Flights of a Spider

Abstract

In this paper, the limits between an already structured individual and its milieu are brought into focus. The significance of the limit lies between the operational potentials of an individual and its milieu: that which is neither structure nor potential yet. In other words, the architectural limit belongs neither to the past nor to the future, but to a constant present, the a praesenti of being in becoming and becoming in being. On the limit that constantly shifts and transforms, grows and shrinks, both the past and the future inform each other. Through the disparity of their informational differential, any architectural entity passes through the ongoing unfolding of its individuation. For Simondon, the limit is the here-and-now of individuation. It is where the propagation of information on a yet undetermined milieu occurs; in other words, it is where transduction takes place. Through this paper, architectural transduction will be defined as the process whereby architecture undergoes information, where one architectural individual finds its principle of constitution in another. If the limit is the here-and-now of individuation, then architecture, aiming in the production of new processes of individuation, has to deal with the reciprocal practice of finding new ways to perform a play of limits; a play on what is yet to come.