Diagrammatic Transformation of Architectural Space

Considering how much work has gone into the study of diagrams in architecture, the place of diagrams within architectural theory and practice still remains somewhat allusive. After all what relation do they have to sketches, plans or elevations? Or is it not so much the single diagram but the linkages that they engender, linkages that mark the teleological nature of architecture itself? Is it not the architectonic quality of diagrams that invites readers to think of them as related to cosmology as early as Plato's Timaeus? But while intellectual ground may be found for diagrams in antiquity, far more practiced terrain for approaching diagrams in architecture comes from strategies that would emphasize the place of diagrams within architectural design. Diagrams are not hermeneutical in a strict sense but heuristic because they are accompanied by an expectation that they participate in a process that turns words and experience into structure. Diagrams engage not simply an horizon of understanding but a terrain in which structures literally appear in the world. If we are to think about diagrams closely, we must do more than simply mark their presence. Instead we should register their cognitive significance as they direct work and establish networks of relationships between multiple symbolic fields. Diagrams are important and indeed so much so that rather than drifting within a hermeneutical setting they should be approached as vehicles of invention and extension.