this
world. Everything goes through that needle's eye.
Luhmann's philosophy of history differs from both Marx's
and Hegel's. I insist that an architectural theorist possess a

philosophy of history, a theory of historical development.
Luhmann looks at history in terms of modes of social or soci-
etal differentiation - the mark of epochs. Today societies are
organized in terms of functional differentiation. This is what
Luhmann calls functionally differentiated society, composed
of the great function systems of society, themselves parallel
systems that co-evolve as autonomous discourses, systems of
communication like politics, law, economics, science, educa-
tion, health, mass media, and art. A politician has no way
of influencing your voice in terms of scientific truth, just as
issues of law have nothing to say with respect to scientific
knowledge. The economy is separate from politics and has its
own autonomous domain and communication system based
on money and exchange in the market. The reverse is also
true: science can deliver knowledge, but what is to be done
with that knowledge is a matter of the economy, or the
political discourse, and science cannot instruct politics. The
same is true for art and science. The beautiful cannot be sci-
entifically determined, etc.
This is Luhmann's picture of society, which I very briefly
sketch here. Luhmann has in fact written comprehensive
analyses of all these social subsystems, but he did not write
about architecture. He fit architecture anachronistically
- into the art system, but really didn't talk much about it. I
have been reading Luhmann for about 15 years, and it in-
creasingly occurred to me that architecture could be theorized
in the same way. Architecture is one of those great function
systems of contemporary society, our functionally differenti-
ated society.
Just a few more points about what that might mean.
Luhmann discovers a series of important processes that deter-
mine these different systems within the era of modernity. The
emerging market-orientation of the economy, the liberaliza-
tion of the economy, is the pertinent way for the economy to

become an autopoietic system. The political system has been
evolving and succeeding through democratization, and only
through democratization does it become a truly autopoietic,
self-referentially closed system. The legal system found its
autonomy and forward drive through positivism rather than
natural law or God-given legal discourse. Art discovered its
self-programming in romanticism. All of these mechanisms
70 Log 21
mean that these systems become autonomous and adaptive to
each other. They become versatile, innovative, progressive,
and ever-:evolving. All these processes are established some-
where between 1800 and 1900. My thesis here is that the
concept of space, or the spatialization of architecture, is the
equivalent of the democratization of the political system, the
liberalization of the economy, etc.
As Luhmann was analyzing these different function sys-
tems he realized that despite their differences - they share
parallel structures and face parallel, or comparative, prob-
lems: How could they demarcate themselves? How could they
cohere around an elemental operation? How could they rep-
resent within themselves the differences between them and
their environment? He discovers that each of these systems
has a binary code, programs that elaborate how the code val-
ues will be used. Each has its specific medium, such as money
for the economy, and they all have a unique societal function,
which acts as a kind of evolutionary attract or for the differ-
entiation and autonomization of that respective system. This
unique and distinct function unfolds in a series of tasks. Each
of these systems projected itself forward through something
Luhmann called self-descriptions. This means that within
each discourse there are theoretical reflections via great
treatises, written accounts of trying to think through and

argue the function, the purpose, the raison d'~tre of each of
the function systems. So within the political system there is
political theory. The legal system developed together with
jurisprudence. Science developed together with epistemology,
the philosophy of science. And architecture has architectural
theory, but only a deep and comprehensive kind of architec-
tural theory functions as self-description. In volume two I
go through some of them: Alberti's Ten Books on Architecture;
Durand's lectures on architecture for the era of neoclassicism;
Le Corbusier's Towards a New Architecture for modernism; and
The Autopoiesis of Architecture for our time, for
parametricism.
We can identify in every function system a so-called lead
distinction. The lead distinction for architecture is form
versus function. You find it in Alberti. You find it in all major
self-descriptions. This lead distinction is the re-entry of the
system-environment distinction into the system. It represents
the distinction of the system of architecture against its en-
vironment - that is, against the totality of society - within
architecture. So with the category of form, architecture rep-
resents itself to itself as distinct from function, which is the
category representing the external world reference of archi-
tecture. The lead distinction of the economy is the distinction
Winter 2011 71
of price versus value: price is the internal reference; value is
the external reference. In science it is theory versus evidence,
in the law, norm versus fact, etc. There are further parallels
between these function systems. To identify the respective
structure in architecture that coincides with the structures
found in the other function systems has been a creative
puzzle-solving exercise, but in the end a coherent picture

emerges that allows me to take a position with respect to all of
the partial theories I have been developing over the years.
Let me show a few pictures of MAXXI in Rome as a
reminder that there's a certain credibility in realizing projects
that follow the principles I'm talking about. The Rome proj-
ect is a field project. It has a very stringent formalism. At the
same time it is very capable of adapting to contexts, in terms
of continuing field conditions, aligning with an urban grid on
one side and with a separate urban grid on another, incorpo-
rating existing architectures, and managing to create a coher-
ent space around a corner. I would argue that it does a lot of
difficult things with ease and elegance. Some of the strong
alignments with the context go right through the building.
There's a sense of bringing together disparate elements under
a single formalism, with flow lines irrigating the space. One
of the ambitions is moments of deep visual penetration, the
legibility and transparency of complex organization. In the
central communication hub, ramps and staircases follow
the formal language of walls and ribs, creating something
coherent. That's a precondition for generating an overall
complexity without creating visual chaos. Although MAXXI
was designed 10 years ago, it is a kind of early parametricist
project. The proliferation of lines, bundling, converging, and
departing from one another, creates a field space.
***
So let me define parametricism. First of all, a conceptual
definition: all elements of architecture have become para-
metrically malleable. That's both fundamental and profound.
The advantage of this is the intensification of relations both
internally, within a design project, a building, and exter-
nally, with its context and surroundings. This is a funda-
mental ontological shift with respect to the base components
and primitives constituting an architecture. For the previ-

ous 2,000 years, if you like, architecture was working with
platonic solids, with rigid, hermetic, geometric figures, and
just composing them. Compared with classical architecture,
modernism was allowed to stretch proportions, was able
to give up symmetries, and instead had a kind of dynamic
72 Log 21
equilibrium and more freedom that moved these figures from
edifice to space with all of the advantages of abstraction and
versatility that entails. But in terms of the base primitives,
it was geometric figures and nothing else. If you look at the
kinds of primitives we are working with today, however, it is
a totally different world splines, blobs, nurbs, particles, all
organized by scripts. I think it started with deconstructivism,
to a certain extent, and then Greg Lynn talking about blobs in
1994-95. When we were teaching at Columbia in '93, we were
creating dynamic, cross-inflected textures and fields. This
was also the beginning of certain computational mechanisms.
Instead of drawing with ruler and compass, making rigid
lines and rigid figures, we worked with dynamical systems.
That's a new ontology, which cannot but leave a profound,
radically transformative mark on what we do. If we succeed,
and I have no doubt parametricism will succeed, we'll change
the physiognomy of this planet and its built environment, just
the way modernism did for 50 years in the 20th century. The
recession over the last two years put a bit of a damper on
but that should not be misunderstood as a failure or refuta-
tion of this kind of work. In fact, architecture continues to
invest in digital technology, fabrication systems, etc., and
any prohibitive cost is diminishing as a factor. An economic
recession cannot stand in the way of universalizing these
principles. Parametricism is the way we do urbanism and
architecture now.
73

ZAHAHADID ARCHITECTS, MAXXI:
MUSEUM OF XXI CENTURY ARTS,
ROME, 1998-2009. PUBLIC PLAZA AT
ENTRY. PHOTO: IWAN BUN.
Winter 2011
ZAHA RADID ARCHITECTS, MAXXI:
MUSEUM OF XXI CENTURY ARTS,
ROME, 1998-2009. PHOTO: IWAN BAAN.
'" '" '"
So the thesis is clear: parametricism is the great new style after
modernism. I consider postmoderrusm and deconstructivism
to be transitional styles, or transitional episodes. I think that
architectural innovation and history proceed by the succession
of styles. These are the great paradigms and research pro-
grams by which architecture redefines itself. Postmodernism
and deconstructivism are temporary phenomena, a decade
each. Parametricism is already 15 years down the line. Design
research programs establish the conditions for the collec-
tive design research needed to agree on the fundamentals
that add up to an overall research project. If you are fighting
over fundamentals every time you start a new project, you
cannot progress. Here I draw not on Luhmann so much as
on the philosophy of science as projected by Thomas Kuhn,
theorizing paradigm shifts, and in particular I draw on Imre
Lakatos's theory of scientific research programs. Science is
founded, or re-founded, with certain paradigmatic categories,
principles, anticipations, and intuitions about how a science

could progress, and on that basis, after a revolutionary period
of paradigm exploration, a new paradigm or research pro-
gram has to emerge and win the competitive battle, and then
reconstitute cumulative research. Like a research program,
a shared style implies that you are formulating pertinent
desires, framing and posing problems to work on, and stra-
tegically constraining the solution space. We are identifying
Winter 201174 Log 21
problems and trying to solve these problems by means of
parametric systems, by exploring the power of malleability in
the elements. The style imposes a formal a priori. There are
very strong analogies in science. For example, Newton set up
a certain set of principles by which every phenomenon was
investigated, probed, and modeled. From problem to prob-
lem, the same principles are held steady, otherwise there is no
testing, no research. Innovation requires this kind of steady,
collective effort. It is the condition of any progress.
We can think of the history of architecture in terms of
cycles of innovation and shifts between revolutionary periods,
when the paradigm is no longer working, as happened in the
late '60s, the '70s, and early '80s. You couldn't really go on
after Pruitt-Igoe was imploded. The principles that architects
were relying on were exhausted. That's also why SCI-Arc
was founded because the old university way of doing things
couldn't continue, it was bankrupt. The situation required
a sense of freewheeling brainstorming. Architecture drew
on philosophers, and fundamental questions were asked. It's
interesting that today philosophy has receded, we've reached
a different stage. We have drawn conclusions and learned
our lessons; we have internalized new forms of thinking and
argumentation, new values, new philosophies, and now we
have to forge ahead, developing a new architecture. Every
new generation has to relearn the raison d'~tre of what we do,

but that doesn't mean that what we are doing is up for discur-
sive destruction or disposition every second year. At the early
stages of a new convergence you have to become accustomed
to living with a lot of failures, a lot of difficulties, a lot of
implausibilities. That's why we need the avant-garde: where
there is methodical tolerance, where there are dry runs,
experiments, and manifesto projects, and where you can't
expect to immediately compete with the mainstream state
of the art. You have to stick to your principles and not allow
pragmatic concerns to push you to fall back on old models,
old solutions, which are easy and accepted. You've got to go it
the difficult way. You've got to go it the consistent way. The
dogmatic way. That's what Newton did also.
It's important to give a conceptual definition of para-
metricism in terms of parametric malleability, but there is
also an operational definition of parametricism. When I first
started to talk about parametricism I was talking about for-
mal heuristics, but now I find it necessary also to talk about
functional heuristics, because a style is not just a matter of
form and structured formalisms. Each style also introduces a
particular attitude and way of comprehending and handling
7S
ZAHA RADIO ARCHITECTS, NYC 2012
OLYMPIC VILLAGE COMPETITION PRO-
POSAL, NEW YORK, 2004. BIRD'S-EYE
VIEW AND PERSPECTIVE.
functions and program. Any.reri()u.r style must take a posi-

tion on these issues, and I think we have a different attitude
and position with respect to function than the modernists. We
need both functional heuristics and formal heuristics. This is
not something I am dogmatically imposing, I'm just observ-
ing that I, my friends, my students, naturally adhere to these
principles without faiL Their hand would fall off rather than
draw straight lines. Is anybody here drawing a triangle, a
square, or a circle? Ever again? No!
Postmodernism and deconstructivism celebrated collage,
interpenetration, and layering in an unmediated way, but
this notion of pure difference and collage, which is in fact the
default condition of spontaneous urban development after
the collapse of modernism, is invested only in just the pro-
liferation of pure difference, of piling up unrelated elements
against unrelated elements, etc. But that is taboo within the
discourse of parametric ism. Modernism, seriality, repetition
are out of the question. Instead everybody is putting down
their own shape, form, material- all uncoordinated. So, if
the modernist recipes as well as their spontaneous antitheses
are rejected, where are we going?
We are trying to create a second nature, a complex var-
iegated order, at Zaha Hadid Architects and at the different
schools where we teach. I am trying to formulate the positive
principles that determine the new physiognomy, that define
a new way of working with parametrically malleable, soft
forms. Soft forms are able to incorporate a degree of adap-
tive intelligence. They are no longer just forms, but may have
gravity or structural constraints, material constraints, inbuilt
logics that make them intelligent.
The second positive principle, or dogma, which all of you
here always demand of yourselves and which your teachers
76 Log 21

will demand of you as students, is differentiation. If you are
building differentiated systems, whether you work only with
smooth gradients, or whether you work with thresholds or
singularities, you will always work with laws, with rule-
based systems of differentiation. These can be applied mean-
ingfully, for instance, in the adaptation of facades to create
an intelligent differentiation of elements. You can do this by
taking data sets like sun exposure maps and make them drive
an intelligent differentiation of brise-soleil elements, which
are scripted off the data set. But you can also apply this kind
of technique to urbanism. We're talking about urban fields,
about the lawful differentiation of an urban fabric according
to relevant data sets.
Once you have a series of these internally differentiated
systems, you can think about establishing correlations be-
tween them, where one system drives the other. These are all
co-present systems, which become representations of each
other. They might be ontologically rather different, radically
other. There will be multiple systems, each differentiated.
Then you can establish correlations. Here, just a simple exam-
ple, are our towers for the New York Olympic Village, which
interface with the ground and create a kind of resonance with
it. The way the facade is correlated with the horizontal sec-
tion of a tower has to do with the programmatic shift from
an office area to a residential area. And of course you can try
to mechanize these correlations in terms of associative logics.
What is important here for me is that we are moving from
single-system projects, which are a kind of first stage - too
abstract to really grip in reality to the inter-articulation of
multiple subsystems, to multisystem correlations.
The principles of parametricism, in terms of its heuris-
tics, its operational definition, provide failsafe tools for criti-

Winter 2011 77
cism and self-criticism of project development and project
enhancement. You can always identifY where the rigid forms
still persist, where there is still too much simple repetition,
where there are still unrelated elements. You can always ask
for further softening, further differentiation, and further
correlation of everything with everything else. There's
always more to script and correlate to intensifY the internal
consistency and cross-connections and resonance within a
project and to a context. It's a never-ending trajectory of
a project's progression. The intensification of relations in
architecture reflects the intensification of communication
among all of us, everyday and with everything. A building
can no longer be a silo out in the greenfield; it needs to be
connected in an urban texture, needs to be accessible, have
internal differentiation, yet have a sense of continuity.
Functional heuristics. There are some taboos in terms of
handling functions. We avoid thinking in terms of essences.
We avoid stereotypes and strict typologies. We also avoid
designating functions to strict and discrete zones. These are
taboos for all of us. Instead, we think in terms of gradient
fields of activity, about variable social scenarios calibrated by
various event parameters. We think in terms of actor-artifact
networks. That's the way we break down a program, a task.
And that makes sense, because the formal heuristics and func-
tional heuristics coalesce, make sense together. To translate
these functions into form you need the formal heuristics I
discussed earlier.
Clearly, parametric systems or techniques could be used
as technologies of design by modernists like Norman Foster;
they could also be used by neoclassicists. The point is that

the tools themselves have great potential, but we need to
drive these potentials and draw decisive conclusions and give
value and direction to the utilization of these tools. That is
the difference between a set of techniques and a style, which
depends on these techniques, albeit not exclusively, but drives
them to a new destiny. Foster's British Museum dome could
only have been done with parametric tools. Every joint is dif-
ferent, every panel is different. The use of parametrics made
this possible, but the spirit of this application is the spirit of
modernism of neutralizing the differences, making them
inconspicuous. Here all elements are different but they want
to appear the same. Against that I put forward a new kind
of "artistic project," the project of driving the conspicuous
amplification of differences. So a difference in curvature is
transcoded into radically different conditions of ribbing, of
gridding, of dense networking, perhaps engendering a phase
78
PATRIK SCHUMACHER IS A DIRECTOR
OF ZAHA HADm ARCHITECTS AND
PROFESSOR AT INNSBRUCK UNIVER-
SITY. HE IS ALSO CO-DIRECTOR OF
THE DESI<TN RESEARCH LABORATORY
AT THE ARCHITECTURAL ASSOCIATION
SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, LONDON.
Winter 2011
change at a certain threshold. This is much more prone to

the development of versatile conditions and different atmo-
spheres, which bleed into each other instead of establishing
disparate zones. I think our work forms a much more perti-
nent image and vehicle of contemporary life forces and pat-
terns of social communication than that big Foster dome.
This emphasis on differentiation, the amplification of de-
viations rather than neutralization and compensation, is also
related to the difference between exploratory design research
and problem solving. Problem solving is the engineering
side, the side of parametric technique. In contrast, when we
are talking about parametricism as style, we're talking about
teasing out the as yet unknown potentials of these techniques,
but with the general direction clearly set by the parametricist
heuristic principles. This has been going on for quite a while
now. I believe that we are on the cusp of moving from an
avant-garde condition into claiming the mainstream. Most
of our projects, even most of our built work, are hypotheses,
manifestos, but I think some of our projects go beyond that
and are becoming compelling success stories in the real world.
The projects now coming out of the office show the rich-
ness of our formal vocabulary and the richness of types of
structures we are addressing. There's a kind of unity within
difference, or difference within unity, moving across various
scales: endless forms. But these endless forms are there to or-
ganize and articulate life. So formpo"Wers function. That's the
new thesis. Spatial organization sustains social organization.
Can we demonstrate, control, and predict this? To a certain
extent, I would argue, we can.
If we look at the history of parametricism, in fact it's the
history of the whole evolution of architecture. The funda-
mental thesis is that social order requires spatial order, that
society doesn't exist without a structured environment, and
that society can only evolve if it is able to enhance and intri-

cately structure its built environment as well. Architecture
provides the necessary substrate of cultural evolution.
79
DocumentationBright LightAuthorDatePurposeProjected usage
on shelter and meals program
Shelter UsageThe Bright LightUsage Figures for
2010*DecNovOctSepAugJulSingle Rooms
(5)118110112104106103Common Room 1 (15
max)448419434422421410Common Room 2 (15
max)432436412431405411Domestic Abuse Shelter
(3)728781524754Total Client Days1070105210391009979978*
Figures represent total occupancy for each month. Projected
UsageYearClient
Days200310,37113750200411,03813750200511,3111375020061
1,78713750200712,14213750200812,61713750200913,2461375
0201013,87513750201114,10413750201214,54513750
Projected Usage
Client Days 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011
2012 10371 11038 11311 11787 12142
12617 13246 13875 14104 14545 2003
2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 13750
13750 13750 13750 13750 13750 13750
13750 13750
Year
Total Client Days
Projected
1
2
3

4
5
6
7
8
9
10
A
B
C
D
The Bright Light
Usage Figures for 2010*
Dec
Nov
Oct
Single Rooms (5)
118
110
112
Common Room 1 (15 max)
448
419
434
Common Room 2 (15 max)
432
436
412
Domestic Abuse Shelter (3)
72
87
81
Total Client Days
1070
1052
1039

* Figures represent total occupancy for each month.
January 25, 2012
Ann Magee
Assistant Financial Administrator
State Dept. of Social Services
1 East Central Ave.
Atlanta, PA 66601
Dear Ms. Magee:
Thank you for your inquiries about The Bright Light. I am
enclosing a complete usage report for 2010. As the following
summary table indicates, we have seen increased use of the
shelter in the second half of the year. Even if we take into
account our severe winter, the shelter is being used at a greater
rate than in any previous year.
Our analyst has projected shelter usage for the next two fiscal
years. Based on those projections, The Bright Light will need to
start expanding its space within the next two years, or we will
have to start sending people to other facilities. Currently, the
closest facility is located 30 miles away in the town of Three
Points. For many of our clients, this would not be a practical
alternative.
I hope this material helps you in organizing budget priorities for
the next state budget. Please let me know if you need any more
information.
Regards,
Peter Skinner
Financial Director
The Bright Light

Self-Check And Submit:
Appendix C – Integrating Excel with other Office
Applications, pgs EX C21 - EX C27 only
Complete only the small section towards the end of Appendix C
that begins with “Integrating Excel with other Office
Applications”. Do not complete the rest of Appendix C on
Creating a Shared Workbook. Submit the Memo Destination
Word document and the Income Statement Source workbook
Submit To Be Scored:
Appendix C, Bright Light Case Problem
The Bright Light Case Problem is not in your textbook.
Complete this Case problem using the instructions listed below.
Begin and Submit to the Final Project Dropbox when complete:
Final Project – Tutorial 8, Case Problem 4, pgs 482-485
This project will comprise 20% of your grade. Please do not
wait to begin this project until the last minute. It is a
comprehensive assignment and will take a fair amount of time
to complete. Double check your final product to make sure it is
professional looking and error-free before turning it in. You
will submit the following documents from the Alia’s Senior
Living workbook: Documentation sheet, Invoice, Invoice
formulas and Product Pricing and Shipping sheet.
In step 4o, the best solution for the shipping cost is an IF
Function with a nested vlookup (the IF checks if the subtotal is
>=200 and thevlookup references the shipping cost table).
Bright Light Case Problem
Data files needed for this Case Problem:Usage.xlsx and
Request.docx
Problem: Peter Skinner is writing a letter to the state
government to report on the shelter and meal programs used at

Bright Light. He has data in an Excel workbook and needs to
incorporate the data into the letter he is composing in Word.
Because the report will also include projections for the
upcoming year, which he might modify, Peter wants to create a
link between the information in the Excel workbook and the
Word document. He also wants to embed in the Word document
a chart that he has created in his workbook. He asked you to
help link the two files.
Complete the following:
<![if !supportLists]>1. <![endif]>Open the Usage workbook
located in the Appendix C misc folder, and then save it as
Bright Usage.
<![if !supportLists]>2. <![endif]>In the Documentation
sheet, enter the date and your name, and then switch to the
Shelter Usage worksheet.
<![if !supportLists]>3. <![endif]>Open the Request
document located in the Appendix C misc folder, and then save
it as Bright Request.
<![if !supportLists]>4. <![endif]>Return to the Bright Usage
workbook, and then copy the range A2:G9 in the Shelter Usage
workbook.
<![if !supportLists]>5. <![endif]>Return to the Bright
Request document, and then paste the selected range as a link
below the first paragraph of Peter’s letter.
<![if !supportLists]>6. <![endif]>Peter discovered that the
number of client days in the domestic abuse shelter in December
2010 was actually 75, not 72. Make this change in the Bright
Usage workbook, and then verify that the Bright Request
document is automatically updated.
<![if !supportLists]>7. <![endif]>Copy the Projected Usage
chart from the Shelter Usage worksheet, and then embed the
chart below the second paragraph in Peter’s letter (do not link
the chart).
<![if !supportLists]>8. <![endif]>Edit the embedded chart,
changing the background color of the plot area from yellow to
white.

<![if !supportLists]>9. <![endif]>Save and close the Bright
Request and Bright Usage files. Print and submit the finished
workbook to your instructor.
DocumentationMortgage AnalysisAuthor:Date:Purpose:To
calculate the monthly payment and total cost of a mortgage
under different conditions
MortgageMortgage AnalysisLoan Amount$250,000Interest
Rate5.50%Years30Term (Months)360Monthly
Payment($1,419.47)Total($511,010.10)
INTRODUCTION
Architectural Curvilinearity: The Folded, the Pliant
and the Supple / Greg Lynn
In 1993, Greg Lynn guest-edited an issue of Architectural
Design
dedicated to an emerging movement in architecture: folding.
Lynn, a Los Angeles-based architect/educator with a
background
in philosophy and an attraction to computer-aided design, was
the ideal person to organize this publication and, in effect,
define
the fold in architecture, a concept that generated intense interest

during the remainder of the decade.
In his contributory essay, ''lrchitectural Curvilinearity: The
Folded, the Pliant and the Supple," Lynn ties together a variety
of sources-including the work of Gilles Deleuze, Rene Thom,
cooking theory, and geology-to present an alternative to
existing architectural theory and practice. He states that since
the mid-1960s architecture has been guided by the notion of
contradiction, whether through attempts to formally embody
heterogeneity or its opposite; in short, postmodernism and
decon-
structivism can be understood as two sides of the same coin.
Yet,
for Lynn, "neither the reactionary call for unity nor the avant-
garde
dismantling of it through the identification of internal
contradic-
tions seems adequate as a model for contemporary architecture
and urbanism." Rather, he offers a smooth architecture (in both
a
visual and a mathematic sense) composed of combined yet dis-
crete elements that are shaped by forces outside the

architectural
discipline, much as diverse ingredients are folded into a smooth
mixture by a discerning chef. This new architecture, what Lynn
calls a pliant, flexible orchitecture, exploits connections
between
elements within a design instead of emphasizing contradictions
or attempting to erase them all together. Of equal importance
is that this architecture is inextricably entwined with external
forces, both cultural and contextual. Architects deploy various
.. ,JJiJIIIiIIIIliii.
,j'"'ngies-including a reliance on topological geometry and
"'u"al software and technologies-in the creation of their designs,
II,,' Ihe resulting works tend to be curvilinear in form and
inflected
....Ih the particulars of the project and its environment.
In addition to Lynn's essay, Folding in Architecture, as the
A/. hitectural Design issue was titled, included other texts by
fig-
,,·os such as Deleuze, Jeffrey Kipnis, and John Rajchman, and
'''presentative projects by architects like Peter Eisenman, Frank

( inhry, and Philip Johnson. This list of distinguished
collaborators
("fl' weight to the publication, intimating that the phenomenon
"I the fold was already entrenched within architectural design.
If Indeed it was, Folding in Architecture cemented the shift in
(lfchitectural thought by identifying and highlighting this new
mchitecture of smoothness. The importance of Lynn's special
.,sue of Architectural Design was underscored by its reprinting
in
2004 as "a historical document,"1 complete with new
introductory
nssays analyzing and situating the original publication as a
guid-
Ing force within twenty-first-century architectural discourse.2
Notes
Helen Castle, "Preface," in Folding in Architedure, ed. Greg
Lynn
(London: Wiley-Academy. 2004), 7.
2 See Greg Lynn, "Introdudion," in Folding in Architecture,
8-13; and

Mario Carpo, "Ten Years of Folding," in Folding in
Architecture. See
also Branko Koleravic, ed., Architecture in the Digital Age:
Design and
Manufacturing (New York: Spoon Press, 2003), 3-10.
30 31
GREG LYNN
ARCHITECTURAL
CURVILINEARITY:
THE FOLDED, THE PLIANT
AND THE SUPPLE
First appeared in Architectural Design 63, no. 3/4 (1993): 8-15·
Courtesy ofGreg
For the last two decades, beginning with Robert Venturi's
Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture,' and Colin Rowe
and Fred Koetter's Collage City,2 and continuing through Mark
Wigley and Philip Johnson's Deconstructivist Architecture,
archi-
tects have been primarily concerned with the production of
heterogeneous, fragmented and conflicting formal systems.

These practices have attempted to embody the differences
within and between diverse physical, cultural, and social con-
texts in formal conflicts. When comparingVenturi's Complexity
and Contradiction or Learning from Las vegas with Wigley and
Johnson's DeconstructionArchitecture it is necessary to
overlook
many significant and distinguishing differences in order to
identify at least one common theme.
Both Venturi and Wigley argue for the deployment of dis-
continuous, fragmented, heterogeneous, and diagonal formal
strategies based on the incongruities,juxtapositions and opposi-
tions within specific sites and programmes. These disjunctions
,nult from a logic which tends to identify the potential con-
1I.IIIit'lions between dissimilar elements. A diagonal dialogue
Iwlween a building and its context has become an emblem
I", Ihe contradictions within contemporary culture. From the
', •.1It' of an urban plan to a building detail, contexts have been
IIl1l1ed for conflicting geometries, materials, styles, histories,
,.lId programmes which are then represented in architecture as
11111' mal contradictions. The most paradigmatic architecture
of
t t1l' last ten years, including Robert Venturi's Sainsbury Wing
of
'hI' National Gallery, Peter Eisenman's Wexner Center, Bernard
I chumi's La Villette Park or the Gehry House, invests in the
,II ('hitectural representation of contradictions. Through con-
II ad iction, architecture represents difference in violent formal
• 1111 t1icts.

Contradiction has also provoked a reactionary response
,,, formal conflict. Such resistances attempt to recover unified
.1Il'hitecturallanguages that can stand against heterogeneity.
I !Ility is constructed through one of two strategies: either by
''('onstructing a continuous architectural language through
historical analyses (Neo-Classicism or Neo-Modernism) or by
ldt'ntifying local consistencies resulting from indigenous cli-
mates, materials, traditions or technologies (Regionalism).
rhe internal orders of Neo-Classicism, Neo-Modernism and
Ilt'gionalism conventionally repress the cultural and contextual
discontinuities that are necessary for a logic of contradiction.
III architecture, both the reaction to and the representation of
heterogeneity have shared an origin in contextual analysis. Both
Iheoretical models begin with a close analysis ofcontextual con-
ditions from which they proceed to evolve either a
homogeneous
or heterogeneous urban fabric. Neither the reactionary call for
IInity nor the avant-garde dismantling of it through the identifi-
t':ltion of internal contradictions seems adequate as a model for
l'Ontemporary architecture and urbanism.
GREG LYNN 33
32
In response to architecture's discovery of complex, dis-
parate, differentiated and heterogeneous cultural and formal
contexts, two options have been dominant; either conflict and
contradiction or unity and reconstruction. Presently, an alter-
native smoothness is being formulated that may escape these

dialectically opposed strategies. Common to the diverse sources
of this post-contradictory work-topological geometry, mor-
phology, morphogenesis, Catastrophe Theory or the computer
technology of both the defense and Hollywood film industry-
are characteristics of smooth transformation involving the
intensive integration of differences within a continuous yet het-
erogeneous system. Smooth mixtures are made up of disparate
elements which maintain their integrity while being blended
within a continuous field ofother free elements.
Smoothing does not eradicate differences but incorporates3
free intensities through fluid tactics of mixing and blending.
Smooth mixtures are not homogeneous and therefore cannot
be reduced. Deleuze describes smoothness as "the continuous
variation" and the "continuous development ofform."4 Wigley's
critique of pure form and static geometry is inscribed within
geometric conflicts and discontinuities. For Wigley, smoothness
is equated with hierarchical organisation: "the volumes have
been purified-they have become smooth, classical-and the
wires all converge in a single, hierarchical, vertical movement.
"5
Rather than investing in arrested conflicts, Wigley's slipperi-
ness might be better exploited by the alternative smoothness of
heterogeneous mixture. For the first time perhaps, complexity
might be aligned with neither unity nor contradiction but with
smooth, pliant mixture.
Both pliancy and smoothness provide an escape from the
two camps which would either have architecture break under
the stress ofdifference or stand firm. Pliancy allows architecture
to become involved in complexity through flexibility. It may be
34 ' ARCHITECTURAL CURVILINEARITY
pn""ihlc to neither repress the complex relations of differences

"Ih fixed points ofresolution nor arrest them in contradictions,
btu "ustain them through flexible, unpredicted, local connec-
Ikllls. To arrest differences in conflicting forms often precludes
....ny of the more complex possible connections of the forms of
.rc:hilecture to larger cultural fields. A more pliant architectural
k'""ibility values alliances, rather than conflicts, between ele-
"'t"IlIS. Pliancy implies first an internal flexibility and second a
dc-,ll'ndence on external forces for self-definition.
If there is a single effect produced in architecture by folding,
.. will be the ability to integrate unrelated elements within a
new
tunlinuous mixture. Culinary theory has developed both a prac-
tklll and precise definition for at least three types of mixtures.
l'lll' first involves the manipulation of homogeneous elements;
bt"lIling, whisking and whipping change the volume but not
.ht" nature of a liquid through agitation. The second method
ur incorporation mixes two or more disparate elements; chop-
Pill){, dicing, grinding, grating, slicing, shredding and mincing
rvisl'erate elements into fragments. The first method agitates
• "ingle uniform ingredient, the second eviscerates disparate
Ingredients. Folding, creaming and blending mix smoothly
multiple ingredients "through repeated gentle overturnings
wilhout stirring or beating" in such a way that their individual
l'hnracteristics are maintained.6 For instance, an egg and choco-
tilt' are folded together so that each is a distinct layer within a
c:nntinuous mixture.
Folding employs neither agitation nor evisceration but a
.upple layering. Likewise, folding in geology involves the sedi-
IUl'ntation of mineral elements or deposits which become
_lowly bent and compacted into plateaus of strata. These strata
Afl' compressed, by external forces, into more or less continu-
IIUS layers within which heterogeneous deposits are still intact
in varying degrees of intensity.

GREG LYNN 35
A folded mixture is neither homogenous, like whipped
cream, nor fragmented, like chopped nuts, but smooth and
heterogeneous. In both cooking and geology, there is no pre-
liminary organisation which becomes folded but rather there
are unrelated elements or pure intensities that are intricated
through ajoint manipulation. Disparate elements can be incor-
porated into smooth mixtures through various manipulations
including fulling:
"Felt is a supple solid product that proceeds altogether dif-
ferently, as an anti-fabric. It implies no separation of threads,
no intertwining, only an entanglement of fibres obtained by
full-
ing (for example, by rolling the block of fibres back and forth).
What becomes entangled are the microscales of the fibres. An
aggregate of intrication of this kind is in no way homogeneous;
nevertheless, it is smooth and contrasts point by point with the
space of fabric (it is in principle infinite, open and uninhibited
in every direction; it has neither top, nor bottom, nor centre;
it does not assign fixed or mobile elements but distributes a
continuous variation}."?
The two characteristics of smooth mixtures are that they
are composed of disparate unrelated elements and that these
free intensities become intricated by an external force exerted

upon them jointly. Intrications are intricate connections. They
are intricate, they affiliate local surfaces of elements with one
another by negotiating interstitial rather than internal connec-
tions. The heterogeneous elements within a mixture have no
proper relation with one another. Likewise, the external force
that intricates these elements with one another is outside of the
individual elements control or prediction.
Viscous Mixtures
Unlike an architecture of contradictions, superpositions and
accidental collisions, pliant systems are capable of engendering
36 ARCHITECTURAL CURVILINEARITY
unpH'dicted connections with contextual, cultural, program-
nutl ito, structural and economic contingencies by vicissitude.
Vldssitude is often equated with vacillation, weakness8 and
Intll'l'isiveness but more importantly these characteristics are
trt'(IUcntly in the service of a tactical cunning.9 Vicissitude is
• (IUality of being mutable or changeable in response to both
'.vourable and unfavourable situations that occur by chance.
Vldssitudinous events result from events that are neither arbi-
trAry nor predictable but seem to be accidental. These events
.rt' made possible by a collision of internal motivations with
""Il'rnal forces. For instance, when an accident occurs the
vl"1 i m s immediately identify the forces contributing to the
acci-

dt'1l1 and begin to assign blame. It is inevitable however, that
nu single element can be made responsible for any accident
." I hese events occur by vicissitude; a confluence of particular
Inlluences at a particular time makes the outcome of an acci-
d('111 possible. If any element participating in such a
confluence
(If local forces is altered the nature of the event will change. In
A Thousand Plateaus, Spinoza's concept of "a thousand vicis-
alludes" is linked with Gregory Bateson's "continuing plateau
uf intensity" to describe events which incorporate unpredict-
"hie events through intensity. These occurrences are difficult to
ICIl'alise, difficult to identify. 10 Any logic of vicissitude is
depen-
tll'nt on both an intrication of local intensities and the exegetic
prcssure exerted on those elements by external contingencies,
Nl'ither the intrications nor the forces which put them into rela-
lion are predictable from within any single system. Connections
hy vicissitude develop identity through the exploitation of local
iltljacencies and their affiliation with external forces. In this
fil'nse, vicissitudinous mixtures become cohesive through a
log-ic ofviscosity.
Viscous fluids develop internal stability in direct propor-
lion to the external pressures exerted upon them. These fluids
GREG LYNN 37

behave with two types of viscidity. They exhibit both internal
cohesion and adhesion to external elements as their viscosity
increases. Viscous fluids begin to behave less like liquids and
more like sticky solids as the pressures upon them intensify.
Similarly, viscous solids are capable of yielding continually
under stress so as not to shear.
Viscous space would exhibit a related cohesive stabil-
ity in response to adjacent pressures and a stickiness or
adhesion to adjacent elements. Viscous relations such as these
are not reducible to any single or holistic organisation. Forms
of viscosity and pliability cannot be examined outside of the
vicissitudinous connections and forces with which their defor-
mation is intensively involved. The nature of pliant forms is
that they are sticky and flexible. Things tend to adhere to them.
As pliant forms are manipulated and deformed the things
that stick to their surfaces become incorporated within their
interiors.
Curving Away from Deconstructivism
Along with a group of younger architects, the projects that best
represent pliancy, not coincidentally, are being produced by
many of the same architects previously involved in the valorisa-
tion of contradictions. Deconstructivism theorised the world as
a site of differences in order that architecture could represent
these contradictions in form. This contradictory logic is begin-
ning to soften in order to exploit more fully the particularities
of urban and cultural contexts. This is a reasonable transition,
as the Deconstructivists originated their projects with the inter-
nal discontinuities they uncovered within buildings and sites.
These same architects are beginning to employ urban strategies
which exploit discontinuities, not by representing them in for-
mal collisions, but by affiliating them with one another though
continuous flexible systems.

Just as many of these architects have already been inscribed
...hl" a Deconstructivist style of diagonal forms, there will
.",1), hc those who would enclose their present work within
• Nto-Baroque or even Expressionist style of curved forms.
"JW("vcr, many of the formal similitudes suggest a far richer
*kJJCil' of curvilinearity"11 that can be characterised by the
Involvement of outside forces in the development of form. If
Inltrnally motivated and homogeneous systems were to extend
In .tmight lines, curvilinear developments would result from the
IIM'urporation of external influences. Curvilinearity can put
into
..hllion the collected projects in this publication [Architectural
,"',ign 63], Deleuze's The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque and
Rene
Tholn's catastrophe diagrams. The smooth spaces described
by these continuous yet differentiated systems result from cur-
..linear sensibilities that are capable of complex deformations
In rl'sponse to programmatic, structural, economic, aesthetic,
political and contextual influences. This is not to imply that
Intl'nsive curvature is more politically correct than an unin-
volved formal logic, but rather, that a cunning pliability is often
Inure effective through smooth incorporation than contradic-
lion and conflict. Many cunning tactics are aggressive in nature.
Whether insidious or ameliorative these kinds of cunning con-
IIt'ctions discover new possibilities for organisation. A logic of
rurvilinearity argues for an active involvement with external
('wnts in the folding, bending and curving of form.
Already in several Deconstructivist projects are latent sug-
J(estions of smooth mixture and curvature. For instance, the
(iehry House is typically portrayed as representing materials
Hnd forms already present within, yet repressed by, the subur-
hlln neighbourhood: sheds, chain-link fences, exposed plywood,
trailers, boats and recreational vehicles. The house is described

liS an "essay on the convoluted relationship between the
conflict
within and between forms ... which were not imported to but
GREG LYNN 39
emerged from within the house."" The house is seen to provoke
conflict within the neighbourhood due to its public representa-
tion of hidden aspects of its context. The Gehry House violates
the neighbourhood from within. Despite the dominant appeal
of the house to contradictions, a less contradictory and more
pliant reading of the house is possible as a new organisation
emerges between the existing house and Gehry's addition. A
dynamic stability develops with the mixing of the original and
the addition. Despite the contradictions between elements pos-
sible points of connection are exploited. Rather than valorise
the conflicts the house engenders, as has been done in both
academic and popular publications, a more pliant logic would
identify, not the degree ofviolation, but the degree to which new
connections were exploited. A new intermediate organisation
occurs in the Gehry House by vicissitude from the affiliation of
the existing house and its addition. Within the discontinuities
of Deconstructivism there are inevitable unforeseen moments
of cohesion.
Similarly, Peter Eisenman's Wexner Center is convention-
ally portrayed as a collision of the conflicting geometries of the
campus, city and armoury which once stood adjacent to the site.
These contradictions are represented by the diagonal collisions
between the two grids and the masonry towers. Despite the dis-
junctions and discontinuities between these three disparate
systems, Eisenman's project has suggested recessive readings
ofcontinuous non-linear systems ofconnection. Robert Somop3

identifies such a system of Deleuzian rhizomatous connections
between armoury and grid. The armoury and diagonal grids
are shown by Somol to participate in a hybrid L-movement that
organises the main gallery space. Somol's schizophrenic analy-
sis is made possible by, yet does not emanate from within, a
Deconstructivist logic of contradiction and conflict. The force
of this Deleuzian schizo-analytic model is its ability to maintain
40 . ARCHITECTURAL CURVILINEARITY
multiple organisations simultaneously. In Eisenman's project
Iht' tower and grid need not be seen as mutually exclusive or in
(,()lItradiction. Rather, these disparate elements may be seen
I" distinct elements co-present within a composite mixture.
I%mcy does not result from and is not in line with the previous
luc:hitecturallogic of contradiction, yet it is capable of exploit-
Ing many conflicting combinations for the possible connections
Ihilt are overlooked. Where DeconstructivistArchitecture was
seen
II) t'xploit external forces in the familiar name of contradiction
And conflict, recent pliant projects by many of these architects
t'xhibit a more fluid logic of connectivity.
Immersed in Context
The contradictory architecture of the last two decades has
t'volved primarily from highly differentiated, heterogeneous
('ClI1texts within which conflicting, contradictory and discon-
Iinuous buildings were sited. An alternative involvement with
Iwterogeneous contexts could be affiliated, compliant and con-
Iinuous. Where complexity and contradiction arose previously
(rom inherent contextual conflicts, present attempts are being
made to fold smoothly specific locations, materials and pro-
Jtmmmes into architecture while maintaining their individual
Idt'ntity.

This recent work may be described as being compliant; in
II state of being plied by forces beyond control. The projects
are
folded, pliant and supple in order to incorporate their
nmtexts with minimal resistance. Again, this characterisation
lihould not imply flaccidity but a cunning submissiveness that
Is l'apable of bending rather than breaking. Compliant tactics,
Mll'h as these, assume neither an absolute coherence nor cohe-
,.ion between discrete elements but a system of provisional,
Intl'nsive, local connections between free elements. Intensity
d{'scribes the dynamic internalisation and incorporation of
GREG lYNN 41
external influences into a pliant system. Distinct from a whole
organism-to which nothing can be added or subtracted-
intensive organisations continually invite external influence
within their internal limits so that they might extend their
influence through the affiliations they make. A two-fold deter-
ritorialisation, such as this, expands by internalising external
forces. This expansion through incorporation is an urban
alternative to either the infinite extension of International
Modernism, the uniform fabric of Contextualism or the con-
flicts of Post-Modernism and Deconstructivism. Folded, pliant
and supple architectural forms invite exigencies and contingen-
cies in both their deformation and their reception.
In both Learning from Las Vegas and Deconstructivist
Architecture, urban contexts provided rich sites of difference.
These differences are presently being exploited for their abil-
ity to engender multiple lines of local connections rather than
lines of conflict. These affiliations are not predictable by any
contextual orders but occur by vicissitude. Here, urban fabric

has no value or meaning beyond the connections that are made
within it. Distinct from earlier urban sensibilities that general-
ised broad formal codes, the collected projects develop local,
fine grain, complex systems of intrication. There is no general
urban strategy common to these projects, only a kind of tactical
mutability. These folded, pliant and supple forms of urbanism
are neither in deference to nor in defiance of their contexts
but exploit them by turning them within their own twisted and
curvilinear logics.
The Supple and Curvilinear
1 suppleadj [ME souple, fr OF, fr L supplic-, supplex
submissive, suppliant, lit, bending under, fr sub +plic-
(akin to plicare to fold)-more at PLY] u: compliant often
to the point of obsequiousness b: readily adaptable or
responsive to new situations 2a: capable of being bent or
folded without creases, cracks or breaks: PLIANT b: able to
perform bending or twisting movements with ease and
grace: LIMBER c: easy and fluent without stiffness or
awkwardness. 14
At an urban scale, many of these projects seem to be some-
where between contextualism and expressionism. Their supple
rorms are neither geometrically exact nor arbitrarily figural.
I:or example, the curvilinear figures of Shoei Yoh's roof struc-

tures are anything but decorative but also resist being reduced
to a pure geometric figure. Yoh's supple roof structures exhibit
/I logic of curvilinearity as they are continuously differentiated
Ill'cording to contingencies. The exigencies of structural span
Il'ngths, beam depths, lighting, lateral loading, ceiling height
lind view angles influence the form of the roof structure. Rather
than averaging these requirements within a mean or mini-
mum dimension they are precisely maintained by an anexact
),l·t rigorous geometry. Exact geometries are eidetic; they can
bl' reproduced identically at any time by anyone. In this regard,
they must be capable of being reduced to fixed mathematical
(Iuantities. Inexact geometries lack the precision and rigor nec-
t'ssary for measurement.
Anexact geometries, as described by Edmund Husserl,15
nrc those geometries which are irreducible yet rigorous. These
geometries can be determined with precision yet cannot be
reduced to average points or dimensions. Anexact geometries
often appear to be merely figural in this regard. Unlike exact
geometries, it is meaningless to repeat identically an anexact
geometric figure outside of the specific context within which
It is situated. In this regard, anexact figures cannot be easily
translated.
GREG LYNN 43
http:awkwardness.14
Jeffrey Kipnis has argued convincingly that Peter Eisenman's
Columbus Convention Center has become a canonical model
for the negotiation of differentiated urban fringe sites through
the use of near figures. '6 Kipnis identifies the disparate sys-
tems informing the Columbus Convention Center including:
a single volume of inviolate programme of a uniform shape

and height larger than two city blocks, an existing fine grain
fabric of commercial buildings and a network of freeway inter-
changes that plug into the gridded streets of the central business
district. Eisenman's project drapes the large rectilinear vol-
ume of the convention hall with a series of supple vermiforms.
These elements become involved with the train tracks to
the north-east, the highway to the south-east and the pedes-
trian scale of High Street to the west. The project incorporates
the multiple scales, programmes, and pedestrian and auto-
motive circulation of a highly differentiated urban context.
Kipnis' canonisation of a form which is involved with such spe-
cific contextual and programmatic contingencies seems to be
frustrated from the beginning. The effects of a pliant urban mix-
ture such as this can only be evaluated by the connections that
it makes. Outside of specific contexts, curvature ceases to be
intensive. Where the Wexner Center, on the same street in
the same city, represents a monumental collision, the
Convention Center attempts to disappear by connection between
intervals within its context; where the Wexner Center
destabilises
through contradictions the Convention Center does so by
subterfuge.
In a similar fashion Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Museum
in Bilbao, Spain covers a series of orthogonal gallery spaces
with flexible tubes which respond to the scales of the adjacent
roadways, bridges, the Bilbao River and the existing medieval
city. Akin to the Vitra Museum, the curvilinear roof forms of
the
Bilbao Guggenheim integrate the large rectilinear masses of
!Cullery and support space with the scale of the pedestrian and
IlUtomotive contexts.

The unforeseen connections possible between differenti-
illl'" sites and alien programmes require conciliatory, complicit,
pliant, flexible and often cunning tactics. Presently, numerous
IIrchitects are involving the heterogeneities, discontinuities and
tli fferences inherent within any cultural and physical context
by
IIligning formal flexibility with economic, programmatic and
Ii' ructural compliancy. A multitude ofpli based words-folded,
pliant, supple, flexible, plaited, pleated, plicating, complicitous,
t'Ompliant, complaisant, complicated, complex and multiplici-
tous to name a few-can be invoked to describe this emerging
urban sensibility of intensive connections.
The Pliant and Bent
pJiableadj [Me fr plieirto bend, fold-more at PLY] 1a: supple
enough to bend freely or repeatedly without breaking b: yield-
ing readily to others: COMPLAISANT 2: adjustable to varying
conditions: ADAPTABLE, syn see PLASTIC, ant obstinate.17
John Rajchman, in reference to Gilles Deleuze's book Le pli
has already articulated an affinity between complexity, or plex-
words, and folding, or plic-words, in the Deleuzian paradigm
of "perplexing plications" or "perplication.'"8 The plexed and
the plied can be seen in a tight knot of complexity and pliancy.
Plication involves the folding in ofexternal forces.
Complication
involves an intricate assembly of these extrinsic particularities
into a complex network. In biology, complication is the act ofan
embryo folding in upon itself as it becomes more complex. To
become complicated is to be involved in mUltiple complex,
intri-
(.'ate connections. Where Post-Modernism and

Deconstructivism
resolve external influences of programme, use, economy and
GREG LYNN 45
http:obstinate.17
advertising through contradiction, compliancy involves these
external forces by knotting, twisting, bending, and folding them
within form.
Pliant systems are easily bent, inclined or influenced. An
anatomical "plica" is a single strand within multiple "plicae."
It is a multiplicity in that it is both one and many simultane-
ously. These elements are bent along with other elements into
a composite, as in matted hair(s). Such a bending together of
elements is an act ofmultiple plication or multiplication rather
than mere addition. Plicature involves disparate elements with
one another through various manipulations of bending, twist-
ing, pleating, braiding, and weaving through external force. In
RAA Um's Croton Aqueduct project a single line following the
subterranean water supply for New York City is pulled through
multiple disparate programmes which are adjacent to it and
which cross it. These programmatic elements are braided and
bent within the continuous line of recovered public space which
stretches nearly twenty miles into Manhattan. In order to incor-
porate these elements the line itself is deflected and reoriented,
continually changing its character along its length. The seem-
ingly singular line becomes populated by finer programmatic
elements. The implications ofLe pli for architecture involve the
proliferation of possible connections betweenfree entities such
as these.
A plexus is a multi-linear network of interweavings, inter-
twinings and intrications; for instance, of nerves or blood

vessels. The complications of a plexus-what could best be
called complexity-arise from its irreducibility to any single
organisation. A plexus describes a multiplicity of local connec-
tions within a single continuous system that remains open to
new motions and fluctuations. Thus, a plexial event cannot
occur at any discrete point. A multiply plexed system-a com-
plex-cannot be reduced to mathematical exactitude, it must
bet described with rigorous probability. Geometric systems have
I distinct character once they have been plied; they exchange
Axed co-ordinates for dynamic relations across surfaces.
Alternative types of transformation
I ,Iscounting the potential ofearlier geometric diagrams ofprob-
Ibility, such as Buffon's Needle Problem,'9 D'Arcy Thompson
provides perhaps the first geometric description of variable
ddormation as an instance of discontinuous morphological
development. His cartesian deformations, and their use of flex-
Ible topological rubber sheet geometry, suggest an alternative
to the static morphological transformations of autonomous
architectural types. A comparison ofthe typological and trans-
rormational systems of Thompson and Rowe illustrates two
rlldically different conceptions of continuity. Rowe's is fixed,
('xact, striated, identical and static, where Thompson's is
dynamic, anexact, smooth, differentiated and stable.
Both Rudolf Wittkower-in his analysis of the Palladian
villas of :194920-and Rowe-in his comparative analysis of
Iltllladio and Le Corbusier of:194721-uncovera consistent
organ-
isational type: the nine-square grid. In Wittkower's analysis of
twelve Palladian villas the particularities of each villa accumu-
late (through what Edmund Husserl has termed variations) to

generate a fixed, identical spatial type (through what could best
be described as phenomenological reduction). The typology of
this "Ideal Villa" is used to invent a consistent deep structure
underlying Le Corbusier's Villa Stein at Garche and Palladio's
Villa Malcontenta. Wittkower and Rowe discover the exact geo-
metric structure of this type in all villas in particular. This fixed
type become a constant point of reference within a series of
variations.
Like Rowe, Thompson is interested in developing a math-
ematics of species categories, yet his system depends on a
GREG LYNN 47
dynamic and fluid set of geometric relations. The deformations
of a provisional type define a supple constellation of geomet-
ric correspondences. Thompson uses the initial type as a mere
provision for a dynamic system of transformations that occur
in connection with larger environmental forces. Thompson's
method of discontinuous development intensively involves
external forces in the deformation of morphological types. The
flexible type is able to both indicate the general morphological
structure of a species while indicating its discontinuous devel-
opment through the internalisation of heretofore external
forces within the system. 22 For instance, the enlargement of a
fish's eye is represented by the flexing of a grid. This
fluctuation,
when compared to a previous position of the transformational
type, establishes a relation between water depth and light inten-
sity as those conditions are involved in the formal differences
between fish. The flexing grid of relations cannot be arrested at
any moment and therefore has the capacity to describe both a
general type and the particular events which influence its devel-
opment. Again, these events are not predictable or reducible

to any fixed point but rather begin to describe a probable zone
of co-present forces; both internal and external. Thompson
presents an alternative type of inclusive stability, distinct
from the exclusive stasis of Rowe's nine-square grid. The sup-
ple geometry of Thompson is capable of both bending under
external forces and folding those forces internally. These trans-
formations develop through discontinuous involution rather
than continuous evolution.
The morphing effects used in the contemporary advertis-
ing and film industry may already have something in common
with recent developments in architecture. These mere images
have concrete influences on space, form, politics, and cul-
ture; for example, the physical morphing of Michael Jackson's
body, including the transformation of his form through various
surgeries and his surface through skin bleachingand lightening.
These physical effects and their implications for the definition
of gender and race were only later represented in his recent
video Black & White. In this video multiple genders, ethnicities
lind races are mixed into a continuous sequence through the
digital morphing of video images. It is significant that Jackson
is not black or white but black and white, not male or female
hut male and female. His simultaneous differences are charac-
leristic of a desire for smoothness; to become heterogeneous
yet continuous. Physical morphing, such as this, is monstrous
hecause smoothness eradicates the interval between what
Thompson refers to as discriminant characteristics without
homogenizing the mixture. Such a continuous system is neither
an assembly of discrete fragments nor a whole. 23 With Michael
Jackson, the flexible geometric mechanism with which his video
representation is constructed comes from the same desire
which aggressively reconstructs his own physical form. Neither

Ihe theory, the geometry or the body proceed from one another;
rather, they participate in a desire for smooth transformation.
Form, politics, and self-identity are intricately connected in this
process of deformation.
A similar comparison might be made between the liq-
uid mercury man in the film Terminator 2 and the Peter Lewis
House by Frank Gehry and Philip Johnson. The Hollywood
special effects sequences allow the actor to both become and
disappear into virtually any form. The horror of the film results
not from ultra-violence, but from the ability of the antagonist
10 pass through and occupy the grids of floors, prison bars, and
other actors. Computer technology is capable of constructing
intermediate images between any two fixed points resulting
in a smooth transformation. These smooth effects calculate
with probability the interstitial figures between fixed figures.
Furthermore, the morphing process is flexible enough that
GREG LYNN . 49
http:whole.23
http:system.22
multiple between states are possible. Gehry's and Johnson's
Peter Lewis House is formulated from multiple flexible forms.
The geometry of these forms is supple and can accommodate
smooth curvilinear deformation along their length. Not only are
these forms capable of bending to programmatic, structural and
environmental concerns, as is the roof ofShoei Yoh's roof struc-
tures, but they can deflect to the contours and context of the
site,
similar to Peter Eisenman's Columbus Convention Center
and RAA Urn's Croton Aqueduct project. Furthermore, the
Lewis House maintains a series of discrete figural fragments-
such as boats and familiar fish-within the diagrams of

D'Arcy Thompson, which are important to both the morphing
effects of Industrial Light and Magic and the morphogenetic
diagrams of Rene Thorn, Gehry's supple geometry is capable of
smooth, heterogeneous continuous deformation. Deformation
is made possible by the flexibility of topological geometry in
response to external events, as smooth space is intensive and
continuous. Thompson's curvilinear logic suggests deforma-
tion in response to unpredictable events outside of the object.
Forms of bending, twisting or folding are not superfluous
but result from an intensive curvilinear logic which seeks to
internalise cultural and contextual forces within form. In this
manner events become intimately involved with particular
rather than ideal forms. These flexible forms are not mere rep-
resentations of differential forces but are deformed by their
environment.
Folding and Other Catastrophes for Architecture
3 fold vb [ME folden, fro OEfoaldanj akin to OHGfaldan to
fold, Gk di plasios twofold] vt 1: to lay one part over another
part, 2: to reduce the length or bulk of by doubling over,
3: to clasp together: EN1WINE, 4: to clasp or embrace
closely: EMBRACE, 5: to bend (as a rock) into folds, 6: to
incorporate (a food ingredient) into a mixture by repeated
gentle overturnings without stirring or beating, 7: to bring
to an end.24
Philosophy has already identified the displacement presently

occurring to the Post-Modem paradigm of complexity and con-
tradiction in architecture, evidenced by John Rajchman's Out
oj the Fold and Perplications. Rajchman's text is not a mani-
fl'sto for the development of new architectural organisations,
but responds to the emergence of differing kinds of complex-
ity being developed by a specific architect. His essays inscribe
spatial innovations developed in architecture within larger
intellectual and cultural fields. Rajchman both illuminates
I'l'ter Eisenman's architectural practice through an explication
of Le P!i and is forced to reconsider Deleuze's original argu-
ment concerning Baroque space by the alternative spatialities
of Eisenman's Rebstock Park project. The dominant aspect of
the project which invited Rajchman's attention to folding was
the employment of one of Rene Thorn's catastrophe diagrams
in the design process.
Despite potential protestations to the contrary, it is more
than likely that Thorn's catastrophe nets entered into the archi-
tl'cture of Carsten Juel-Christiansen's Die Anhalter Faltung,
Peter Eisenman's Rebstock Park, Jeffrey Kipnis' Unite de
Habitation at Briey installation and Bahram Shirdel's Nara
Convention Hall as a mere formal technique. Inevitably,
architects and philosophers alike would find this in itself a
catastrophe for all concerned. Yet, their use illustrates that at
Icast four architects simultaneously found in Thorn's diagrams
a formal device for an alternative description of spatial com-
plexity. The kind of complexity engendered by this alliance
with
Thorn is substantially different than the complexity provided by
GREG LYNN 51
either Venturi's decorated shed or the more recent conflicting
forms of Deconstructivism. Topological geometry in general,

and the catastrophe diagrams in particular, deploy disparate
forces on a continuous surface within which more or less open
systems of connection are possible.
"Topology considers superficial structures susceptible to
continuous transformations which easily change their form, the
most interesting geometric properties common to all modifi-
cation being studied. Assumed is an abstract material of ideal
deformability which can be deformed, with the exception of
disruption. "
These geometries bend and stabilise with viscosity under
pressure. Where one would expect that an architect looking
at catastrophes would be interested in conflicts, ironically,
architects are finding new forms of dynamic stability in these
diagrams. The mutual interest in Thorn's diagrams points to a
desire to be involved with events which they cannot predict.
The
primary innovation made by those diagrams is the geometric
modelling of a multiplicity of possible co-present events at any
moment. Thorn's morphogenesis engages seemingly random
events with mathematical probability.
Thorn's nets were developed to describe catastrophic events.
What is common to these events is an inability to define exactly
the moment at which a catastrophe occurs. This loss of exacti-
tude is replaced by a geometry of multiple probable relations.
With relative precision, the diagrams define potential catas-
trophes through cusps rather than fixed co-ordinates. Like any
simple graph, Thorn's diagrams deploy X and Y forces across
two axes of a gridded plane. A uniform plane would provide the
potential for only a single point of intersection between any two
X and Y co-ordinates. The supple topological surface of Thorn's
diagrams is capable of enfolding in multiple dimensions.
Within these folds, or cusps, zones of proximity are contained.

As t he topological surface folds over and into itself multiple
pos-
"ible points of intersection are possible at any moment in the
/. dimension. These co-present Z-dimensional zones are pos-
liible because the topological geometry captures space within
lis surface. Through proximity and adjacency various vectors of
force begin to imply these intensive event zones. In catastrophic
('vents there is not a single fixed point at which a catastrophe
occurs but rather a zone of potential events that are described
hy these cusps. The cusps are defined by multiple possible
inter-
IIl·tions implying, with more or less probability, multiple fluid
Ihresholds. Thorn's geometric plexus organises disparate forces
ill order to describe possible types of connections.
If there is a single dominant effect of the French word pli,
II is its resistance to being translated into any single term. It is
precisely the formal manipulations of folding that are capable
of incorporating manifold external forces and elements within
form, yet Le pli undoubtedly risks being translated into archi-
Il'cture as mere folded figures. In architecture, folded forms
risk quickly becoming a sign for catastrophe. The success of the
IIrchitects who are folding should not be based on their ability
10 represent catastrophe theory in architectural form. Rather,
Iht, topological geometries, in connection with the probable
('vents they model, present a flexible system for the organisa-
lion of disparate elements within continuous spaces. Yet, these
"mooth systems are highly differentiated by cusps or zones of
(·o-presence. The catastrophe diagram used by Eisenman in the
I{l'bstock Park project destabilises the way that the buildings
meet the ground. It smoothes the landscape and the building
hy turning both into one another along cusps. The diagrams

used by Kipnis in the Briey project, and Shirdel in the Nara
(:onvention Hall, develop an interstitial space contained simul-
laneously within two folded cusps. This geometrically blushed
surface exists within two systems at the same moment and in
GREG LYNN 53
this manner presents a space of co-presence with multiple adja-
cent zones of proximity.
Before the introduction of either Deleuze or Thom to archi-
tecture, folding was developed as a formal tactic in response to
problems presented by the exigencies of commercial develop-
ment. Henry Cobb has argued in both the Charlottesville Tapes
and his Note on Folding for a necessity to both dematerialise
and differentiate the massive homogeneous volumes dictated
by commercial development in order to bring them into rela-
tion with finer grain heterogeneous urban conditions. His first
principle for folding is a smoothing of elements across a shared
surface. The facade of theJohn Hancock Tower is smoothed into
a continuous surface so that the building might disappear into
its context through reflection rather than mimicry. Any poten-
tial for replicating the existing context was precluded by both
the size of the contiguous floor plates required by the developer
and the economic necessity to construct the building's skin
from glass panels. Folding became the method by which the
surface of a large homogeneous volume could be differentiated
while remaining continuous. This tactic acknowledges that the
existing fabric and the developer tower are essentially of differ-
ent species by placing their differences in mixture, rather than
contradiction, through the manipulation ofa pliant skin.
Like the John Hancock Building, the Allied Bank Tower
begins with the incorporation of glass panels and metal frame

into a continuous folded surface. The differentiation of the
folded surface, through the simultaneous bending of the glass
and metal, brings those elements together in a continuous
plane. The manipulations of the material surface proliferate
folding and bending effects in the massing of the building. The
alien building becomes a continuous surface of disappearance
that both diffracts and reflects the context through complex
manipulations of folding. In the recent films Predator and
I'r('dator II, a similar alien is capable of disappearing into both
urban and jungle environments, not through cubist camou-
Unge lS but by reflecting and diffracting its environment like an
octopus or chameleon. The contours between an object and
lIS context are obfuscated by forms which become translucent,
rellective and diffracted. The alien gains mobility by cloaking
its
volume in a folded surface of disappearance. Unlike the "deco-
rnted shed" or "building board" which mimics its context with
a singular sign, folding diffuses an entire surface through a
Ilhimmering reflection of local adjacent and contiguous particu-
Inrities. For instance, there is a significant difference between a
limall fish which represents itself as a fragment of a larger fish
Ihrough the figure of a large eye on its tail, and a barracuda
whieh becomes like the liquid in which it swims through a dif-
fused reflection of its context. The first strategy invites
deceitful
detection where the second uses stealth to avoid detection.
Similarly, the massive volume of the Allied Bank Tower
situates
hsclfwithin a particular discontinuous locale by cloaking itself
In a folded reflected surface. Here, cunning stealth is used as a
way of involving contextual forces through the manipulation of
II surface. The resemblance offolded architecture to the stealth
bomber results not from a similarity between military and archi-

I('ctural technologies or intentions but rather from a tactical
disappearance'6 of a volume through the manipulation of a sur-
fnce. This disappearance into the fold is neither insidious nor
innocent but merely a very effective tactic.
Like Henry Cobb, Peter Eisenman introduces a fold as a
method of disappearing into a specific context. Unlike Cobb,
who began with a logic of construction, Eisenman aligns the
fold with the urban contours of the Rebstock Park. The
repetitive
Iypologies ofhousing and office buildings are initially deployed
un the site in a more or less functionalist fashion; then a topo-
logical net derived from Thom's Butterfly net is aligned to the
GREG LYNN 55
perimeter of the site and pushed through the typological bars.
This procedure differentiates the uniform bars in response to the
global morphology of the site. In this manner the manifestation
of the fold is in the incorporation of differences-derived from
the morphology ofthe site-into the homogeneous typologies of
the housing and office blocks. Both Eisenman's local differen-
tiation of the building types by global folding, and Cobb's local
lUlU11l~ across constructional elements which globally
differen-
tiates each floor plate and the entire massing of the building are
effective. Cobb and Eisenman "animate" homogenous organi-
sations that were seemingly given to the architect-office tower
and siedlung-with the figure of a fold. The shared
of folding identified by both Eisenman and Cobb, evident in
their respective texts, is the ability to differentiate the inherited
homogeneous organisations of both Modernism (Eisenman's
siedlung) and commercial development (Cobb's tower). This
differentiation of known types of space and organisation has

something in common with Deleuze's delimitation of folding
in architecture within the Baroque. Folding heterogeneity into
known typologies renders those organisations more smooth
and more intensive so that they are better able to incorporate
disparate elements within a continuous system. Shirdel's use
ofThom's diagrams is quite interesting as the catastrophe sec-
tions do not animate an existing organisation. Rather, they
begin as merely one system among three others. The convention
halls float within the envelope of the building as they are sup-
ported by a series of transverse structural walls whose figure is
derived from Thom's nets. This mixture of systems, supported
by the catastrophe sections, generates a massive residual pub-
lic space at the ground floor of the building. In Shirdel's project
the manipulations of folding, in both the catastrophe sections
and the building envelope, incorporate previously unrelated ele-
ments into a mixture. The space between the theatres, the skin
und the lateral structural walls is such a space of mixture and
intrication.
With structure itself, Chuck Hoberman is capable of
transforming the size of domes and roofs through a folding
structural mechanism. Hoberman develops adjustable struc-
tll res whose differential movements occur through the dynamic
transformation of flexible continuous systems. The movements
of these mechanisms are determined both by use and struc-
ture. Hoberman's structural mechanisms develop a system of
smooth transformation in two ways. The Iris dome and sphere
projects transform their size while maintaining their shape.
This flexibility of size within the static shape of the stadium is
(:apable of supporting new kinds of events. The patented tiling
patterns transform both the size and shape of surfaces,
developing local secondary pockets of space and enveloping
larger primary volumes.

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