Folds, Bodies & Blobs, Collected Essays

Response to "Probable Geometries"

Lynn, Greg. “Probable Geometries: The Architecture of Writing in Bodies,” Folds, Bodies & Blobs, Collected Essays. La Lettre Volée, 1998.

Greg Lynn opens by conveying a certain desire: architects need to write more. Lynn claims that the trend of architecture had followed Wigley's and Venturi's theories of geometric conflict. Through writing, or theorizing and conceptualizing into a communicable media, Lynn believes that architecture can break from its "exact geometries" and pure forms. He argues that designers should become more fluid and free like in writing.

Lynn outlines the Bataille and Hollier formula to architecture: "Eidetic forms are (1) exact in measure and contour, (2) visually fixed, (3) identically repeatable."

He continues to berate the classification of architectural and anti-architectural practices. Relating to behavioral studies, I found this classification particularly humorous as it points out some idiosyncrasies of architectural mundaneness, as depicted by HOK. To protest said mundaneness, current practice also lets designers coin new terms for the vague, such as "anexact." Lynn uses the phrase "anexact yet rigorous" to exemplify the advancement of the architectural field. His explanation of new terms sheds light onto the field today, especially as Lynn delves into stereology vs. orthographics.

Later in the paper, Lynn' begins to delve into rather profound developments of centuries past: Bernoulli's Discrete vs. Continuous: the Needle problem being described may be attributed to the "randomness" of probability. Histology and Stereometry: because ethics find that live dissection of human bodies is unethical, much of the information extracted must be extrapolated.

Overall, this paper served to describe the trend from the Modern movement to the Deconstructivist theories that have arisen from the late 90's. Lynn largely attributes them to the geometric conflicts and convergences from stereometric projection. In other words, as architects began to use sections and conceptualize new forms, probable geometries become the vehicle to new architecture.

Response to "Blob Tectonics"

Lynn, Greg. “Blob Tectonics, or Why Tectonics is Square and Topology is Groovy,” Folds, Bodies & Blobs, Collected Essays. La Lettre Volée, 1998.

Lynn uses blobs as a means to challenging traditional ways of comprehending tectonics. As the blob does not have a "discrete envelope," the entire blob is to be considered as wholly a continuous surface. Its dependence on contextual environment becomes the defining factor for their chaotic, complex shape. 

"As structural engineers have for centuries, architects might consider more complex analogies of support than the simplistic, bankrupt, and highly overrated notion that buildings should stand vertically." This statement epitomizes the entire notion of the Deconstructivist movement where buildings challenged the idea of traditional structural verticality. Steven Holl's Vanke Center harks to blob architecture as blocks of program bleed into the central core. Though the conventional construction techniques are still apparent, Holl expresses a similar idea to Lynn's blob architecture as forms permeate into the landscape and creates amorphous experiences of space.