Dealing with time, place and memory in contemporary architecture - architecture between indexical and diagrammatic
Abstract
Using the example of temporality and approach to time I would like to demonstrate the connection of architecture as an index and as a diagramm by comparing two types of buildings, seemingly standing on opposite ends of spectrum - shopping center and library. Indexical concept of architecture (in the US the most frequently used in critical theory based on Frankfurt school that influenced thoughts of Manfredo Tafuri and subsequently other authors, for example M.
Wigley or P. Eisenman) considers the perception of architecture as a process of decoding meaning.
Important is what architecture means and how it is read. This concept is based on semiotics, (e.g., Ch.
S. Peirce, U.
Eco). Diagrammatic concept of architecture, based on Gilles Deleuze, or Michael Foucault and embodied in American theory mostly in the context of the projective theory, does not deal with meanings, with what the architectural object is, but rather how it operates and appeals, how it can change state of things, how virtual becomes actual.
It does not need a reader, it becomes deleuzian "fold" of reality. In my dissertation I follow up the connection between the two approaches, namely the examples embodying these seemingly opposite poles, an indexical library and a diagrammatic shopping center.
At this conference, I would like to focus specifically on the perception of time in this context. Everything is chaning too fast nowadays and the role of architecture is particularly specific.
It is not a medium which can be flexibly changing according to circumstances. Therefore there exist different approaches to time within architecture.
Indexical architecture, represented by library is going against the time, defying it and presuming stability, long continuance and personifing memory. Diagrammatic architecture, represented by shopping center, is functioning outside of time, trying not to create memory, adjusting to the circumstancie and changing with the contemporary era.