Diagramming the Contemporary OMA’s Little Helper in the Quest for the New Wouter Deen and Udo Garritzmann (OMA) ‘The only text on the diagrams of Rem Koolhaas and his Rotterdam office OMA-AMO, this edited essay (originally published in OASE, no 48, 1998) is written from the position of academic and professional insiders, Because Udo Garritzman was a former project architect at OMA and Wouter Deen a student research-assistant of Koolhaas, their perspective is a valuable, ‘multiple, double-first-hand account. For Garritzman, his ‘essay itself constitutes a diagram of OMAs working methods”. The eclectic range of OMA diagrams is paradoxical and enigmatic, characterised by a series of ‘quixotic and ironic hybrids of juxtaposed and contradictory concepts and techniques such as ‘Romantic bureaucracy’. Invoking the organi ;powers of the metaphor, the cartoon and the importance of the fax during this period in the history of OMAYs diagrammatic development, Garritzman {and Deen capture the distinctive, sometimes complex ambiguity, humour and critical edge to the sometimes superficially but rhetorically naive over- ‘and under-determinations of the diagrams. In their optimistic but practical focus on newness, these exemplify the heroic-sardonic nature of OMA design at the turn of the millennium, OMAS use of diagrams is characteristic ofan atitude towards design that centres on research and renewal. nits quest for new readings of contemporary conditions, OMA is ‘always receptive to non-architectural information. The implicit hypothesis seems to be that any piece of information can potentially generate an architectural theme or concent. Diagrams have proved to be effective instruments in this regard, converting data into Phenomena, combining intellect and imagination, and conceptualising a project by ‘making use of images, metaphors, models and signs. Romantic Bureaucrats Through graphic representation, abstract data are rendered concrete, and general struetural characteristic can be recorded and described. Sometimes, visualisation of the {ata alone wil reveal the essence of or key to, @ concept. The automatic and consistent way in which the facts are charted could be described as bureaucratic. The creative moment lies in the question of what is charted and how. Selection, reduction and simplification are mechanisms that are active in this process... for OMA these visualised data serve asa point of departure and as stimuli or interpretations £228, The Diagrams of Arcitectre (OMA, Pot ayant Sout City ‘The fist surveys involve the widest possible exploration of the options. Studies of programme, volume, densities and typologies are set down in abstract form in variants {and models, without these directly resulting in a design, and have, in that sense, a iagrammatic character. Graphic representation renders data manipulable as material for thought models. The mast radical speculations can be represented without a design OMA analytical explorations using diagrams do not investigate the state of mind of individual artists/architects but disclose the unconscious, invisible structures of Contemporary society, and make ‘systematic idealization, a spontaneous overestimation Of the present’ possible - a method of working that Novalis was advocating in the early Romantic period: ‘The world needs romanticizing.. ramanticization is nathing other than 8 qualitative potentiation .. When | invest the ordinary with a higher meaning, the everyday with mystery, the familar with the dignity of the unfamiliar, the finite with a semblance ofthe infinite, then | am romanticizing these things. £228, Diagramming the Contemporary: OMA Lite Helper in he Guest forthe NewRomanticisation has the effet of blurring the border between analysis ofthe data and conception of the project. This is what Rem Koolhaas values in the paranoid crit method of the Surrealist, ‘a rational method which does not claim to be objective through which analysis b mes identical to creation Organising Metaphors (OM Ungers has described metaphors as “transformations of an actual event into @ figurative expression, evoking images by substituting an abstract notion for something more descriptive and illustrative ... Designers use the metaphor as an instrument of thought that serves the function of clarity and vividness antedating or bypassing logical processes. Rem Koolhaas, to0, often uses metaphorical expressions to convey a concept. Unlike Ungers’ metaphors, Koolhaas’s metaphors are not so much about analogies of form a5 analogies of operating mechanisms ... [or] organising principles, described by the ‘metaphor; an interaction of elements, which are conceptually ‘charged’ by means of analogy and association. By means of metaphorical analogies with operating mechanisms from other disciplines ... innovative organising principles are developed; moreovel ‘unconscious, iational and emotional forces that play a role in urban organisation become discussabe. The metaphor is instrumental in organising the components of @ project. Iti this organising potential that makes of the metaphor a diagram, move than 1 reference. The metaphor is the ln we ste equivalent ofthe diagram £280 Te Diagrams of Achitetur | 281 blagramming the Contemporary: OMKS tle Hele i MARKET so Cartoon The cartoon is another form of diagrammatisation; Scott McLoud wrote the following about cartoons: by de-emphasizing the appearance ofthe physical world in favor ofthe idea of form, the cartoon places itself in the world of concepts’ The process applied here is “amplification through simplification. .. The cartoon isto a large extent an adapted representation; ceaity is conceptualised and codified using different ways of drawing and recognisable types. The cartoon makes it possible to focus extremely & essential plan elements in theic spatial context, without the need for a detailed architectonic elaboration. While doing this, OMA uses the cartoon in an ideologically hybridising way: the cartoonlike drawings for Lille show the merging of rational organisation of infrastructure and the mise en seéne of crossing points, vistas and cityscapes. The fascination with hypermodem infrastructures is connected with the picturesque sensibility ofthe townscape movement. fectivly on the Fax ‘fax combines the reflective nature of writing with the immediacy ofa telephone cl. Fax chnology dictates the nature of the drawings [which] have to passthrough the coarse- tained seve ofthe fax, Perhaps this explains OMAS preference for sketching with a ballpoint pen ... [which] is conducive to selection, reduction and simplification. The ballpoint line is clear, quick, des immediately and can be faxed. The fax becomes a partner inthe pursuit of implicit. With the rise of the fax, the directness and immediacy, the purposiveness and lectveness ofthe diagram acquis a technical pendant, an unconscious catalysti ALN 44 UNIVERSAL MODERNIZATION PATENT wm @ iaagoedensan “CAKE-TIN ARCHITECTURE”(2002) \ (09 Patent for “Cake-Tin COMA.CCTY patent agar Patent Proje, 2008. © OMA (OMA, expla axonements dacram CCTV Headuarter, Bling 2008, © OMA, 232. The Diograms of Ahitetre £288. Diagramming the Contemporary: OMAS itl Helprin the Quest forthe Newele 14 rors ac 284. The Diagrams of Architectre Rhetoric Like the metaphor and the cartoon, the diagram has great rhetorical and evocative power, particularly because ofthe b/w graphics that are generally used. Tis produces a compact presentation of information and ideas: the clear formal structure alows things to be represented ina highly simplified manner. At the same time, the diagram presents an instant ‘overview of a certain complex of factors: despite the strong degree of reduction and simplification, thece isa suggestion of completeness. In ation, the diagram has acquited strong connotations of rigid statistic research in the 20th century, which means that the use of diagrams in architecture easly makes a scientific impression, Curiously enough, this is diametrically opposed to a current tendency in scientific practice; Kreusse argues that visualisation is regarded as an inferior instrument in the scientific world, The special thing about diagrams isthe connection of visual perception and rational thought; the diagram thinks in images. This constitutes an ambiguity which might be undesired by science; it suits (OMA perfectly for presenting certain insights. an inevitable consequence of certain factors The New Analysis of programme, reduction and simplification, exaggeration of the inital situation, are brought to a point of schematisation where originally known relationships dissolve and the separate components (data, phenomena, ideas and also forms) can be freely examined in terms of new mutual relationships. OMAS analytical sensibility and the agenda ofthe neu, which lets no convention alone, find in diagrams an instrument that addresses simultaneously intellect and imagination ... analysis and vision crystalise in the diagram into a pregnantly visualised thought of the new. ‘Diagramming the Contemporary: OMA's Lite Helper in the Quest for the New’, I Bijlsma, W Deen and U Garsitzmann (eds), OASE (Rotterdam), no 48, 1998, Excerpts from pp 82-92. Some diagrams not published in the original anicle, © Udo Gatsitanaius and Wouter Deen, 1906, £238. lagamming the Contemporary: ONAS Lite Helper in the Quest forthe New=p Between Ideas and Matters Icons, Indexes, Diagrams, Drawings and Graphs Alejandro Zaera-Polo (Foreign Office Architects) Alejandro Zaera-Polo (Principal of Foreign Office Architects, London, and Director of the Berlage Institute, Rotterdam) sets out in his essay to substantiate the role of the diagram in contemporary, non- representational architecture. Influenced by the philosophy of Charles Peirce, Zaera-Polo describes a series of critical distinctions between the diagram and a number of closely related concepts. He proposes ways in which the diagram can be deployed and operate architecturally, but which crucially distinguish the diagram and the graph from the drawing, Defining x ‘the diagram in terms of its abilities to describe relationships and prescribe the performances of space, and in relation to its processing of matter, his s = focus is primarily on the formal and performance innovations that « increased computational powers can bring to new kinds of diagrammatic architectures and urban designs. His analysis and subsequent conclusions r {orm a manifesto for an architecture of innovative organisations that allow {for new and multiple readings and for a renewed methodological basis for architectural innovation through material, performative systems instrumentalised and actualised through the diagram. After @ few decades in which the architectural debate has been focused on signification, representation and language, in the last few years there has been a progressive shift towards methodology and instrumentality, This may be due to the increasing ov Globalisation. The resulting process of cultural hybridisation demands new types of architectural practices capable of building spatial and material organisations that ranscend. simplistic ineffective within this cultural environment as they often operate by opposition, seeking to jap of multiple cultures, languages and codes, triggered by accelerating uitural constructs. Citcal practices have beco represent contradictions. Their reliance on cultural conventions, either symbolic or arbitrary, makes them dependent on a certain level of consensus and cultural consistency which is no longer a default condition within contemporary advanced Societies. IF embodying cultural and political effects a priori into the design may nat Perform effectively in this emerging urban environment, the central issue for design practices becomes to devise methods to generate coherent, non-representational forms that lend themselves to affiative relationships a posterior, generating projective arguments rather than interpreting, mimicking or representing existing ones, £236. Te Diagrams of Architect 237 Between des and Matters: ons, Indes, Diagrams, Oawings and Graphs‘The massive development of information technologies has triggered practices that are ‘ven more tothe production of new realities than tothe representation or interpretation of an existing one, The computers allow us to construct organisations and images that we have never seen before, and therefore could have never imagined — without its existence, ‘The visualisation and operation with numerical data on multidimensional spaces, avalable through information technology, allows us to introduce other parameters in architectural tools (such as time, ight, temperature, weight, ete) that we were not able to visualise previously. It also allows us to test the behaviour of a system under conditions that are ‘ot experimentally verified, and to explore architectural and urban situations beyond the accumulated knowledge or experience iea and image were the same word in ancient Greek. We can only conceptualise what we can see. If the realisation of the possible is a matter of interpretation, of re- description of a given set of identities or organisations, the actualisation ofthe virtual ‘an never operate by resemblance, and therefore it requires tools that wil allow us to see = and therefore to imagine, to conceptualise ~ what we have never seen before. i is precisely this capacity to expand our perception to damains beyond our experiential knowledge, and to control and accurately determine the processes of construction, that ‘makes the computer an ideal instrument forthe production ofthe virtual. This i also one ‘of the reasons for the renewed interest in the diagram and diagrammatic practices. As ‘opposed to signifying or symbolic operations, one of the greatest potentials of a iagrammatic construction is to produce organisations with multiple readings. Since the mid-1990s diagrams have been a key subject of architectural discourse, but the vatiety of exceptional powers attributed to them are many, and not always consistent. It is therefore important to clatify the terms of discussion in order to understand how the diagram relates to other instruments and mediations between concepts, material ‘organisations and effects. What is the difference between using diagrams and using icons, symbols, indexes as forms of mediation between concepts and material ‘organisations? What are the different potentials of the diagram, and what do we Understand by diagrams, drawings, graphs and the technical arsenal of non representational architecture? {An interesting background to the discussion on the diagram can be traced to semiotics Probably the earliest accounts on this subject date from Charles Peice’s classification of signs into icons, indexes and symbols. Accotding to Peirce, an icon isa sign which itself expresses the qualities of its dynamic object: that i to say, an icon (such as a religious image or 2 political symbol) is a material expression of the qualities, functions and properties of the object itself, but the materiality of the icon is not relevant to its performance. The nature of the ican isnot arbitrary as there is no binding relationship between its form and its content. An index (such as a the reading of a measuring instrument, a physical trace ofan action or an associated phenomenon) is a sign which 238. The Diagrams of Actectre ‘manifests the influence of its dynamic object, by an action which leaves a material imprint. Indexes do have also binding relationship between form and content, but this connection isnot formally expt, although itis materaly linked. A symbol (examples ‘might include a trophy, a monument or 2 word) is a sign which refers to its dynamic ‘object through a formal representation. In the sign the relationship between form and content is totaly arbitrary and immaterial, Diagrams, as opposed 10 signs, symbols, indexes or cons, donot play a representational ole fr their dynamic object, and mediate between physical constructs and concepts or percepts on an organisational level, Their performance depends on how they are deployed, IF the origins of the diagrammatic practices of the 1960s tend to avoid the iconic ‘similarities between the diagram and the building, some of the Pop-based architects, would resort to icons and signs as a way of drawing relationships between concepts and form, Some of the architectural proposals that emerged in the 1970s within citical practices were primarily aimed to produce mediations between cultural or subjective representations, through abstract formal systems as an alienating mechanism, practising a sort of dialectical materialism aimed at destabilising the status quo. The project of autonomy and the utopian approaches dating back from the 1970s belong to this lineage, where the world evolves through the dialectic ‘between the real and the utopian, On the contrary, the new pragmatists utilise the diagram as 2 projective rather than @ ‘mediating tool that constructs the real, producing not only new organisations but aso new sensations and moods, Following the work of Deleuze and Guattar, who define the clagram in the context of a technoscientific semiotics, the diagram does not belong to a logic of representation, lke the other sign, but inaugurates a logic of sensation aimed at bringing forward new worlds. The diagram allows the emergence of another possible wort, However, there ae several paths of development within the diagrammatic. The diagram has often been linked to the tracing of the virtual, sometimes related to the mere ‘organisation of space and matter, sometimes to the production of sensations and affects. “There are those who understand the diagram as primarily related to topology and those wo include indexicalty as part of a diagrammatic practice. Without taking sides in this debate and for the sake of clarity, | would like to define a diagram as a tool that describes relationships and prescribes performances in space. It does not necessatly contain metic or geometric information: those emerge once the tiagram stats processing matter. diagram is usually specific to a space; it may be @ specific location, a scale, a temporal frame, but it aways has a spatial correlation, a5 ‘opposed to a graph which exists in an abstract space. The diagram relates to processes that may occur not only in three-dimensional space but in several other dimensions of realty, There is a tendency to believe that there isa ‘diagrammatic architecture’, where 239. Between eas and Mates ons, dees, Diagrams, rawings and Graphsthe architecture inherits the formal characteristics of the diagram, but in principle a diagram is not necessarily similar in form to the organisation it prescribes: a very simple diagram may generate vety complex organisations ‘The primary quality of a diagram is its reductive nature. Diagrammatic operation should ‘not be confused with arbitrariness or lack of control: on the contrary, the diagram is about precisely defining, at every moment in the process the exact level of knowiedge ‘and determination that we can exert on the project. In a diagrammatic process, the project keeps a capacity to tigger possibilities. The project retains its virtuaitis, which become only partially actualised, keeping the possibilty to develop ad infinitum. In a diagrammatic practice the moment of closure is determined by factors extemal to the Project, and the propositional moments, the aims and strategies, are not restricted tothe ‘origin or the end, but to the interstices ofthe process. Between the form of the diagram and the fina form of the building, additional information needs to be added ‘An example of a project developed diagrammatically isthe Yokohama International Ferry Port Terminal project, where the diagram sets the targets precisely, but also generates ‘more ambiguous readings of the outcome, The project begins with the ambition to Produce a pier where you never retrace your steps. That is the concept ofthe project, \which is embedded in a diagram that defies the characteristic linear organisation of @ pier (the no-return diagram), In whatever direction the pier i travelled, the experience willbe of a continuous forward movement. The project's departure is not placed on its formal or representational qualities, but on its most basic performance as a spatial ‘organisation. The physical concreteness of the project emerges progressively as the diagram becomes engaged with a certain matetal in Yokohama, the material is the ground. Its deployment evolves the no-return diagram into a three-dimensional diagram. Ergonomic and functional information are then incorporated into the new diagram ~ for example, the scale of the load-bearing structures, head clearances and ‘manufacturing constraints are incorporated to determine the scale and geometry ofthe surface’s deformations, Only ater the diagram has absorbed allthis information does it ‘become a drawing, having acquired metrical and geometrical determinations. A drawing {3 material organisation that prescribes metric and geometric information in three- dimensional space. Its precision is therefore critical for its operativity. Conventional architectural methods are based on an indeterminate relationship between the diagrams and the drawings. In traditional architectural methodologies, these relations are usually regulated by the conventions of the discipline. Drawings are the primary instrument forthe production of architecture. But a design process that remains limited to the relationship between drawings and real-space buildings is constrained to the actualisation of conventions and commonly resists the integration of variation, local specificities or changes of concitions. Tis is where the siagrammatic process becomes advantageous in a culture characterised by change. 240. The Diagrams of Achitecure Foreign Office Architects, Yokohama itertonal ery fon Terminal 1900 Diagram ofthe geometrical seting ou fhe ger ais © FOR Inerasol Frey Pr Terminal. 1299 Grealaton diagram. © FOR 241 Between des and Mates ons Indes, Diagrams Drawings and Graphs- Ff A graph is a plot of information that is not actualised in real space. A graph does not have Physical or visual content, as it does nat belong to an exganisation that unfolds in real space. It describes or prescribes information operating in an abstract space. it can act to unlock virtualties that are not perceptible on a sensible level or it can extend the capacity of material organisations to affect or be affected by processes occuring in virtual spaces. The transfer ofa graph into real space always requitesa specific transfer technique; for example, the implementation ofthe differential fenestration ratios in a building envelope to produce variable environmental performances requires a specific technolagy to differentiate. In architecture, to make a graph operative it is crucial to understand the dimensional relationship between the space of the graph and the concrete space. The most common problem in contemporary experimental architecture i to literally turn the space ofthe diagram or the graph int the space ofthe drawing, and therefore ofthe building The current tendency towards smoothness isan effect of operating with fctionless diagrams. But real buildings have materials, and these are in charge of the production ofthe coarseness and true complexity ofthe building’ form and organisation. A diagram or a graph aways require a determinant form of mediation to become a drawing, to enter nto rel space 249, Between ideas an Mater: ons. Indenes, Diagrams, Drawings and GraphsWANTED: SPACE 244 The Diagrams of Architecture ‘ore To Metacity/Datatown Winy Maas (MVRDV) In this short set of extracts from their book Metacity/Datatown (1999) by MVRDV (Winy Maas, Jacob van Rijs and Nathalie de Vries), the authors describe the two theoretical projects, Metacity/Datatown. The projects consist ofa variety of architectural and urban design proposals that emerge from numerical and statistical diagram research into the preconditions and fundamental, systemic situations and principles of modern and possible future cities. Influenced by earlier 20th-century provocative and utopian projects such as Superstudio, the Metabolists, Archigram, science fiction ‘and film, the datascapes MVRDV became famous for are superficially simple, but resolve into more complex, subtle and ambiguous underlying proposals. The resulting hypothetical and utopian, counterfactual design ‘options that emerged from the quantitatively driven 3-D and 4-D diagrams are influenced by concepts of the systems and information revolution, the \ceasing scale and integration of urban and architectural data and its availability, and the computational processing of urban planning and chitectural design methodologies. As a multidisciplinary fusing of ‘computer games, software design and programming, information design and visualisation, and the predictive techniques, procedures and research ‘methodologies of futurology, the MVRDV diagrams of Metacity/Datatown constitute a seminal polemic with conceptual and utopian overtones. The izarre, radical and didactic design proposals that emerge from these seemingly unbiased, quotidian statistics and diagrammatic exercises are Presented as the inevitable outputs of an a-ideological, scientific rationality, confidence and clarity, in a process of inexorable scenario building. That the apparently emergent, eclectic, extraordinary and futuristic overall forms of the results and proposals seem to be an ‘exaggerated, unexpected, ludic and ironic, methodologically mediated extension of the present everyday (at close range and in detail the styling and aesthetic is rectangular and for all intents and purposes practically Modernist) is a carefully calculated extrapolation. Since Metacity/ Datatown, MVRDV have extended their uses and application of diagrams and diagrammatic methods through their development of increasingly sophisticated proprietary software that combines real-time CAD animations and parametrically controlled and customisable diagrammatic interfaces. The projects diagrammed and simulated in programs such as RegionMaker, FunctionMixer and Spacefighter have evolved into more ambitious, detailed and rigorous research projects, manifestoes and designs that have influenced a generation of architects, urban designers and policy makers around the world. 248. Metaiy/OatatounParametric Diagrams a Patrik Schumacher (Zaha Hadid Architects) Patrik Schumacher (Co-Director of the Architectural Association's Design Research Laboratory (AADRL) and Partner in Zaha Hadid Architects) describes here the possibilities and potentials of the parametric architectural diagram. Using two superimposed distinctions ~ between the ordinary and extra-ordinary diagram and between the metric and parametric diagram ~ he outlines a future for architecture through the parametric diagram and the new Parametricsm style. For Schumacher, Parametricism is the appropriate architectural response to the need to ‘organise and articulate the increasing complexity of the post-Fordist society. As an account focusing on both the parametric architectural diagram and on the diagram in Zaha Hadid’s oeuvre, it contributes to the understanding of one of the most significant and original bodies of work in the history of architecture. The focus of avant-garde architectural design moves away from the design of individual buildings to the design of parametric diagrams that are capable of multi- various individuation. ‘Two Distinctions Concerning Diagrams A diagram is a type of representation that is characterised by a high level of abstraction. The representation focuses on vety specific aspects of the represented entity, These isolated aspects can then be grasped and manipulated with a high degree of efficiency. This abstraction works wel if what has been abstracted from can be taken for granted; that isto say, usualy this high level of abstraction is granted an the basis of a clear understanding of what is omitted from the representation, and how the ciagram can be completed in order to obtain a more fully mimetic representation. | would like to talk of ordinary diagrams, if the relationship between the abstract diagram and the concrete entity represented is unproblematic because it is Fixed through built-in routine assumptions Durand! was perhaps the frst to introduce a diagrammatic process within architecture He proposed a ‘mechanics of composition’? made easy and efficient by using gridded paper upon which a series of basic elements such as walls and columns could be ‘combined ~ following the rules of alignment, regularity and symmetry ~ to frm standard building parts such as porches, vestibules and rooms, which in tuen could be combined into various whole buildings, again following the rules of alignment, regularity and ‘symmetry. Both elements and parts were familiar To further rein in the results of the Compositional process from the very start, Durand proposed in fact a procedure of decomposition or successive division stating from global geometric forms like