“Deleuze, Architectural Diagram and the Contraction of Life” - Deleuze Studies Conference
The notion of diagram was developed by Gilles Deleuze over a long period of time as a relatively consistent yet cumulatively polysemantic concept. Throughout this development, diagram obtained a-signifying yet generative capacities when discussed in relation to literature and art (as in Deleuze’s work on Proust and Bacon), acquired organizational capabilities when utilized in unpacking sociopolitical apparatuses (as in his work on Foucault’s dispositifs), and developed machinic and topological tendencies when operated in the explication of ecological life (as in his geo-ontological works developed together with Felix Guattari).In the last thirty years of architectural discourse, Deleuze has become the primary figure whom architects seek for theoretical support in their uses—and abuses—of architectural diagrams. Despite the popular upsurge, however, the polysemantic nature of Deleuze’s diagram has been appropriated into architectural discourse via reductive translations, diluted mostly to argue for projective capacities of architectural diagrams as a way to distinguish them from the representative logic of certain architectural drawings, such as plans and sections. The multi-faceted notion of diagram developed by Deleuze has a lot more to offer to the understanding of built and natural environments if we do justice to its very potentials.
This paper pursues to enrich the reductive encounter of diagram between the philosophy of Deleuze and architecture. It is an attempt to elaborate how the explication of multi-modal potentials of Deleuze’s diagram can lead to the understanding of diagrammatic relations of architecture and spatiality with creative processes (as in art), power dynamics (as in sociopolitics), and reciprocal development of organisms with their associated milieu (as in ecology). It is an experiment to explore how certain architectural and spatial diagrams are drawn on paper and canvas, while some are drawn on individual bodies, and yet, some others are drawn on the substance of earth itself.
Conference: 8th International Deleuze Studies Conference
Program: lecture, research
Location: Stockholm, Sweden
Date: July 2014
Speaker: Gökhan Kodalak
Status: Realized
