The Thing with Thingness

“Details … can be regarded as the minimal units of signification in the architectural production of meanings”1 states Marco Frascari in The Tell-The-Tale Detail. Within, he describes an additive presencing of an architecture through individual perception until the eventual “construction and construing …”2 of the thing takes place. The sum of the parts equals the whole but/and embodies the essence of the whole simultaneously. Some fifteen years later, the diagram is thrust forward as the ultimate but/and expression of the discipline. As stated by Peter Eisenman, “Generally, a diagram is a graphic shorthand. Though it is an ideogram, it is not necessarily an abstraction. It is a representation of something in that it is not the thing itself. In this sense, it cannot help but be embodied. It can never be value- or meaning-free even when it attempts to express relationships of formation and their processes. At the same time, a diagram is neither a structure nor an abstraction of structure. While it explains relationships in an architectural object, it is not isomorphic with it.”3

https://doi.org/10.35483/ACSA.AM.107.116

Volume Editors
Amy Kulper, Grace La & Jeremy Ficca

ISBN
978-1-944214-21-0