"why tectonics is square and topology is groovy"

Lynn states that our current fascination and dependency upon geometric conflicts in architecture is a response against idealized, pure forms. Indeed, an interrogative process. He exposes a number of philosophers and theorists who both oppose and support the idea that “architecture…resists the play of writing more than any other.” That is, the act of writing (a heterogeneous, mutable and perhaps even illogical ((?)) operation) opposes the static, utopian forms conceived of in architecture and reminiscent of the inherent geometry found in the human body. The exactitude and symmetry celebrated by the Canons of Proportion text and drawings thus express what Lynn is arguing against: true geometries reducible to ideal forms. He calls for an architecture of anexact forms and rigor. Let’s be more like writing.

His argument presupposes that the act of writing is in fact “indeterminate, non-ideal, heterogeneous, and undecidable.” I am having difficulty understanding the process as such. Maybe I need a better working definition for what writing actually means? How is writing any different than critical thinking and inflection? Is it the physical manifestation of putting words to paper and editing and re-editing letters, words, sentences, and paragraphs to offer a coherent argument?

I wonder if writing is the best model to juxtapose the viewpoint of Bataille and Hollier that architecture is “reducible, static, exact, and fixed.” While the collection of essays was written in 1998, from the perspective of developments in computational power and cyberspace the book is dated. Currently, researchers and philosophers are drawing parallels between the architecture of the computer and how our minds work. It is in this non-linearity of the internet and neuronal firing that best exhibit what Lynn describes as an “anti-architectural” amorphous process.

Lynn offers a critical distinction between exact, inexact, and anexact forms in order to support his argument. He presents as evidence a number of disciplines concerned with measuring and mapping amorphous objects and conditions. I was not familiar with the word “anexact” before this reading, but now seem to understand the integrity of the distinction between the three terms.

The second article is about blobs, with respect to both the particular and the general. Lynn likes blobs. He argues that these form(less) objects have the capacity to change contemporary tectonic discourse. Formally indeterminate, they cannot be reduced to any certain geometry and have an almost parasitic nature to them.

Perhaps blobs operate at the highest level of abstraction within an architectural context? Indeed, extrinsic forces and conditions coupled with the physical properties of the envelope determine their resultant shape. It seems to me that these intensive, conditional idiosyncrasies of site are abstracted to the nth degree until a blob is born.

His biases in both essays are apparent. Favoring incompleteness and improbability, the evidence presented support his claims. I was intrigued by his discussion of the planimetric and sectional freedom manifested by Le Corbusier in both the Maison Dom-ino and Citrohan. Implicit within their simple frames, each illustrates the infinite possibilities of the random section model and helped my further understanding of a new favorite word, anexact. Even with infinitesimally close transactions, will we ever be able to model and map an exact amorphous form? It seems to me that even at the rate computational power is exploding daily, it is impossible to replicate a three dimensional object at a level that it can be deemed exact.



I often wish there existed a verb to describe the act of questioning, creating and influencing the built environment. And I wish it was called architect-ing.