Cul-de-sac
- Publisher:
- e-flux
- Publication Type:
- Internet Publication
- Citation:
- 2023
- Issue Date:
- 2023-03
Closed Access
| Filename | Description | Size | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chronograms of Architecture - Urtzi Grau et al.pdf | Published version | 1.78 MB |
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Of the many predictive diagrams that Charles Jencks produced, his 1969 dissimilarity matrix of the most future-shaping architects of the day possessed the keenest foresight. Not in terms of the architects selected but the methodological paradigm it espoused: computationally-enhanced prediction, currently impacting the futures of architectural education, and just about everything else. Appropriating the format of the then-nascent numerical taxonomy—a technique able to process nearly infinite but only visible characters in calculating the relations between a set of unclassified individuals—Jencks’s little-known closed square grid of thirty-four columns and rows assigned a numerical value to the dissimilarity or relational distance between pairs of architects from a list of thirty-four. This diagram is not a timeline, unlike the phylogenies that numerical taxonomy matrixes sought to replace. Its denial of time’s passage fixes us firmly in Friedrich Kittler’s eternal present of computation. Its hermetic nature asserts its exhaustive combinatorial logic. Unlike the bifurcating precedent, no space is reserved for the equivalent of new branches yet to be discovered. Thus, it simultaneously denies any outside and indeterminacy—if a property cannot be counted, it does not count.
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