The following are quotations from our readings that helped us understand the transition from the Deluzian Project to the philosophies of Greg Lynn and further to the proposed ideas in Mr. Lynn’s presentation of the Embryologic House.

The concepts we chose best articulate this transmition of philosophies are the Deluzian concepts of smooth, fold, intricated, intensity, multiplicity, curvalinearity, pliable, and supple

Greg Lynn

Architectural Curvilinearity

The Folded, the Pliant and the Supple

“Smooth mixtures are made up of disparate elements which maintain their integrity while being blended within a continuous field of free elements.

“Smoothing does not eradicate differences but incorporates free intensities through fluid tactics of mixing and blending. Smooth mixtures are not homogeneous and therefore cannot be reduced. Deluze describes smoothness as ‘the continuous variation’ and the continuous development of form.’” (p.24)

“Both pliancy and smoothness provides an escape from the two camps which would either have architecture break under the stress of difference or stand firm. Pliancy allows architecture to become involved in complexity through flexibility” (p.24)

“Pliancy implies first an internal flexability and second a dependence on external forces for self-definition.” (p.24)

“Folding, creaming and blending mix smoothly multiple ingredients ‘through repeated gentle overturnings without stirring or beating’ in such a way that their individual characteristics are maintained. For instance, an egg and chocolate are folded together so that each is a distinct layer within a continuous mixture.

Folding employs neither agitation nor evisceration but a supple layering.” (p.25)

“…there is no preliminary organization which becomes folded but rather there are unrelated elements or pure intensities that are intricated through a joint manipulation.” (p.25)

“…pliant systems are capable of engendering unpredicted connections with contextual, cultural, programmatic, structural and economic contingencies by vicissitude” (p.25)

“If internally motivated and homogeneous systems were to extend in straight lines, curvilinear developments would result from the incorporation of external influences.” (p.25)

“This is not to imply that intensive curvature is more politically correct than an uninvolved formal logic, but rather, that a cunning pliability is often more effective through smooth incorporation than contradiction and conflict.”... A logic of curvalinearity argues for an active involvement with external events in the folding, bending and curving of form.” (p.26)

“Where complexity and contradiction arose previously from inherent contextual conflicts, present attempts are being made to fold smoothly specific locations, materials and programmes into architecture while maintaining their individual identity.” (p.26)

“Anexact geometries, as described by Edmund Husserl, are those geometries which are irreducible yet rigorous. These geometries can be determined with precision yet cannot be reduced to average points or dimensions. Anexact geometries often appear to be merely figural in this regard. Umlike exact geometries, it is meaningless to repeat identically an anexact geometric figure outside of the specific context within which it is situated. In this regard, anexact figures cannot be easily translated.” (p.27)

“If there is a single dominant effect of the French word pli, it is its resistance to being translated into any single term. It is precisely the formal manipulations of folding that are capable of incorporating manifold external forces and elements within the form, yet Le Pli undoubtably risks being translated into architecture as mere folded figures.” (p.29)

“In the recent film Predator and Predator II, a similar alien is capable of disappearing into both urban and jungle environments, not through cubist camouflage but by reflecting and reffracting its environment like an octopus or chameleon. The contours between an object and its context are obfuscated by forms which become translucent, reflective and diffracted. The alien gains mobility by cloaking its volume in a foolded surface of disapearence.” (p.30)

“…it is important to maintain a logic rather than a style of curvalinearity. The formal affinities of these projects result from their pliancy and ability to deform in response to particular contingencies. What is being asked in different ways by the group of architects and theorists in this publication is: How can architecture be configured as a complex system into which external particularities are already found to be plied? (p.30-31)

Introduction

Greg Lynn

“Intricacy is the fusion of disparate elements into continuity, the becoming whole of components that retain their status as pieces in a larger composition.” (p.9)

“Like mechanical reproduction and its modern vision of identical glossy modules, intricate reproduction is still dependent on a model of the machine. But instead of a mechanism of simple repetition, an intricate reproduction machine is a wet machine charged with free energy, variation, and subtlety…””…Intricacy evokes an eroticism for the machine and a desire to make it reproduce organically, both in variation of subtly variegated brothers and sisters as well as a differentiated complex of discrete organs that nonetheless coheres into a beautifully synthesized whole.” (p.12)

Embryologic House

Greg Lynn