The Tense of Architecture

Introduction

What can a philosopher of language have to say about the works of two architects? More interestingly, what can he have to learn from a book called Architectural Body ? At first sight, the only possible answer is: nothing. Except that the architects in question are also artists or poets, and one of their previous works, The Mechanism of Meaning , cannot be indifferent to a philosopher of language. So that the philosopher of lan¬ guage can exert his talents in two ways. He can discuss and make sense of (in a technical, not a patronising acceptation of the phrase) the architects’ pronouncements, especially when they seem to defy common sense and beggar belief. And he can wonder whether the series of concepts produced in their architectural manifes¬ to cannot be distinctly, and perhaps crucially, relevant to his concerns. I shall therefore proceed in two steps. I shall consider the very formulation of the entire project; and I shall learn something from Architectural Body.

We have decided not to die

How can we make sense of a proposition like this, which runs contrary to our most ingrained beliefs, beliefs so firmly established that they have acquired the status of knowledge? I do not believe I shall even¬ tually die, I know it.

There are two trivial ways out of this quandary. I can treat the proposition as a piece of artistic provo¬ cation, designed to shake me, temporarily and I hope pleasurably, out of my ingrained knowledge — this is hardly better than a pose. Or I can treat the proposition as metaphorical. The traditional way not to die in that sense is to survive through one’s offspring or one’s works — the metaphor is as old as the hills.

The interest of Gins and Arakawa’s position is that they do not encourage either of those trivial solu¬ tions, but take their proposition, there lies their radicalness, not only seriously but literally.

This is where the philosopher of language may have something to say, simply by asking, in his profes¬ sional capacity, the question: how can I construe the meaning of such a proposition, which is semantically outrageous, but has the hallmark of respectable grammaticality?

I shall attempt to do this with the help of Gilles Deleuze’s theory of sense, as expressed in his Logique du sens. His theory is based on the contrast between meaning and sense, or rather, since this is a French text, between two acceptations of sens. For Deleuze, a proposition has meaning if three elements are present: ma¬ nifestation, designation and signification. Manifestation denotes the relationship between the proposition and