Philosophy of Architectural Figures

Abstract

Following Lyotard’s deconstruction of the opposition between the discursive and the figural, the construction “philosophy of architectural figures” would include the intention to depart from the problem of order between the two. If, instead of the question what is discursive in the figural or what is figural of the discursive, the question of the “whole” is asked, then the meaning of the position “between” the discourse and the figure – the discursive content and the figural materiality – would be found in what resists (discursive and/or figural) representation. Architecturally speaking, we can always talk about the conceptual materiality or the projected immateriality of architectural figures. The figure tends to elude discourse or mere representation through the philosophy of concepts. But it also insists on the simultaneous presence of the textual. The play between the materiality of language (which cannot be reduced to the phenomenological) and the certain phenomenology of the figure (which cannot be fully translated into linguistic concepts) is close to “desire” itself. More precisely, it becomes the most extreme form of desire. The idea to speak simultaneously about the absence of the figurative in figuration and the textual presence by the “body of words” – through a series of short sequences, that is, figures – is close to Lyotard’s comma between the discourse and figure. By dividing or linking the two words, this comma introduces an element of “incommensurability” that seeks to insinuate the radicality that allowed the term “figure” to enter the discourse. On the other hand, placing a comma begins the deconstruction of the word figure. This is why we construct sequences with “commas” that do not aim to explain anything but to inspire philosophers to see architectural figures. At the same time, these sequences open up the possibility for the architect to assign movement to architectural figures through the body of words. The idea to use text for confirming architectural possibility of the final materiality of the architectural concept at the same time represents an opportunity for philosophy to explore the materiality of words. Invoking what cannot be represented, the figural destabilizes the boundaries of the representable, that is, the boundaries of the discursive, striving to finally merge with it.