The Transverse Face: Architecture X Culture

TL;DRAbstract

The theoretical framework for this paper arrives from the cultural crossingsbetween the work of Japanese architect Shin Takamatsu and Frenchphilosopher Felix Guattari on a dynamic conception of subject formation andcitizenship of space that is different from the kind of ecstasies celebrated inphenomenology. The paper draws on Guattari's concepts of transversality orcrossings that produce an irreducible uniqueness in architecture, and'faciality' which describes a 'redundancy in the machinic unconscious' thatbears upon the semiology of cultural construction, in relation to Takamatsu'sarchitecture. This is a concept of culture not based on subjective identities ortranscendent communities, but emerges at the transversal occasions inarchitecture as material works themselves. In this approach, architectureforfeits its quest for cultural identity through form, as identity becomes theresult of mere happenstance. The architectural sense in cultural formation istherefore invested not in a predef

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