BOUNDARY CONDITIONS IN ARCHITECTURE. THE CONCEPT OF THE VIRTUAL ARCHITECTURAL OBJECT. Moras Antonios, architect, MA student, Architectural design-space-culture, N.T.U.A..

1.THE CONCEPT OF FRAGMENT IN WESTERN METAPHYSICS 2. EXPANDING THE CONCEPT OF THE FRAGMENT 3. THE RECONFIGURATION OF THE CONCEPT OF THE OBJECT AND THE RE-RADICALIZATION OF THE SENSE OF TIME AS INTERIORITY. INTERACTION AND THE VIRTUAL ARCHITECTURAL OBJECT. 4. THE ATTRIBUTES OF THE EXPANDED ARCHITECTURAL OBJECT

1. THE CONCEPT OF FRAGMENT IN WESTERN METAPHYSICS Western metaphysics is based on the relation of subject-object in which the dipoles of representation-reality and criticism- representation are interjected. Any relationship between separate things can and must be understood within these boundaries.

1. THE CONCEPT OF FRAGMENT IN WESTERN METAPHYSICS On the two dipoles of representation- reality and criticism-representation, the relation of possible-real emerges internally. Reality should be understood as this condition that is closely connected to the sense of real. Thereby, representation constitutes a possibility of the real, while criticism constitutes a possibility of representation. Anything we are aware of comprises either a representation or a criticism of representation. Representation constitutes a fragmentary expression of the real and criticism expresses possibility in representation. An object can be thought of either as representation or as criticism of representation

1. THE CONCEPT OF FRAGMENT IN WESTERN METAPHYSICS the fragment: -is part of a totality, an imperfect representation of a totality. -can be abstracted by a totality but it can never be produced in means of augmentation -the rules that condition the fragment are intrinsic in the order of the totality and they can not differ -There exists a unique, exterior point of surveillance that can control the versions of reality through the functions of similarity and constrainment.

1. THE CONCEPT OF FRAGMENT IN WESTERN METAPHYSICS typology: -incorporation of a type either as it is (function of representation) or as a standard that is modified-reinterpreted (function of critique) -the prevailing/dominating tradition is considered as a fact that can not be disputed -the repetition of type and typology validates the new as a condition that has to be subsumed in the scheme of continuity of logos. -Euclidean Geometry, Cartesian space, metric relations. this condition could be conceptualized as historical formalism, the obsession repeated in the sequence and recitation of historical/architectural events/types- typologies.

1. THE CONCEPT OF THE FRAGMENT IN WESTERN METAPHYSICS The architectural object as a timeless totality is considered as a perfect organized total, which has a definite and specific function. The relations between its parts are metric, stable and immutable and usually can be attributed to an ethical-aesthetic rule. Any change, transformation, deformation or destruction of the architectural object is corruptive, as it deviates from its initial, perfect condition which is totally attributable to an architect-creator. Architecture is the image of the architect. Fragments can only be conceived as parts or degenerate/unfinished forms that are obliged to discipline and routinize to the rules of the architectural conception and its creator.

2. EXPANDING THE CONCEPT OF THE FRAGMENT -Instead of examining what a system is composed of, resulting in functions of similarity, we should focus on the interactions that elements/fragments are involved in. Instead of dealing with a fixed object, we are facing a world as an opened up, expanded body of relations or as a force field. -A force field is comprised by micro and macro architectures. -Micro architectures-correlations enclose, macro architectures-correlations are enclosed. -Micro and macro architectures are variable as fields and subfields of forces. -Forces are not effected but diffused. -Micro and macro architectures subsequently are intrinsically attributed with the characteristic of reconfiguring in different formations.

2. EXPANDING THE CONCEPT OF THE FRAGMENT The expansion of the concept of the fragment is possible by applying the same to the actions that it can incorporate, those interactions that are not intrinsic to the conception of the body/field. The intrinsic interactions of the body/field lead us to a conceptualization of the fragment as part of a totality. As a result we can conceptualize the fragment either in correlation to the discontinuities that emerge in the body/field or in correlation to an exteriority. The fragment emerges in and through a body / field during an intensive condition, that is closely connected to the boundary conditions (exteriorities) or conditions when the system is in a crisis (error). The fragment either emerges via the mutation/transformation of the correlations in the field (error) or it constitutes the field where transformation occurs through the application of correlations that are seemingly conflicting (exteriority). The fragment emerges either as a hybrid (exteriority) or it emerges as a metastasis (error). The fragment is an intrinsic modality of the expanded object.

3. THE RECONFIGURATION OF THE CONCEPT OF THE OBJECT AND THE RE-RADICALIZATION OF THE SENSE OF TIME AS INTERIORITY. INTERACTION AND THE VIRTUAL ARCHITECTURAL OBJECT. Temporalities of the force-field. The force-field is a field of temporalities that are connected with the epimerized forces. Time is an interiority of the field. The way in which a system transforms is the way time transforms, the same way its configurations/morphemes interact. Instead of a time that imposes itself as normality, time is regarded as a process of becoming. Time is an affect and not an effect. Intensive and not extensive. The future is not just what might come and consequently would effect the system. The future is a system that is constituted as an open body, thereby the future is open to the logic of the events that took or will take place. “…duration is what it differs from itself. Matter, on the other hand, is what does not differ from itself; it is what repeats itself”. (Deleuze, 2002, deserted islands and other texts , p37)

3. THE RECONFIGURATION OF THE CONCEPT OF THE OBJECT AND THE RE-RADICALIZATION OF THE SENSE OF TIME AS INTERIORITY. INTERACTION AND THE VIRTUAL ARCHITECTURAL OBJECT. The virtual-actual relation Bergson : the virtual is a power that comes from the past, which stays with us in the present, until it is actualized. It is not something that is incompletely expressed, because it is not pre-figured. It is the dynamics of an element that under certain circumstances is actualized within the present. Deleuze : virtuality exists in such a way that it actualizes itself as it dissociates itself; it must dissociate itself to actualize itself. Differentiation is the movement of a virtuality actualizing itself. Grosz : the relation of virtual and actual is one of surprise, because virtuality, as a contraction of temporalities, promises something different to actuality. Virtuality produces and always includes in it the possibility of something different instead of the actual. Rajchman : The virtual is not an abstraction, a generality, or an a priory condition. It doesn’t take us from the specific to the generic. It increases possibility in another way; it mobilizes as yet unspecifiable singularities, bringing them together in an indeterminate plan.

3. THE RECONFIGURATION OF THE CONCEPT OF THE OBJECT AND THE RE-RADICALIZATION OF THE SENSE OF TIME AS INTERIORITY. INTERACTION AND THE VIRTUAL ARCHITECTURAL OBJECT. The past is a modality that is beared as a virtual part of the present but in a way that it (or tradition) is not alien but intrinsic, in a word inattributable. Interaction provides the condition for the in-attributability of the object, the necessary condition for the object to result as the synergy of its environment. Approaches to interaction through design: - quantification/digitalization of qualitative features (carte). Mediation of interaction through the processing of the information that flows in the system. Parametric architecture. - diagramm (calque). The environment can be ontologically conceived as a series of rules of interaction. It fosters intensive instead of extensive quantities (DeLanda) and singularities instead of particularities, as they interfere synergetically in linearity and they render it multiple (Wagensberg).

3. THE RECONFIGURATION OF THE CONCEPT OF THE OBJECT AND THE RE-RADICALIZATION OF THE SENSE OF TIME AS INTERIORITY. INTERACTION AND THE VIRTUAL ARCHITECTURAL OBJECT. The architectural environment/context should enable: (i)the coexistence of configurations, (ii)the potential of reciprocal access to them, (iii)the potential of negotiating the terms according to which interaction can happen and (iv)the opening-up of the configurations in communication and acceptance of the rules of interaction. In such an architectural environment/context, the condition of negotiating the terms according to which the opening-up of configurations can happen is the event of the emergence of the fragment, the event of the expansion of configurations into inexact interaction. It is the event of expanding interaction between anexact configurations.

4. THE ATTRIBUTES OF THE EXPANDED ARCHITECTURAL OBJECT -The expanded architectural object can not be isolated from its environment, it doesn’t have exact form but some kind of virtualized form, it has forms in singular number. It is part of an unstable field of interactions and it can not be reduced to an elementary item. -It is organized around a hybrid serial genetic algorithm that constitutes a quasi interiority instead of an identity. The hybrid serial genetic algorithm provides the conditions for the emergence of an oblique identity that is based on the virtualization of a series of interactions between the configurations of an expanded architectural object. The constitution of a quasi interiority is necessary for the preservation of the operativity of the object in relation to its environment (larger scale configurations). This quasi interiority does not represent the configurations of an object, but it impels the instantaneous conditions of interactions, that are based on serial logic, and aims to actualizing the virtualities of divergence and deviation, that modify the limits of the expanded architectural object and the modalities of its environment.

Thank you.