Beschreibung
des Entwurfs-programmes |
Multiplicity
At the bottom of our pockets, we (almost) all have a small technological plate, which, in addition to its telephone function, also serves as a camera, typewriter, calculator, dictaphone, hi-fi system, video monitor, etc. We don't need to be asked to draw this object and become a multi-media man-orchestrator. Listening to our favourite radio programme on the move, finishing the latest episode of the most popular series, and immediately sharing it in words and pictures on social networks.
The smartphone has turned us into digital hikers. It works on the same model as the Swiss army knife: an assembly of miniaturised objects with intuitive controls. Multiple functionalities for a unified user guide. Simple in appearance, efficient in its handling, multiple in its configurations.
This multiplicity is paradoxically stimulated by the unity and compactness of the object. Multiplicity is eminently dialectic. It manifests itself when it reveals 'double-bottomed' objects or functions, other hidden meanings and uses.
But multiplicity is itself a notion with several entries. It unfolds in the labyrinth of its own meanings.
When we speak of multiplicity, what exactly do we mean? It can be synonymous with profusion, abundance or reproduction. Is this multiplicity thus synonymous with excess? Not necessarily, because its industrial connotations also generate their own regulation. Mass production allows for economies of scale, and the development of standards that we imagine to be economical. Multiplicity and compactness, two poles that are not so separate.
Then comes another nuance, that between reproduction and variation. Multiplicity would not necessarily be linked to 'the same', but rather to the reproduction of a model, with a small difference each time. In the end, something quite similar to the 'type' in architecture: an abstract model that requires more variation than copying. Thus, all the schools of the Third Republic look alike, without any of them having the same drawings. This multiplicity then calls for its own system of classification, of nomenclature. It is the taste for collecting, sometimes to the point of intoxication of saturation (the cabinets of curiosities) or exhaustiveness (the encyclopaedias).
It is the very paradox of classification to reveal itself endlessly, to the point of vertigo.
Today, "Google searches" go beyond the limits of nomenclatures. Instead, they operate through written and visual neighbourhoods, sometimes surprising, but opening up to other associations of ideas. This digital model is that of "big data", an infinite data bank and inexhaustible stock of information.
Do these classifications require limits? Is it not preferable, on the contrary, to let them go? These data banks reflect a contemporary world that has long since lost a single reference point. The same is true of architecture. We no longer build according to 'types' or unique programme models.
The disappearance of this single model can be seen everywhere. However, the form of our environment is not formless. Rather, it is elusive, constantly reshaped by myriad economic, political, moral and other models and counter-models. Defining an organisation or an identity necessarily means weighing up these multiple models or hypotheses, often mixing them up. To nuance, to refine, is necessarily to assume multiplicity.
This multiplicity - even in its infinity - then asserts itself as a paradoxical compass. It brings to light the different facets of an identity, and even shapes new ones, which in turn will shed light on others, and so on.
What if multiplicity were a determining factor in 'making society'? Here again, let us take advantage of the ambiguities of the term! In its 'reproductivist' approach, would multiplicity necessarily be on the side of accumulation, or even saturation? In its 'specialised' approach, would this notion necessarily play into the hands of fragmentation or even crumbling? On the contrary, the opposite phenomenon occurs. For multiplicity also encourages grouping by affinity. It generates community. It even creates certain biological models, to stimulate living beings that cannot live in isolation: clusters, swarms, clusters (outside of its medical meaning). Models that can easily be transcribed to the architectural and urban scale.
Multiplicity goes beyond the method of classification to produce its own forms of development. It also goes beyond its original meaning of abundance, to highlight multi-faceted tools. In the end, this multiplicity is never very far from compactness. The joining of opposites always leads to surprises.
An architecture that allows for multiplicity would therefore be one that allows for economy and optimality, while also opposing the quest for the univocal standard, the isomorphic module and strict repetition. Otherwise, we fall into the trap of reproducibility: each copy is less sharp than the last.
Avoiding this pitfall means defining places, spaces, constructive systems, and assemblies that are just as sharp as each other. But precisely, how can we define their "sharpness"? How do we know the optimality of an element?
Precisely, when we can justify its presence for at least two reasons. Precisely, when it is opposed to mono-functionality.
Precisely, when, even if compact, even if minimal, it is already a multiple object.
Thus, an object can be unitary without being condemned to uniformity.
Uniqueness is not synonymous with uniformity. To give value to an element is to endow it with several facets. Multiplicity then becomes an oxymoron: polymorphic uniqueness. A single piece, but with multiple uses.
Our practice as architects consists of producing prototypes. At all scales. Constructive detail or building, everything is a prototype. An assembly of two standards should not be based on the lowest common denominator between these two elements but, on the contrary, should stimulate a new mixture.
How will these elements react? Like a chemical alloy (fusion or transubstantiation)? Or a multiplication (the potentialities of each of the elements stimulating unexpected new ones)? The uncertainty of the result is counterbalanced by another certainty: precisely that of having experimented with composite operations, to generate, beyond an object, a dynamic of multiplicity that only asks to unfold, unfold, unfold.
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