Escaping architecture: deleuze and the reinvention of experimental practice

Abstract

The danger with architectural appropriations of Deleuzian concepts is not only that of being too literal or superficial, but also too limited in scope. This work will argue that Deleuze’s thought has a lot more to offer the field of architectural practice and can be used as a catalyst to resist and transform the striating and stagnating forces that dominate contemporary architectural thinking, practice and production. Deleuze’s rich conceptual matrix is underpinned by a combination of an affirmative creative experimental ethos and a challenging orientation to the material world, including the nature of spaces, materials and sensations that this entails. Deleuze’s unique position can be used as a platform to explore how architecture can creatively experiment in ways that resist the forces of organization and control that prevent it from inventing new architectural responses to life. If Deleuze is understood as committed to the ongoing search for thought without image by using philosophy as the art of creating concepts, then what might the implications of this approach be in an architectural context? Against this background, this thesis will proceed to investigate the following key concepts. It commences by looking at the paradox of the New, why this is important for architecture and how Deleuze’s concept of itineration might contribute to a series of revised architectural responses in the future. The problem of architectural design itself is reworked in conjunction with an analysis of Deleuze’s concepts of Immanence and the diagram. I then seek to deepen the existing discussion of space in Deleuze’s work by tracing how his concepts of the line and war machine lead us to a redefinition of materiality and suggest an alternate way for architects to experiment according to the traits of matter and the processes of metallurgy. The question of metallurgy leads to the exposition of Deleuze’s theory of sensation in an architectural context via his concepts of the monument and the House. Drawing all of these themes together allows me to argue for not only a reorientation to the processes and products of the architectural endeavour, but also a reinvention of architectural practice itself. To innovatively experiment requires a radical rethinking of the nature of the material world, of how space, matter and sensation combine via the architectural act and how to remain open to the vitalizing metamorphic vagaries of difference itself.