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diagram
Kazuyo Sejima is a new type of architect If there is one way that
best describes the spirit of her structures, it would be to say that it
is diagram architecture. With this short definition Toyo Ito, in
addition to precisely describing the synthetic quality of the works of
his colleague, introduces a more general question, attributing to
the diagrammatic substance of her architecture a specific role of
newness in the evolution of the discipline. We may agree more or
less with this interpretation, but it is certain that the diagram has
played an increasingly central role in the most advanced
architectural production. In recent years it has become a specific
feature of the neo-avant-gardes. Hyungmin Pai retraces this
development in American architecture, revealing the progressive
obsolescence of systems of representation from the beaux-arts
tradition, focused on the object in itself, as opposed to more
effective graphic instruments. Instruments capable of synthetically
relating strictly compositional aspects to those of function,
symbolism, concept, time and, definitively, to all those elements
that cannot be probed by means of simple projective geometry, yet
represent a major part of contemporary design scenarios.
There is little doubt, in fact, that the present architectural situation
is marked by the progressive, accelerated burst of questions,
information, needs and intentions that are increasingly diversified
and heterogeneous with respect to the specifics of the discipline.
The efficacy of the diagram lies to a great extent precisely in its
interdisciplinary potential, its capacity to act as a mediator between
different, inter-related quantities, helping to explain them and
providing a sort of graphic shortcut for the representation of more
or less complex phenomena (for a collection of diagrams from a
wide range of areas, see Fisuras, July 2002). So it is no surprise
that its appearance in the field of architecture is often linked to
incursions of personalities from other backgrounds, often so
effective that they leave lasting signs. Besides the well-known
example of Benthams panopticon, reinterpreted by Foucault and
then Deleuze as a paradigm of social control, we can also site the
diagram only indications on the drawings used by Ebenezer
Howard to promote his idea of the garden city. The undeniable
communicative power of these graphics, connected to the
correspondence between concepts and their representation, is
accompanied by the fact that diagrams can take the form of true
machines for thinking: the mathematicians Gerard Allwein and
John Barwise reveal the extreme elasticity of these tools, capable
of being simultaneously precise and imprecise, of simplifying and
illustrating complex phenomena, eliminating the superfluous.
Critical attention began to focus on these themes between the end
of the second world war and the 1970s. This involved the spheres
of architectural and urban design, as well as that of historical
interpretation. The bubble diagrams produced at Harvard under the
guidance of Walter Gropius (Herdeg, 1983) were joined by the
research of Christopher Alexander (who considers the diagrams to
be the most significant contribution of his very well-known Notes
on the Synthesis of Form), the essays of Kevin Lynch (from The
Image of the City to The View from the Road in collaboration with
Appleyard and Myer developing new graphic tools for the