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The most common mistake of contemporary ‘experimental’ architecture is to turn the space of the diagram or graph literally into the space of the drawing, and, therefore, of the building.2(Alejandro Zaera-Polo)The diagram […] does not act as a code, but as a modulator.3(Gilles Deleuze)Often thought of in somewhat static, explanatory terms, the typical architectural diagram is used as a form of shorthand to succinctly communicate condensed information about a project and/or its conditions. In this way, the diagram functions as kind of coding device. Contrary to this typical coding function, Georges Teyssot describes the potential of a diagram that functions not as a code (mould) but rather as a modulator: ‘while molding leads to a permanent state of things, modulation introduces the factor of time’.4 Modulating is simply, as Deleuze says, ‘molding in a variable and continuous manner’.5 Critical to the modulating function is a degree of indeterminacy, which allows a diagram to be both responsive and flexible.

When pious critics criticized Millet for painting peasants who were carrying an offertory like a sack of potatoes, Millet responded by saying that the weight common to the two objects was more profound than their figurative distinction. As a painter, he was striving to paint the force or that weight, and not the offertory or the sack of potatoes.(Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari)Gilles Deleuze sought an ontology that did not, according to Todd May, ‘reduce being to the knowable’. Instead he sought a widening of thought that would allow one ‘to palpate the unknowable’. Key to this expanded field of thought is an ability to think the ‘material synthetic unity’ of ‘sensation’. Deleuze drew upon art in general, and painting in particular, to describe both the nuances of sensation and how to think sensation.

‘How can an entity with no discernible beginning or end be a place?”Fumihiko MakiArchitecture has long provided concrete expression for ideals such as home, nation, justice, democracy and spirituality. In so doing, it has helped to place them within society. The placing of these ideals has been an important aspect of both ancient and modern cultures, helping to focus, gather and structure many aspects of daily life, to mesh practices and customs with the assets of particular locales, and provide grounding for human existence.