Towards a Deleuzian Approach in Urban Design

Difference and Repetition in Redevelopment Projects for the Al Kadhimiya Historical Site, Baghdad, Iraq: Towards a Deleuzian Approach in Urban Design

A Dissertation submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Cincinnati

In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN ARCHITECTURE

In the School of Architecture and Interior Design Of the college of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning

2018

By Najlaa K. Kareem

Bachelor of Architecture, University of Technology 1999 Master of Science in Urban and Regional Planning, University of Baghdad 2004

Dissertation Committee: Adrian Parr, PhD (Chair) Laura Jenkins, PhD Patrick Snadon, PhD

Abstract

In his book Difference and Repetition, the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze distinguishes between two theories of repetition, one associated with the ‘Platonic’ theory and the other with the

‘Nietzschean’ theory. Repetition in the ‘Platonic’ theory, via the criterion of accuracy, can be identified as a repetition of homogeneity, using pre-established similitude or identity to repeat the

Same, while repetition in the ‘Nietzschean’ theory, via the criterion of authenticity, is aligned with the virtual rather than real, producing simulacra or phantasms as a repetition of heterogeneity. It is argued in this dissertation that the distinction that Deleuze forms between modes of repetition has a vital role in his innovative approaches to the Nietzschean’s notion of ‘eternal return’ as a differential ontology, offering numerous insights into work on issues of homogeneity and heterogeneity in a design process. Deleuze challenges the assumed capture within a conventional perspective by using German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s conception of the ‘eternal return.’

This dissertation aims to question the conventional praxis of architecture and urban design formalisms through the impulse of ‘becoming’ and ‘non- representational’ thinking of Deleuze.

The research attempts to conceptualize the relationship between history and the occurrence of new social contexts and to locate varying forms of active and temporal engagements with the material formations of cultural environments and historical sites. This dissertation explores the possibility of using history as a dynamic, intensive force in an architectural and urban design thinking process as a mean to escape the historicism and representational image functionary towards a re-engineered creative historical/architectural dialogue. The dissertation will conceptually analyze the difference between mimicking historical styles in a decontextualized manner and repeating them with difference using the theory of Difference and Repetition outlined by Deleuze. More precisely, this dissertation will show what Deleuze creative ontology of becoming and change might offer to

ii architectural and urban design discourses where their practices can be improved through repetition, and where it is believed that reproducing history may reinforce pride and develop the sentiment of nationalism while making way for more accepted forms of imitation. A good example is a historical revivalism happening in Iraq. Although Deleuze’s influence on architectural and urban design thinking has grown dramatically since the early 1990s, the affective strategies that have resulted from his creative approach remain mostly unaddressed in Middle Eastern architectural knowledge. This dissertation aims to fill that gap. Methodologically, it will compare and contrast two different design strategies for the redevelopment of the Al Kadhimiya historical site in

Baghdad, the capital of Iraq. This comparative research investigates the problem of representational thinking in architectural and urban design practices and to what extent repeating the past produces sociocultural uniformity or cultural difference.

The significance of this dissertation ranges widely from exploring the ethico-aesthetics of heterogeneous architecture in contemporary design associated within the innovative cultural paradigms to the role of philosophy in emerging new subjectivity and relational practices in architecture and urban design, including creative and strategic spatial practices.

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DEDICATED

To my Beloved Parents & Family

Without whom this dissertation would never have come into existence

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

First and about all, I would like to thank the Almighty Allah (God) for providing me the opportunity, health, knowledge, and skill to start this study and to persist and finish it in an acceptably.

I would like to thank all those who contributed to this dissertation. I would like to start by expressing gratitude to the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research in Iraq

(MOHESR) for awarding me a Ph.D. scholarship which supported me to do this scholarly research and advance my academic career in architecture and urban design. I would like to extend my deepest gratitude to the chair of my Ph.D. committee Dr. Adrian Parr, and Dr.Patrick Snadon and

Dr. Laura Jenkins, the members of the supervisory committee, who supported my early work on this dissertation and sustain it to its completion. I am particularly grateful for Dr. Adrian Parr for her confidence and the freedom she gave me to do this research, thank you for your effort, guidance, and support over the years. You set an example of excellence as a scholar, instructor, and role model. I wish to express my gratitude to Dr. Patrick Snadon who always gave me constant encouragement, advice, and valuable suggestions for this research. I am also very grateful to Dr.

Laura Jenkins who is kindly and generously sharing her expertise and insights through this process.

I am deeply grateful to all my committee members for assenting to read the manuscript during the summer and to participate in defense of this dissertation.

I would also like to express my deep gratitude to the faculty at the University of Cincinnati, the College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning. I would particularly like to thank Professor

Craig Vogel for his invaluable guidance and suggestions, and I would like to thank Professor Edson

Cabalfin who has been so helpful and cooperative in giving his support.

Gratitude and appreciation also extend to the Harvard College Library, Aga Khan

Documentation Center and Visual Archive at MIT, Library of Massachusetts Institute of

Technology (MIT) for supporting me in getting the original studies of the Al Kadhimiya historical site (TAKHS). I would like to thank the administrative and librarians’ staff at the University of

Cincinnati Design, Art, Architecture and Planning (DAAP) Library for supporting me in obtaining the first volumes and the original editions of studies related to the theories of the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and his collaborator Félix Guattari. I would also like to thank the mayoralty of Baghdad (Amanat Baghdad), and the staff of the Engineering Department in the Al

Jawadain Holy Shrine for providing me with the latest information, original materials, archival date, achieved projects, and drawings related to the Al Kadhimiya historical site in Baghdad, Iraq.

This dissertation could not have been completed without the main source of my strength, my parents, Mrs. Iqbal and Mr. Kadhim Kareem. Thank you for all your unconditional love. I would also like to thank my brothers, Ali and Ahmed, my sisters, Ella and Zhara, for their love and care, and for their assistance in getting important literature and documents on the redevelopment of the Al Kadhimiya historical site in Baghdad, Iraq, from the libraries of Baghdad

University, University of Technology, University of Thi-Qar, governmental and religious institutions and ministries.

Finally, special thanks to my small family, my husband, Mustafa Al Janabi, a Professor in

Modern History. I have been lucky to have his expert suggestions and unwavering support. My son Mohammed, my daughters, Noor, Ruqayah, and Zainab, thank you for filling my life with happiness. I owe the completion of this dissertation to all of you.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract ii ii Dedication v v Acknowledgments vi vi Table of Contents viii viii Table of Figures xi xi

Chapter One: Research Framework 1

1.1 Introduction 1 1.2 Research Questions 4 1.3 Research Aims 4 1.4 Research Scope 5 1.5 Hypothesis 6 1.6 Methodology 7 1.6.1 Historical Background 8 1.6.2 Formal Analysis 11 1.6.2.1 The Al Kadhimiya Historical Site 11 1.6.2.2 The Dewan Architecture and Engineer Firm Proposal 13 1.6.2.3 The Assemblage Architects Firm Proposal 15 1.6.3 Comparative Analysis 17 1.6.4 Conceptual Analysis 20 1.7 Literature Review 21 1.8 Theoretical Framework and Intellectual Apparatus 25 1.8.1 Helen Morgan Parmett’s Notion of ‘Disneyfication’ 26 1.8.2 Gilles Deleuze’s Notion of ‘Difference in Itself’ 27 1.9 Findings and Discussion 28 1.10 Organization of the Dissertation 29

Chapter Two: Literature Review 33

2.1 The Time of Architecture: Deleuze’s Reading of Nietzschean Eternal Return 3 3 2.2 Deleuze’s Philosophy in Difference and Repetition 35 2.3 Nietzschean Eternal Return 38 2.4 Urban Design Thinking in Eisenman’s Critical Practice 44 2.5 Deleuze’s Transcendental Empiricism 50 2.6 Machinic Urbanism in Eisenman’s Design Process 57 2.7 Conclusion 60

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Chapter Three: Qualitative Methodology 63

3.1 New Territories for Old Architecture: Nomadic History as a Design Strategy in the Redevelopment Urban Project for the Al Kadhimiya Historical Site, Baghdad, Iraq 5 8 3.2 Capturing Old Architecture 66 3.2.1 Mixed Land Uses 73 3.2.2 Compact Building Design 74 3.2.3 Form and The Architectural Style 76 3.3 Deleuze’s Rejection of Representational Thinking 78 3.4 Machinic Urbanism: Cracking the Past 84 3.5 Conclusion 93

Chapter Four: Main Findings 96

4.1 Memory in an Experimental Preservation: Deleuze, Duration, and Nonlinear History 96 4.2 The Morphological Stages for the Al Kadhimiya Historical Site 98 4.2.1 The First Morphological Stage: Before 1936 98 4.2.2 The Second Morphological Stage: 1940-1975 99 4.2.3 The Third Morphological Stage: 1976-2003 101 4.2.4 The Fourth Morphological Stage: 2003 to present 101 4.3 Historical Background of the Planning and Urban Studies (approaches to the issue) 103 4.4 The Allusion of the History in the Traditional Mode of Preservation 111 4.5 Deleuze, Duration, and Nonlinear History 118 4.6 Machinic Mode to Preserve the Nonlinear History 120 4.7 Conclusion 129

Chapter Five: Discussion 131

5.1 Eisenman Critical Practice: Beyond Urban Formalism In-Between Actualizing Function and Virtualizing Chaos 131 5.2 The Interstitial Spaces in Eisenman Architecture and Urban Formalisms 132 5.3 Assemblage Theory 135 5.4 Assemblage Design Thinking 137 5.5 The Logic of Sensation 142 5.6 Deleuze’s Affective Assemblage 1 46 5.7 Urban Assemblage 150 5.8 Conclusion 158

Chapter Six: Conclusion 160

6.1 Historical Materiality in the Realm of Contemporary Architecture: The Argument of Differentiation in Design Thinking Process 160 6.2 Actualization of the Virtual in Eisenman’s Critical Practice 162

6.3 Deleuze’s Critique of Fixed Identity 169 6.4 Deleuze’s Process of Differentiation 171 6.5 Representational Thinking vs. Differentiation 176 6.6 Places of Becoming in Diagrammatic Models 183 6.7 Urban Image Beyond Deleuze and Guattari 185 6.8 Conclusion 189 6.8.1 Contribution 192 6.8.2 Expected Outcomes 192 6.9 Further Research 194

Bibliography 1 9 6

Appendix 208

TABLE OF FIGURES

Figure 2.1: Eisenman Architects, Rebstockpark Concepts Diagrams, 1991-1992.

Figure 2.2: Eisenman Architects, Rebstockpark Surroundings, 1991-1992.

Figure 2.3: Eisenman Architects, Rebstockpark Concepts Diagrams, 1991-1992.

Figure 2.4: Eisenman Architects, Rebstockpark Drawing, 1991-1992.

Figure 2.5: Eisenman Architects, Rebstockpark Drawing, 1991-1992.

Figure 2.6: Eisenman Architects, Rebstockpark Model, 1991-1992.

Figure 2.7: Eisenman Architects, Rebstockpark Design Concept, 1991-1992.

Figure 2.8: Eisenman Architects, Rebstockpark Perspective View, 1991-1992.

Figure 2.9: Eisenman Architects, Rebstockpark Perspective View, 1991-1992.

Figure 3.1: MIT Libraries, Aga Khan Visual Archive, The Al Kadhimain Shrine, 1982.

Figure 3.2: MIT Libraries, Aga Khan Visual Archive, The Al Kadhimain Shrine, 1982.

Figure 3.3: Fine Arts Library, Harvard College Library, Golden Domes and Minarets of The Al Kadhimain Shrine, 1923.

Figure 3.4: Dewan Architects and Engineers Firm, The Al Kadhimiya Redevelopment, 2009.

Figure 3.5: Fine Arts Library, Harvard College Library, The Al Kadhimain Shrine, 1923.

Figure 3.6: Dewan Architects and Engineers Firm, The Al Kadhimiya Redevelopment, 2009.

Figure 3.7: Dewan Architects and Engineers Firm, The Al Kadhimiya Redevelopment, 2009.

Figure 3.8: Dewan Architects and Engineers Firm, The Al Kadhimiya Redevelopment, 2009.

Figure 3.9: Dewan Architects and Engineers Firm, The Al Kadhimiya Redevelopment, 2009.

Figure 3.10: DAEF, The Al Kadhimiya Redevelopment, 2009.

Figure 3.11: DAEF, The Al Kadhimiya Redevelopment, 2009.

Figure 3.12: DAEF, The Al Kadhimiya Redevelopment, 2009.

Figure 3.13: DAEF, The Al Kadhimiya Redevelopment, 2009.

Figure 3.14: Assemblage Architects Firm, Holy City Masterplan, 2009.

Figure 3.15: Assemblage Architects Firm, Holy City Masterplan, 2009.

Figure 3.16: Assemblage Architects Firm, Holy City Masterplan, 2009.

Figure 3.17: Assemblage Architects Firm, Holy City Masterplan, 2009.

Figure 3.18: Assemblage Architects Firm, Holy City Masterplan, 2009.

Figure 3.19: Assemblage Architects Firm, Holy City Masterplan, 2009.

Figure 3.20: Assemblage Architects Firm, Holy City Masterplan, 2009.

Figure 4.1: FAL, Harvard College Library, Al Kadhimain Shrine Surroundings, 1923.

Figure 4.2: FAL, Harvard College Library, Entrance of The Al Kadhimain Shrine, 1923.

Figure 4.3: Sahar Mohamed Al-Kaisi, The Al Kadhimiya Historical Site, Before 1936.

Figure 4.4: Sahar Mohamed Al-Kaisi, The Al Kadhimiya Historical Site, 1940-1975.

Figure 4.5: Sahar Mohamed Al-Kaisi, The Al Kadhimiya Historical Site, 1976-2003.

Figure 4.6: John Warren, The Al Kadhimiya Historical Site, 2003 to present.

Figure 4.7: Google Earth image, The Al Kadhimiya Historical Site, 2003 to present.

Figure 4.8: Yasser Tabbaa Archive, Aga Khan Documentation Center at MIT, The Al Kadhimain Shrine, 1980s.

Figure 4.9: International Quran News Agency, The Al Kadhimain Shrine, 1970s.

Figure 4.10: Doxiadis master plan of Baghdad, DA 1958.

Figure 4.11: Polservice Consulting, Engineers Warsaw-Poland, Masterplan of Baghdad, 1967.

Figure 4.12: Polservice Consulting, Engineers Warsaw-Poland, Masterplan of Baghdad, 1974.

Figure 4.13: Design of the Al Kadhimiya neighborhood in Baghdad, The mid-1970s.

Figure 4.14: MIT Libraries, Aga Khan Visual Archive, The Al Kadhimain Shrine, New Surroundings, 1982.

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Figure 4.15: MIT Libraries, AKVA, Traditional House in The Al Kadhimiya site, 1982.

Figure 4.16: Google Earth image, Al Kadhimiya Neighborhood in Baghdad, West of the Tigris River, 2007.

Figure 4.17: The Al Kadhimiya Neighborhood in Baghdad, 2013.

Figure 4.18: The Al Kadhimiya Neighborhood in Baghdad, 2013.

Figure 4.19: DAEF, The Al Kadhimiya Redevelopment, 2009.

Figure 4.20: AAF, Holy City Masterplan, 2009.

Figure 5.1: Eisenman Architects, Berlin Memorial, Perspective View, 1998-2005.

Figure 5.2: Eisenman Architects, Berlin Memorial Design Drawing, 1998-2005.

Figure 5.3: Eisenman Architects, Berlin Memorial Design Drawing, 1998-2005.

Figure 5.4: Eisenman Architects, Berlin Memorial Perspective View, 1998-2005.

Figure 5.5: Eisenman Architects, Berlin Memorial Design Concept, 1998-2005.

Figure 5.6: Eisenman Architects, Berlin Memorial Design Concept, 1998-2005.

Figure 5.7: Eisenman Architects, Berlin Memorial Model, 1998-2005.

Figure 5.8: Eisenman Architects, House III, 1969-1971.

Figure 6.1: Irene Fanizza, Freespace, the 16th International Architecture Exhibition, Corderie dell'Arsenale, Venice, 2018.

Figure 6.2: EA, City of Culture of Galicia, Santiago de Compostela, Spain, 1999- 2011.

Figure 6.3: Representational Image of the Thought.

Figure 6.4: DAEF, The Al Kadhimiya Redevelopment, 2009.

Figure 6.5: AAF, Holy City Masterplan, 2009.

Figure 6.6: Marc Ngui, Deleuze & Guattari's A Thousand Plateaus, Rhizome, 2008.

Figure 6.7: Marc Ngui, Diagrams for D&G ATP, 2008.

Figure 6.8: Marc Ngui, Deleuze & Guattari's A Thousand Plateaus, Multiplicity, 2008.

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Figure 6.9: Marc Ngui, Deleuze & Guattari's A Thousand Plateaus, Assemblage, 2008.

Figure 6.10: Marc Ngui, Deleuze & Guattari's A Thousand Plateaus, Becoming, 2008.

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CHAPTER ONE Research Framework

1.1 Introduction

The purpose of this dissertation is to explore how we can perceive the coming future that creatively blends with the historic touch. The author of History and Becoming: Deleuze’s

Philosophy of Creativity, Craig Lundy, raises an intellectual question about the meaning of history in Deleuze’s individual works and his collaboration with the schizoanalyst/political activist Félix

Guattari. Lundy puts forward various innovative suggestions to enable an escape from representational thinking and to create a creative dialogue between history and becoming.1 Like

Lundy, the American architect and theoretician Peter Eisenman claims that “we cannot repeat the iconic of the past in the present because they do not have the same iconic value.”2

In his incisive essay, The End of the Classical: The End of the Beginning, the End of the

End, Eisenman constructs a route to lines of flight, escaping the clamp of history and questioning the authority of dominant systems that have captured architecture and urban design since the classical period.3 However, the dilemma is that many architectural and urban design practices are still imprisoned and limited to a very narrow imagistic mode of history. Consequently, this limitation causes many issues related to three important aspects of architectural and urban design projects in historic sites: socio-cultural preservation, tourism economic improvement, and adaptability to modern environmental requirements. The problem is that architecture and urban design are traditionally “subjected to dominant, ‘natural’ orders: structural, functional, symbolic,

1- Craig Lundy, History and becoming: Deleuze’s philosophy of creativity (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), 1. 2- Alejandro Zaera-Polo, “Eisenman's Machine of Infinite Resistance,” EI Croquis 83(1997):50-63. 3- Alejandro Zaera-Polo, “A Conversation with Peter Eisenman,” EI Croquis 83 (1997a):12.

1 and linguistic,”4– which are “static, hierarchically-ordered structures of time and space.”5 Thus, this largely representational notion overlooks the ontology of becoming and change in architectural and urban design thinking. Consequently, this dissertation will draw parallels between dominant architectural and urban design practices and Deleuze’s new intellectual framework, ‘radical difference’ to analyze two proposals submitted in 2008-2009 for the Al Kadhimiya historical site redevelopment project in Baghdad, Iraq. The two proposals included the winning proposal by the

Dewan Architecture and Engineer Firm and one of the top-ten finalist projects by Assemblage

Architects Firm. In the analysis, the dissertation examines the representational thinking in architecture and urban design that conveys within it a norm of static and false identity in comparison to the ontology of becoming and change defined by Deleuze in his theory of Difference and Repetition.

Immense disciplinary literature addresses the problem of representational thinking in architecture and urban design and the critical role of history and becoming to face this issue. Many scholars, theorists, architects, urban designers, and planners, such as K. Michael Hayes, Fredric

Jameson, Elizabeth Grosz, Adrian Parr, Manuel Delanda, Peter Eisenman, Kim Dovey, and Jean

Hillier to name a few, all write about and critique representational thinking in architecture and urban design. Using Deleuze’s philosophical notions is an essential component of their research and methodology; they approach the study of architecture and urban design through an analysis of the innovative variation and production of time and space. The main argument and the essential element here is to designate intellectual constructs in what aspects the dogmatic image of history

4- Alejandro Zaera-Polo, “The making of The Machine: Powerless Control as A Critical Strategy,” Eleven Authors in Search of a Building: the Aronoff Centre for Design and Art at the University of Cincinnati, ed. Cynthia C. Davidson (New York: Monacelli Press, 1996), 30. 5- Dorothea Olkowski, Gilles Deleuze and the ruin of representation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 2.

2 becomes effective and energetic. This dissertation is a critical analysis of the creative conception of history, and its vital role in the process of creation to produce the new. The dissertation will compare and contrast representational architectural and urban design thinking with a notion of architectures of becoming, offering a new intellectual framework for experimental design.

Furthermore, the dissertation inquiry into the openness of ‘difference’ is a central component of

Deleuze’s ontology of becoming and change to support the production of ‘machinic urbanism,’that involves different bodies in different spatial practice. Deleuze scholar Adrian Parr coins the term

‘machinic urbanism.’ “Machinic urbanism would produce connections and relations between elements to stimulate challenges to traditional economic, environmental, social and cultural doxa, to create lines of ﬂight and alternative discourses from which to imagine, or fabulate, different futures.”6

Deleuze considers that the ontology of becoming and change has a particular duration, a portion of the virtual firmness, and through the relations between forces this pure duration can be apprehended as a transformation.7 It can be said that architectural and urban design practices can interpose and open out of both spatiality and formality during this pure duration, and thus, be considered as abstract machines in Deleuze’s ontology of becoming and change. Furthermore, the non-representational manifestation of architecture and urban design practices is shaped from their various functions and occur in the continuous connections and living requirements and desires such as privacy, housing, safety, and personal boundaries, to name a few.

Deleuze’s ontology of becoming and change deals with the idea that a machine can spontaneously improve thematic relations and energetic assemblages in which living desire and

6- Jean Hillier, Book Review: Adrian Parr (2009) Hijacking Sustainability (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), Deleuze Studies, Volume 4, Issue 1, (2010):138-145. 7- Cliff Stagoll, “Becoming,” The Deleuze Dictionary, Revised Edition, ed. Adrian Parr. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), 28.

3 need can connect, motivate, and generate collections of components with various arrangements, distinguishing ‘machinic’ relationships and potential networks. Eisenman elucidates that the unpredictability in architectural and urban design practices can enable the way for a ‘machinic’ to become animated. In this way, architecture and urban design cannot be subordinated to a scheme of symbolism that represents classical norms and has “already” materialized meaning in the architectural and urban design formalistic image.8 The notion of urban assemblage undermines the static classifications of identity, subject, being, and reason in which they are associated with time and space, awarding the importance to ‘difference’ in pure duration.

1.2 Research Questions

The interests in this dissertation are directed at bringing two questions together to mount a nuanced theoretical discussion of the creative role that ‘difference’ can play in processes of repetition and transformation. First, what might Deleuze’s creative ontology of becoming and change offer to architectural and urban design discourses? And second, how can historical styles be creatively repeated?

1.3 Research Aims

The primary aim of this dissertation is to question the conventional praxis of architecture and urban design formalisms, by aligning the disciplines of architecture and urban design with the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze. An interrogation of the theory, criticism, and practice of these disciplines occurs through the philosophical thought of Deleuze. This dissertation also aims to explore the ‘machinic’ mode of experimental design by which architectural and urban design

8- Peter Eisenman, “Processes of the Interstitial: Notes on Zaera-Polo's Idea of the Machinic,” El Croquis 83, Madrid (1997): 21-35.

4 practices can operate ‘difference,’ proposing a new transversal image of thought and grasping various events and connections.

1.4 Research Scope

Architects and urban designers classically use historicism, in their ‘static,’ ‘hierarchical,’ and ‘structural’ approach and conceptual design thinking, which produces architecture and urban design that are ‘fixed,’ and that deny the dynamic passage of time and cultural change. In contrast, many architects and urban designers who directly lean upon and count on Deleuze’s ontology of becoming and change, including and not limited to Peter Eisenman, Philippe Raham, and Greg

Lynn, use different techniques and concepts in their architectural and urban design practices to produce ‘difference’ and creative change, moving beyond the representational image of thought.

Techniques and concepts such as seriality, fold, diagrams, assemblages, affect, rhizomes, interstitial figural, machinic, geometry, and smooth and striated space have become part of their architectural and urban design thinking and practices.

Covering this wide range of theoretical concepts in this dissertation is slightly challenging.

To narrow it and fill the gap in the literature, this dissertation focuses on Eisenman’s critical practice. It does so by conceptually analyzing the revolutionary themes and strategies of Eisenman, contrary to postmodern historicism’s approach, aiming to demonstrate his folding theme and technique in the Rebstockpark project (RP), that differs from any previous geometry toward a self- referentiality status, and the conditions of ‘interstitiality’ in the Berlin Memorial to the Murdered

Jews of Europe (BMMJE). This dissertation differentiates the repetition of the neo-avant-garde as a process of self-organization that allows evolving connections and alterations to unfold as a virtual difference and pure movement of becoming, from the representational trajectory of postmodern experiments that has led to historicism in architecture.

The scope of this dissertation involves eliciting valuable ideas from Eisenman’s critical practice. This research will use these ideas as a metric for assessing the competition entries, proposing structures and spaces that are open to appropriation and change, while also acknowledging principles drawn from the history of the site, local modes, and possibilities for living. In Eisenman’s critical practice, the notion of form constitutes outside the conventional praxis of modern architecture, in which any character is already determined by codes, orders, and subjects, and consequently, form is informed with precise meaning by rules of coping and function.

According to Eisenman, the conventional praxis of architecture and urban design uses a strict contradiction between two dichotomies, such as ‘figure/ground,’ and ‘form/content,’ instead of

‘in-between’ relations in which the two dualistic oppositions are possibly combined and inserted within one another, creating ‘figure/ figure’ groundless or interstitial figural condition.

According to Deleuze and Guattari, the conceptual and affective assemblages are titled as a productive machine, when the impulsive fluid border of destratification flow is shattered and socialized. That productive machine more precisely echoes life and its numerous virtualities. The benefits of Eisenman’s type of architectural and urban design machines are that they relate noticeably with the concepts of assemblage and affect, thus cracking the conventional methods of predominant formalism and engaging the logic of temporality, the logic of subjectivity, and the logic of sensations.

1.5 Hypothesis

The hypothesis in this dissertation is that the shift to non-representational thinking and

Deleuzian approach has transformed architecture and urban design to critical practices, producing new arrangements, temporal engagements, pure relations, and sustained connections that

6 efficaciously encompass the materialist and intensive urban experimentations in cultural environments and historical sites.

1.6 Methodology

The key primary sources for this dissertation will be the original writings of Gilles Deleuze, as well as Deleuze and his collaborator Félix Guattari that translate into English. Furthermore, this dissertation intends to root analysis in the original texts written by Friedrich Nietzsche, and Henri

Bergson. In addition to the primary sources directly focus on the key concepts of this dissertation, there are numerous of secondary sources, such as Deleuzian scholars’ books and articles that interpret and analyze Deleuze, and Deleuze and Guattari original writings.

The original documentation of two of the urban redevelopment proposals submitted in

2008-2009 for the Al Kadhimiya historical site redevelopment project in Baghdad, Iraq will be primary architectural resources. Official websites and online articles of government and relevant organizations will also provide primary sources. To offer indication to response to the thesis questions, the data collection concentrated on the social, economic and environmental aspects of both proposals.

I will closely trace the concept of ‘place character’ in each scheme of both redevelopment practices of the firms from three phases: (1) “in which place character is experienced by residents,”9 (2) constructed in urban design discourse either creatively or by the impact of urban politics and marketing, and (3) “mobilized both to pursue difference and to protect against difference.”10 This dissertation will scrutinize both the winning plan and the chosen finalist plan to question whether or not the process of redevelopment has achieved what it seeks to accomplish

9- Kim Dovey, Becoming places: urbanism/architecture/identity/power (London: Routledge, 2010), 58. 10- Kim Dovey, Becoming places: urbanism/architecture/identity/power (London: Routledge, 2010), 76.

7 or the opposite by erasing its historical personality through the illusionary neo-traditional styles, which in fact, represent the past and lead to the closure of the processes of becoming.11 Through a comparative analysis, the objective is to discover applicable methods to enhance the urban matrix of Al Kadhimiya without demolishing the existing structures.

1.6.1 Historical Background

Kadhimiya neighborhood was built on the site of the Shunizi cemetery, which certainly pre-dated the foundation of Baghdad in 763AD, and it was named after renowned Imams buried on that site.”12 The Al Kadhimain shrine (TAKS) contains the tombs of the seventh Twelve Shi’ah Imam

Musa bin Ja'far Al Kadhim who died in 799 AD and the ninth Twelve Shi’ah Imam, his grandson,

Imam Mohammad Al-Jawad who died in 834 AD. Both are considered direct descendants of the

Prophet Mohammad.13 In Islam, this adds a sacred aspect to the site, for those Imams had their disciples carry on their legacies. The coming to being of this site followed two steps, consisting of building the shrine over the tombs of these venerated Imams and then building the mosque itself.

Al Yasin describes Al Kadhimiya as a town having a distinctive organic shape, with small buildings surrounding the mosque serving different functions, including housing people, offering different services needed by the dwellers as well as offering religious services. Of these beads of buildings, some are new, and others are defunct and soon to disappear. The buildings connect to

11- Ibid. 12- M.H. Al-Yasin, “Al-Mashhhad Al-Kazimi fi’Al-Asr Al-‘Abbasi,” Sumer 18, (1962):119-128. 13- Khalil J. Strika V., “The Islamic Architecture of Baghdad,” Instituto Universitario Orientale, Napoli, 1987, 3- 14.

8 one another with very tight streets, projecting the idealized image of what is known as the ‘Arab-

Islamic neighborhood.’ The shrine establishes the center of the township and the gradual growth of the historical site as a slow gathering of urban fabric created from the increase of combinations of micro buildings extending around the shrine to produce the unique dense urban site of the Al

Kadhimiya. “Most of its current form and structure dates back to the early decades of the 16th century when it was completely rebuilt.”14 The buildings that survive today stand on the old street lines and previous plots; therefore, they show the physical characteristics of massing and the typical plan of the earlier site.

The Al Kadhimiya historical site is a clear example of the shrine-sites that are known in the East, and particularly in Iraq; it was preceded by Najaf and Karbala historical sites and replicated some of their features. The urban fabric surrounds the shrine giving the inhabitants some intimacy to the area and thus attracting dwellers from Shiite Muslims. Accordingly, in the Al

Kadhimiya, the main pathway of wealth and life attraction which creates a living and growing environment is its religious function. In other words, it is its function which caused the existence of the site as well as identified the lifestyle at its very foundation and formation.

The shrine is the vital nucleus that attracts people through the ages; thousands and thousands of visitors of all stripes, from all over the world, visit the site daily. These rituals revive the local economy and improve the living conditions of the residents; some estimates put the number of daily visitors from five to ten thousand, rising to fifteen or twenty thousand on

Wednesdays and Saturdays. During the religious season, such as Ashoura, the number goes up to six million worshippers who roam the tiny streets of the site. Although the religious celebrations

14- John Warren, “Baghdad Two Case Studies of Conservation,” The Arab City: Its Characters and Islamic Cultural Heritage: proceedings of Symposium Held in Medina, Kingdom of Saudi an Arabia, 24-29 Rabi II, 1401 AH, 28 Feb.-5 Mar. 1981 AD., eds. Ismail Serageldin and Samir El- Sadek, with the assistance of Richard R. Herbert (Arlington, VA: I. Serageldin, 1982), 246.

9 may continue for few days, this always creates havoc as far as lodging, sanitation, and food services are concerned. The demand for services is huge and necessary for the district. The need for accommodation, public health, transportation, and sanitation services mandates the complete renovation of the area. Considering this high demand for services in Al Kadhimiya, there was a need to develop and commercialize the site. Consequently, some of the changes introduced in the historical site, such as straight and wide streets caused a defect in the urban fabric that was cohesive; thus, the features of the urban form have changed. During the 1970s, political demands dictated many municipal authorities in Iraq adopt a “policy of ‘freeing’ important historical religious buildings from their surroundings.”15 This proved to be detrimental to several historical religious structures. Their demolition represents an unrecoverable loss of the authentic Iraqi setting and urban environments, like the clearances surrounding the Al Kadhimain shrine.16

In 1980 the site went through an urban intervention that demolished its historical features.17

The shrine is isolated from its surroundings, and the old fabric is diluted. The new changes brought some urban problems and negatively affected the social aspects and the psychological comfort of the inhabitants.

The Iraqi government committed itself to safeguarding and developing the historical site through a number of studies. The most important study is by the mayor’s office of Bagdad, conducted in 2008-2009 whereby a request for proposals for the regeneration of the Al-Kadhimiya historical site and was won in a tight competition by the Dewan Architects & Engineers.18 The

15- Akram J. M. Al-Akkam, “Urban Heritage in Baghdad: Toward a Comprehensive Sustainable Framework,” Journal of Sustainable Development. 6 (2)2013: 39. 16- Ibid., 39. 17- John Warren, and Roy Worskett, “Conservation and Redevelopment of the Kadimiyeh Area in Baghdad,” in Adaptive Reuse: Integrating Traditional Areas into the Modern Urban Fabric, August 16-20, 1982, ed. Margaret Bentley Sevcenko (Cambridge, Mass.: Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard University and MIT Laboratory of Architecture and Planning, 1983), 32. 18- Hassaneen Murtada, “Expansion in Hadra Kadhimiya on the Urban Structure of the Surrounding Area,” University of Baghdad, Higher Institute for Urban and Regional Planning, high diploma, 2012, 43-70.

10 mayor’s vision was to combine the religious, commercial and local inhabitants’ interests in a design so that it is representative of the environment where people live. All the while, the mayor’s call for proposal emphasizes the uniqueness of the Al-Kadhimiya historical site but at the same time invokes the need to provide durable solutions to its ongoing urban challenges.

1.6.2 Formal Analysis

1.6.2.1 The Al-Kadhimiya Historical Site

The Al Kadhimiya historical site consists of four nearby residential complexes which are

Al Dabgh Kanah, Al Tell, Al Shiyoukh, and Al Qatana. Al Kadhimiya is considered one of the four axes of old Baghdad. The Al Kadhimiya characterizes one of the significant historical centers in the city of Baghdad, conserving its physical shape in the face of changes that occurred in the other parts of the city. It is a neighborhood that is round in shape, with a diameter of about ½ km., an area of 60 hectares, and a population of 600 persons per hectare. The heart of the site consists of the Al Kadhimain shrine, representing the nucleus where it populated and expanded over several of the site’s periods. Its plan is a large U-shaped open court which surrounds the inner building except on its northern side where the other Safawi mosque is located19 (it is now called the Al

Jawadain mosque). It can be said that it is the main factor that regulates the urban structure of the ancient site. The Al Kadhimiya neighborhood was built right up to the walls of its mosque: the mosque of the Al Kadhimain shrine. The tomb mosque of the Al Kadhimain shrine, which is about

40 x 50 meters, contains the inner holy sanctum, an essential rectangular tomb-room of about 11 x 21 meters which comprises the tombs of two respected Imams. Around the mosque of the Al

19- Ihsan Fethi, Urban Conservation in Iraq: The Case for Protecting the Cultural Heritage of Iraq with Special Reference to Baghdad Including a Comprehensive Inventory of its Areas and Buildings of Historic or Architectural Interest (Sheffield: University of Sheffield, Dept. of Town and Regional Planning, 1977), 114.

Kadhimain shrine circulates a riwaq (arcade) on all sides of the shrine and directly above are two impressively splendid and magnificent gilded domes of dual shell structure straight over the silvery-screened sanduqs (boxes). The gilded domes are pointed and rise about 28 meters in height and are raised on a 6 meter high circular drum.

“The domes rest on thick internal walls and triangular cross-ribbed pendentives. The surrounding inner riwaq (arcade) has flat-roofed outer colonnaded porticoes. The riwaq, which surrounds the tomb-room, consists of twenty domed bays which are about 4 by 8.5 meters with deep polygonal niches on either side. While the tomb-room is flanked on the outside by the two great domes and by four small minarets at the corners, the riwaq is conjoined by four impressive and lofty minarets at its corners. These stand about 40 meters high (the highest in Baghdad) and each contains one canopied balcony or verandah. The verandahs are 5 meters in diameter and assembled in three rows of well-pronounced muqarnas work. The riwaq is then surrounded on three sides by colonnaded porticos, while the fourth side is linked with the Safawi mosque. The most elaborate of these porticos is the southern one which faces Mecca.”20

Mecca is a city in Saudi Arabia as well as the birthplace of the Prophet Muhammad and the site of the Prophet’s first revelation of the Quran. Mecca is considered the holiest city for the

Islamic religion, and a pilgrimage to the city (Hajj) is mandatory for all able Muslims. Mecca is home to the Kaaba, regarded by most as Islam’s holiest site, and thus the direction of Muslim prayer.21 The vast open courtyard that surrounds the mosque of the Al Kadhimain shrine on all three sides is about 35 meters in width, and this courtyard is surrounded by a twelve-meter high brick wall with 10 portals. “The wall also contains some eighty iwans (rooms) used for various purposes. Each iwan consists of a pointed vault about 2 meters in depth while the room is about

2.5 by 3 meters.”22

20- Ibid., 114. 21- Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Mecca the Blessed, Medina the Radiant: The Holiest Cities of Islam, export edition (place of publication not identified: Tuttle Publishing, 1997). 22- Ihsan Fethi, Urban Conservation in Iraq: The Case for Protecting the Cultural Heritage of Iraq with Special Reference to Baghdad Including a Comprehensive Inventory of its Areas and Buildings of Historic or Architectural Interest (Sheffield: University of Sheffield, Dept. of Town and Regional Planning, 1977), 114.

The site is covered by two-story dwellings in addition to several small mosques, schools, shops, public baths, workshops, as well as old and modern hotels. The site houses have shanasheel

(wooden rooms in the upper floor extended to the street) giving its building a high sense of privacy, it also serves as honor and prevents the entry of sunlight, in addition to providing shade for pedestrians walking in the streets. The marketplaces are the same as in other Islamic cities or other shrine-sites; they are distinctive for their roofed corridors. The courtyard of the shrine is the only widely open space in the site; it accommodates the religious activities and boosts the social and cultural activities of the residents. The narrow alleys are open into small open spaces that allow the light to penetrate the dark areas of the alleys and improve visibility. These open spaces are integral parts of the alleys and help in circulation of air that cools down the hot weather.

Furthermore, the Al Kadhimiya historical site is distinctively known for its narrow and twisted streets with dead ends and the heights of its buildings that do not exceed two floors. The shrine becomes the basis for the organization of the urban form of the historical site, which characterizes the heart of the site and the focal point of its religious and civic activities; just like the grand mosque in other Islamic and Arabian cities.

1.6.2.2 The Dewan Architecture and Engineer Firm Proposal

In Dewan’s proposal, the basic idea is that the holy shrine is the heart of the site and its nucleus, forming the basis for its activity and growth. The winning proposal depicted the shrine in the center, circled by religious facilities, historic houses, and marketed within a radius of half a kilometer. The focus of the proposed plan was to meet the needs of the huge number of the shrine visitors during the religious events and to preserve the historical urban fabric around the shrine, as well as the renewal of its urban areas. The aim was to detect the impact of changes in the spatial structure of the site that occurred due to changes in demand for services. In Dewan’s proposal, the

13 shrine is surrounded by three various and successive rings of the urban fabric, separating the Haram

(empty arena surrounding the shrine) from the outside to form a whole unit. As a result, the shrine and the urban fabric rings, together, composed an integrated component.

The three circles surrounded the shrine, and their heights elevated gradually toward the outside area. The first circle is composed of what is left from the historic urban fabric as well as reconstruction and maintenance of the distinctive historical buildings that include houses and stores; so that they could be used for religious, social, cultural, and commercial activities. The renovation and the reconstruction of the empty or demolished areas, between the established heritage buildings, would be conducted in a compatible pattern to these buildings. The conservation and reconstruction processes composed a model to revive the ancient neighborhood of the Al Kadhimiya historical site with inner courtyards and shanasheel, forming more pedestrian- friendly spaces, and preventing reliance on automobiles.

The second circle encompassed the residential area with limited architectural homogeneity feature. The pattern of its buildings simulated some elements of the historic buildings adjacent to them, without exact repetition. Also, contained a number of simple craft and industrial activities, along with traffic passages and parking lots. The heights of the buildings are low, three floors at most. In this proposal, urban development allowed people from different family types and income levels to afford a home in the area.

The third circle encompassed a group of residential buildings and new hotel buildings; aligning the main roads nearby the Al Kadhimiya historical site, and forming a ring of six-floor buildings around it, utilizing the resources that existing site provides and maintaining the importance of public and private investments.

Four main axes penetrated the three rings, surrounded the religious center; and linked the

Al Kadhimiya site to the other parts of the city of Baghdad. They were designed as wide pedestrians’ roads, and have stores, designated markets, restaurants, exhibits, and hotels to serve the visitors and the residents. Also, the roads encompassed craft shops infiltrated by rest areas.

Other supplementary buildings such as a library, multi-purpose hall, and host building were added to the historical site in which their designs combined and balanced between the traditional Islamic styles and the contemporary architecture through a comprehensive urban development within potential growth principles.

1.6.2.3 The Assemblage Architects Firm Proposal

The scope of Assemblage’s proposal included creating a new spatial pattern around the shrine. The spatial pattern would contribute remarkably to the uniqueness of the site, and it would be protected and encircled by a building wall that contained vital services to the visitors. The building wall is named the Sacred Wall. It formed a new circular shape around the shrine and functioned to improve the spatial configuration and the urban dynamics of the space, reflecting and filtering the everyday access to the shrine. The Sacred Wall designed to distinguish the space of the sacred from daily life, making the physical connection that conveyed transparency to where the shrine space finished and the urban fabric started. The Sacred Wall also designed to embed mixable services and facilities such as local administration, security check-points, cloak-rooms, maintenance/storage areas, toilets, washing, and the seven main portal gates that link the shrine’s inner gates to essential streets and axes. Furthermore, Assemblage’s proposal offered a new western axis to the dominant shrine area, connected the latter with a relocated railway station and a large new pedestrian boulevard. Assemblage’s proposal offered an injection strategy to provide new services and infrastructure to the local community of the Al Kadhimiya historical site. This

15 injection strategy enriched the urban fabric in the existing residential districts with a circular

“necklace” of small courtyards as nodes, providing important educational and economic services such as primary schools, small local businesses, and small shops and cafes. The urban development is continued by the historic encirclement of the shrine with this an outer circle of smaller squares as a necklace of courtyards that went deeper into existing residential areas, expanding the services for the visitors and the residents. In Assemblage’s proposal, Al Kadhimiya site is considered as a living resident community, not just a religious destination. As a local neighborhood, social patterns are made for families such as open shaded civic spaces, meeting places, greenery facilities, and landmarks.

Regarding urban conservation, many historic buildings, markets, distinctive streets, and character districts with their elements and features are protected and maintained. As infrastructure nodes, the necklace of courtyards radiated new water, power, and sewerage supplies line more rooted into the existing residential districts. The necklace of courtyards is linked by a ring of revitalized streets and would be noticed when crossed or followed. It is also intersected by radial paths leading from the shrine to the periphery. The proposed necklace of courtyards would be placed instead of used open space with a minimum demolition of existing structures.

The design process in this proposal formed a new collection of buildings organized on a lifted plane as a new quarter on the vast western plot of empty land nearby the new western axis, equipping new and main facilities and logistical services, and providing an automobile-free environment on the ground level. Moreover, a new mosque and other supplementary buildings such as a library, religious school, and religious/general administration buildings were added to the area. The new mosque, as a religious landmark, is positioned to match the shrine orientation and has a large shaded courtyard and colonnades. It situated in new street axis towards the south-

16 west. The library and the religious school buildings shared the same ornamental elevation as a pair in one screen. The urban movement through this new quarter is rich with spatial complexity and natural daylighting.

1.6.3 Comparative Analysis

This dissertation will compare and contrast two proposals to redevelop the Al-Kadhimiya historical site and will analyze two different design strategies that architects and urban designers used to incorporate history in these two renewal projects. The two proposals include the winning proposal by the Dewan Architecture and Engineer Firm and one of the top-ten finalist projects by

Assemblage Architects Firm (AAF). The fundamental goal is not to disprove or approve the inert image of history that is recommended by Dewan’s proposal, but rather to examine the mode in which this representational image of history converts to “active and energetic materialities in movement.”23

Drawing from the Deleuzian ontology of becoming and change, architectural design

“elements such as columns, walls, and beams” 24 would be utilized unpredictably and powerfully, precisely “as pure indexical integers.”25 However, the template of representational thinking in urban regeneration projects, specifically in the preservation of historical sites, aims to protect a static image of what constitutes the ‘past’ and in turn, what ‘traditional architecture’ is by imitating the historical elements and reprocessing the traditional substances. This tendency is criticized as being “Disneyfied” and an oversimplification of history and the passage of time.

23- Manuel DeLanda, “Material Complexity,” in Digital Tectonics, edited by Neil Leach, David Turnbull and Chris Williams (London: Wiley-Academy, 2004),14-21. 24- Alejandro Zaera-Polo, “A Conversation with Peter Eisenman,” EI Croquis 83 (1997a):8. 25- Ibid., 8.

The Dewan proposal’s major strength is the attempt to make the Al Kadhimiya site an attractive and thriving regional and international center in the field of religious and commercial tourism and to involve the private sector in completing the project.26

Moreover, the comparative analysis indicates that the Dewan’s proposal has more strengths in its design. The proposed plan attempted to develop the existing residential areas and their services. Furthermore, the project made adequate preparations for mixed land uses and pedestrian movement zones. Dewan’s proposal aimed to expand the space surrounding the shrine in a coherent with the historic areas and to mix the religious functions and occasions within a comprehensive urban plan. Besides, the empty space around the shrine has been used to build service buildings, achieving the complementation in the urban fabric. The pedestrian movement zones were designed to improve the urban areas and the passageways. These zones were prepared with green spaces, providing shaded corridors by a circular canopy of cloth on a folding metal frame supported by a central rod, used as protection against sun or sometimes rain. Palm trees are planted in the movement axes.

In Dewan’s proposal, the Al Kadhimiya historical site was linked with the public transportation network of the city of Baghdad. The proposal provided multiple transportation options such as metro transport, river transport, and rail, attaining well-organized and urban operative system of transportation in the Al Kadhimiya historical site.

The project has adopted an economic factor, generating a comprehensive master plan that integrated spatial and economic realms in the same design. The project has expanded a very vast rehabilitated public space for religious and cultural tourism. Both are instruments for economic

26- The Municipality of Baghdad (Amant Al- Assima), The Development of the Al Kadhimiya district (Development Administration – Heritage Section. Baghdad, Iraq, 2008).

18 rationality that attains economic growth by attracting more visitors from outside the local community.

Escaping the static image of Baghdadi house style, the Assemblage Architects Firm did not use history in a conservative or nostalgic mode. As an alternative, the Assemblage Architects

Firm attached history to an innovative mode, mixing the contemporary with the old. The preservation practice in the Assemblage Architects Firm’s entry emphasized the collective, commercial, and cultural relationships of the individuals who live in this historical site. The

Assemblage Architects Firm’s entry developed the qualities of the historical paths, streets, and houses in addition to the vitality of its retail areas, giving the residents the sense of place. The existing adjacent constructions opposed with the monument, which required more wide space for safety in addition to more facility offices.

In this finalist entry, the preservation of the architectural context as a set of successive units would ensure enhancing the creationist version of socio-spatial materialization, regardless of how the new formal term adheres to the former format. Thus it gives high flexibility in dealing and interacting with these formal terms, under the condition that it forms one conceptual assemblage.

Nonetheless, it also seeks to radicalize the conception of everyday life and urbanism to comprise social life, environmental life, and economic life. “The Deleuzian concept shown in this alternative is the freeing of thought from that which captures or captivates it, and to free thought from the image, indeed to free thought from representation, from the transcendental illusions of representation, to give it back its capacity to effect transformation or metamorphosis, to make thinking itself a little bomb or scattergun.”27

27- Elizabeth Grosz, Architecture from the outside - essays on virtual and real space (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2001), 62-63.

1.6.4 Conceptual Analysis

Deleuze proposes an ontology of becoming and change – originated from the creative and contingent thinking of pure difference (thinking without representational information, such as a previous image or sign). This dissertation of being is a reason to think of ‘difference in itself’– “in terms of how we differentiate in ourselves in our inevitable and perpetual process of transformation, rather than the difference between things, and being different from each other.”28

The logic of representation subjugates difference to identity, a practice that Deleuze finds retrograde in terms of the creative human mind. Instead of thinking about what differs, minds are attached to what is represented and thus lack the ingenuity to innovate by negating the true inherent difference. As Dovey stated, “While representations and spatial practice are integrated in the field of everyday life, they are seriously divided in architectural/urban practice and criticism where avant-garde, form-makers and spatial analysts generally operate in quite separate fields.”29 Minor architecture, as discussed by Jill Stoner, seeks to cause a rupture in structures of domination and oppression. Minor architects are activist architects that excavate the underground of our system.

By attempting to crack these repressive traditions, which is a political action at the core of Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophy, social-design activism will challenge any doxa, any taken-for-granted distributions of power.

These emerging tendencies experiment with intensities and heterogeneous architecture in an attempt to find more creative forms of opportunistic connections for our future, “implying a break with static, fixed, closed and dangerously essentialist notions of place, but preserves a provisional ontology of place-as-becoming: there is always, already and only becoming-in-the-

28- Michael Buser, “Thinking through non-representational and affective atmospheres in planning theory and practice,” Planning Theory, 13 (3)2014: 227-243. 29- Kim Dovey, Becoming places: urbanism/architecture/identity/power (London: Routledge, 2010), 46.

20 world.”30 Similar to tightrope walkers, these architects are progressing with agile but careful movements on the powerful lines that surround and connect the globe; the suggested critical strategy is to resist the political lines of force that are inherent in major architecture towards lines of flight, towards a minor architecture.31 “Where everyday urbanism attends to the interaction between mundane places and the urban fabric, ‘machinic urbanism’ denies the fundamental separation between the everyday life of the city and the city as a whole in an effort to tangibly active multiple urban scales, conditions, and forms.”32

1.7 Literature Review

This dissertation will focus on four main points that include 1) the notions of ‘difference,’

‘repetition,’ ‘empiricism,’ and ‘subjectivity,’ in Deleuze’s ontology of becoming and change 2)

‘place character’ and ‘Disneyfication’ 3) ‘nomadic history,’ ‘machinic urbanism,’ impersonality, and ‘effects’ and 4) Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts of ‘assemblage’ and ‘affect.’ Many scholars such as Deleuze, Guattari, Bergson, K. Michael Hayes, Fredric Jameson, Aldo Rossi, Christian

Norberg-Schulz, Peter Eisenman, Kim Dovey, and Simone Brott, write about these concepts and

I will examine the similarities and differences in their arguments in order to understand the trajectory of thought as well as to develop my definitions and uses of these concepts.

The leading research for this literature review focuses on the Deleuzian theory of the representational image of thought and his philosophy of difference. The theory of difference developed by Deleuze defies the traditional theory of representation, whereby we consider each object (re)presenting something is subordinated to a category or a grouping considered as the

30- Kim Dovey, Becoming places: urbanism/architecture/identity/power (London: Routledge, 2010), 6. 31- Jill Stoner, Toward a minor architecture (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012). 32- Adrian Parr, Hijacking Sustainability (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2009), 142.

21 original. Seen as such, difference is subordinated to some accepted concept considered as the standard everything else is measured to indefinitely. To think in terms of ‘difference-in-itself’ means to ignore the concept itself per se and reflect on its production. In Deleuze’s argument,

“representation” is the end result of giving more importance to “identity.” He views this as a distortion of the truth which does not allow other truths to manifest themselves. This

“representation” can be qualified as a “misrepresentation.” To counter the proponents of

“representation,” Deleuze coined a new term, “internal difference,” which is free of the four illusionary concepts of “representation,” namely: identity, resemblance, analogy, and opposition.

This literature review also provides a new image of thought to comprehend the formation of an ethical succession of events in which architectural and urban design practices escape the representational image functionary. It does so by merging the ideas and philosophies of impersonality and effects of Deleuze (in his book Empiricism and Subjectivity), with that of

Simone Brott (an Australian architect), as the beginning for a diagramming analysis of the empirical subjectivity that functions as a set of effects to reframe the architectural and urban design practices.

The second essential concept is the idea of ‘place identity’ and ‘Disneyfication.’ The thesis will discuss these concepts through its analysis of the winning proposal by the Dewan Architects

& Engineers Firm. ‘Disneyfication’ is criticized for “creating uniformity, privatization, and commodification of public space as well as for its exclusionary nature and its mimicry of the authentic qualities.”33 As reflected in architecture and urban design, a number of post-structuralist critiques have developed similar concepts, along with ‘sense of place,’ ‘spirit of place,’

‘authenticity,’ and ‘home,’ to capture the passing aspirations of people in the form of identity,

33- Helen Morgan Parmett, “Media as a spatial practice: Treme and the production of the media neighborhood,” Continuum 28 (3)2014: 286-299.

22 repressing difference through the imposition of some ideologies on a given culture.34 Kim Dovey argues that when it comes to how people perceive a given space within a structure, the ‘identity,’

‘character’ or ‘sense of place’ are the most evolving concepts that come to mind.35 Thus, this interpretation of Dovey’s standpoint is compatible with Deleuze’s notion of representation. “Truly sustainable change will address more than just the material, spatial realities of slums: design that reworks only buildings, sidewalks, and infrastructure will never be truly sustainable because it fails to address the ideological deﬁnitions of people living within that space.”36

The main reason for selecting Dewan Architects & Engineers Firm was their “keenness,” and “willingness” to preserve the historical area. Despite being approved by the government and

Iraqi architecture and urban design academics and the initiation of its implementation in 2014,37 the project comes under scrutiny in this thesis, which debates that its renewed elements and principles conflict with the heritage of the old site. The thesis will argue that the project proposed by Dewan Architects & Engineers, due to its enormous size and unsuitable nature, will be a design of an unreal or artificial site. The method of copying the same site by repeating its former elements and principles is inadvisable for the redevelopment of an urban historical project because it leads to the potential ‘Disneyfication’ of historical identity.38 Thus, this thesis argues that returning to tradition is bottled up in a system that always calls for the same to be reproduced and thus it becomes a dogma, an imposed will of few on the society which does not encourage rejuvenation and innovation.

34- Kim Dovey, Framing places: mediating power in built form (London: Routledge, 2008). 35- Kim Dovey, Becoming places: urbanism/architecture/identity/power (London: Routledge, 2010), 94. 36- Aimee Wilson, Book Review: Adrian Parr (2009) Hijacking Sustainability: Capitalism, Militarism, and the Struggle for Collective Life. Symploke, Volume 18, Numbers 1-2, (2010): 387-389. 37- “The Government Allocates 200 Billion Iraqi Dinars for the Expansion Project of the Kazimain Shrine.” ALMADA PRESS. October 31, 2014, accessed on April 25, 2015. http://www.almadapress.com/ar/NewsDetails.aspx?NewsID=38911. 38- Alan Bryman, The Disneyization of Society (London: Sage, 2004).

The third critical element to this analysis revolves around the concepts and definitions of

‘nomadic history’ and what Parr calls ‘machinic urbanism.’ This dissertation is a critical analysis of a transitional and productive return of history, ‘a nomadic history.’ The term ‘nomadic history’ is coined by the Deleuze scholar Craig Lundy, which is a conception that has been formulated by

Deleuze’s logic of creation. ‘Nomadic history’ attempts to cause a rupture in structures of domination and oppression to provide “wandering distributions” that move back and forth between old and new anarchic relations.

‘Machinic urbanism’ engages actively with the unusual style of everyday life and urbanism, especially the impression of appearing to “not only what is present in the banality of everyday life, but also on what is absent yet might be there.”39 By analyzing the proposal of the

Assemblage Architects Firm, it will be shown that these alternate possibilities have potential.

“Inspired by the morphology and poetics of the Baghdadi house, the Assemblage Architects Firm’s design successfully resolves a complex matrix of religious, infrastructure, and conservation demands.”40

“The machinic refers to the pattern of non-discursive practices organizing bodies, and is a socio-technological machine.”41 Assemblage Firm’s courtyard design seeks to infuse new services and infrastructure to the residents of the Al Kadhimiya site, highlighting and enhancing urban life.

The goal of enhancing the active public urban spaces is to facilitate the process of redevelopment over time, including different urban actors as well as the residents. The processes of resistance have been analyzed here following Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of assemblage and affect.

39- John Chase, Margaret Crawford, and John Kaliski, Everyday urbanism: featuring John Chase (New York, N.Y.: Monacelli Press, 1999), 32. 40- Assemblage Architecture + Urbanism Frim. Holy City Masterplan. http://assemblage.co/0905_07.html, accessed on 01 Jan 2015. 41- Adrian Parr, Hijacking Sustainability (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2009), 141.

These concepts present the fourth element in this research. They will be explored as practices of deterritorialization in revolutionary spaces in opposition to the dominant structures. “Becoming is concerned with the not-yet, with ensuring that something remains for the people-to-come.” 42

Furthermore, there will be additional research on the architectural and urban design practices in the Middle East and Arab countries. Authors to be included are Yasser Elsheshtawy,

Khaled Asfour, and Waleed Alsayyad. Most of them “point to the theme of the ‘struggle,’ as Arab cities have traditional centers desiring to move away from the restrictions of the end of tradition to embrace modernity, and they are viewed as both recipients of modernity and at the same time a focal point for Arabic-Islamic identity.”43

1.8 Theoretical Framework and Intellectual Apparatus

Most of the chapters of this dissertation have a solid comprehension, not only of the key theoretical texts by Deleuze, Guattari, Nietzsche, and Bergson but also of other theorists and critics who offer sympathetic perspectives on an architecture and urban design. That is "re-orienting," that provokes thematic connections beyond formalist gestures, and that collaborates with (rather than dictates to) its users and inhabitants. This dissertation gives a clear sense of what the historiographical traditions are with respect to the Al Kadhimiya historical site. Many of the theoretical principles are derived from primary sources.

42- Jean Hillier, Book Review: Adrian Parr (2009) Hijacking Sustainability (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), Deleuze Studies, Volume 4, Issue 1, (2010):138-145. 43- Yasser Elsheshtawy, The evolving Arab city: tradition, modernity and urban development (London: Routledge, 2008).

1.8.1 Helen Morgan Parmett’s Notion of ‘Disneyfication’

The repetition of the historical styles and the need to protect the ‘tradition’ of the Al

Kadhimiya site caused some critics to label the winning proposal a “Disneyland,’ insinuating that it embodies socially engineered identities rather than a ‘real’ urban character.44 This repetition begins to articulate a specific “norm” as a form of hegemonic practice. For the winning proposal,

‘Disneyfication’ can be described as the transformation of the Al Kadhimiya site into a carefully controlled and safe environment with homogenized qualities that divest the site of its unique character, repackaging and reproducing the past in a standardized style. Further, authenticity is often a term debated on unjustified, moralistic and circular arguments. “The fragility of the term

‘authenticity’ is exposed when one considers how it ‘claims’ its authenticity against the supposed absence of authenticity elsewhere.”45 This research intends to demonstrate that the winning redevelopment project for the Al Kadhimiya site may indeed lead to a potential ‘Disneyfication’ of the historical site. To develop my arguments, I rely on Helen Morgan Parmett’s definition of

‘Disneyfication,’ in which she primarily equates it to consumerism, for the goal is to create “an optimal space for the marketing and consumption of consumer goods and branded experiences.”46

This definition fails to win the unanimous support of theorists, according to Morgan. Moreover, I parallel Parmett’s definition of Disneyfication to Alan Bryman’s explanation of the term:

“Disneyfication is typically associated with a statement about the cultural products.” 47 This is to say that “to Disneyfy” is to translate or change an object into something shallow and even

44- Kim Dovey, Becoming places: urbanism/architecture/identity/power (London: Routledge, 2010). 45- Neil Leach, “Less aesthetics, more ethics,” Architecture and its Ethical Dilemmas edited by Nicholas Ray (London and New York: Taylor & Francis Inc., 2005), 140. 46- Helen Morgan Parmett, “Disneyomatics: Media, Branding, and Urban Space in Post-Katrina New Orleans,” Mediascape (winter, 2012). http://www.tft.ucla.edu/mediascape/Winter2012_Disneyomatics.html, accessed on February 20, 2015. 47- Alan Bryman, The Disneyization of Society (London: Sage, 2004), 5.

26 oversimplified. Thus, it can be purported that the idea of ‘authenticity’ is merely a tactic to fulfill specific agendas.

In contrast, Adrian Parr advocates a form of ‘machinic urbanism’ in which architects and urban designers would “experiment with the material movements of life in all its variation.”48 This dissertation explores another entry submitted to an international-wide competition for the redevelopment of the Al Kadhimiya historical site. It will compare the traditionally conventional winning proposal by the Dewan Architects & Engineers Firm to another proposal by the

Assemblage Architects Firm. It may be thought that the latter firm does not establish as much of imagistic use of history as the winning one, but I will argue unlike the winning entry, demonstrates a more creative and less harmful approach towards the Al Kadhimiya historical site. In the first proposal by Dewan Architects & Engineers Firm, it will be argued that the creation of a

‘Disneyfied’ historical identity has become an important marketing device that guides the developers’ design strategy whose interests are predominantly driven by turning a quick profit. In contrast, it will be shown that the proposal by Assemblage Architects Firm applies a creative alternative: a ‘machinic urbanism’ detached from this predetermined method. These variables can impact people’s social, political and economic lives.

1.8.2 Gilles Deleuze’s Notion of ‘Difference in itself’

Gilles Deleuze challenges the assumed capture within a specific perspective by using

German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s conception of the ‘eternal return.’ For Nietzsche, the eternal return is an ontological concept in which the repetition is produced via the affirmation of difference. Architecturally, the repetition in postmodern historicism is a mode of imitation. It represents factitious or artificial copies of timeless precedents, establishing a homogenous

48- Adrian Parr, Hijacking Sustainability (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2009), 141.

27 architecture as a ‘false movement of the abstract’49 in which the meaning is stabilized, the work is idealized, and postulating the creation of difference based on prior resemblances, icons, and oppositions. Nietzsche’s version of repetition explicitly refers to the hybrid products (contents) of the neo-avant-garde, in which the architect-critics have desire and ‘will to form’ a heterogeneous architecture based on wholly formal-material emergences and effects that are freed from any authorial intervention, while not representing the real or repeatedly producing a plane of identification. Human classification fails to attain identity in its whole: ‘difference in itself.’

Although pure difference cannot be identified and is unattainable in the present, it underlies all identities and enables us to explain their coming to being. Furthermore, Olkowski argues, “the system of representation, whether in the realm of philosophy, psychology, social and political theory, ethics, or aesthetics, operates by establishing a fixed standard as the norm or model.”50 In her development, Olkowski holds the position that the system of representation is put to question by Deleuze’s ‘logic of difference.’

1.9 Findings and Discussion

By problematizing that system of representation, which functions as a norm or model, meaning can be created for the minorities; “hierarchically organized time and space”51 can be dismantled and turned toward fluid processes called ontology of becoming and change.52

According to the Deleuzian theory of Difference and Repetition, the practice of thinking is random and may direct to a zone not imagined at the beginning. That means the thought process cannot be described as stable; instead, it can seriously affect people’s social, economic and environmental

49- Dorothea Olkowski, Gilles Deleuze and the ruin of representation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999). 50- Ibid. 51- Ibid, 2. 52- Ibid, 14.

28 lives. Some of Deleuze’s famous themes, which are parts of his theory of Difference and

Repetition, are the ideas of repetition, copies, original, and the ideal and its reproductions.53

Deleuze accordingly disapproves this ‘dogmatic image of thought’ because of its association to the system of representation.54 Deleuze suggests that we do not know what the future holds for us, and ethically this is a good case to make. Regarding architecture and urban design, uncertainty might lead the thinking process to entirely different particularities.

1.10 Organization of the Dissertation

The Organization of this dissertation is as follows:

Chapter One

The first chapter exposes the research framework and offers an introduction to the overall structures of this dissertation. It consists of a description of the dissertation thesis statement, aims, questions, and scope. It also contains a setting of the urban scene with historical background, formal analysis, and a brief history of the issue. The first chapter also presents the theoretical and methodological approaches, intellectual apparatus, comparative and conceptual analyses of two different design strategies and proposals for the redevelopment of the Al Kadhimiya historical site.

Chapter Two

The second chapter compares the literature review that is directly relevant to the key concepts of this dissertation. It reviews the relevant Deleuzian literature in collection of multi- disciplinary texts and contemporary academic research related to the disciplines of architecture and urban design as an orientation in which cultural artifacts would have an engagement mode with non-traditional events /paths /energies/ materials that flow to cast history in prolific relations

53- Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 128. 54- Daniela Voss, Conditions of thought Deleuze and transcendental ideas (Edinburgh University Press, 2013), 13.

29 with the present, creating a different appreciation of the past. Theoretical framework and intellectual apparatus resulted from this second chapter will constitute the groundwork for this thesis and will be used as a guide to analyze the two proposals. The central theoretical thought will come from Deleuze’s conceptualization of difference, and his reading of Nietzschean ‘eternal return,’together with Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts of assemblage and affect.

Chapter Three

The third chapter presents and extends on the dissertation theoretical framework and qualitative methodology. The methodology chapter introduces the data that was collected from the two proposals and data analysis procedures that will be included in findings and discussion chapters. It also contains a description of the location where the urban issue exists and why it exists. This chapter will present a comparative analysis of the two different design strategies. The analysis of these two proposals will be examined through theoretical texts to develop a poststructuralist analytical framework. Focusing on ‘nomadic history,’ and ‘machinic urbanism’ in comparison to ‘place identity’ and ‘Disneyfication,’ this chapter will survey various architectural and urban design theories, mechanisms, and inspirations in which architects and urban designers apply them to practice, exploring the intersections between the theories of the

Gilles Deleuze and the subjects of architecture and urban design. Moreover, a theoretical argument, evolving from a global range of literature, including Middle Eastern argument, will be examined along with Deleuze’s theory of Difference and Repetition as a critical groundwork for multiple responses and opportunities to expand the image of history beyond the traditional notions conveyed by architectural historians as tracing methodology.

Chapter Four

The fourth chapter remarks on the findings, reporting what the data analysis exposed. Henri

Bergson’s philosophy of time, used by Deleuze when he developed his theory of Difference and

Repetition will be adopted as a poststructuralist analytical framework to critically analyze the two proposals. It will first outline the history of the site and its developments to examine and compare the architectural and urban design practices in the Al Kadhimiya historical site in the past and present. It contains an extended description of the urban context, including the morphological stages for the Al Kadhimiya site with the historical background of the planning and urban studies

(approaches to the issue). This chapter provides new understanding of memory, relating architectural and urban design thinking to the ‘machinic’ mode of experimental design and preservation in which architectural and urban design practices can produce difference, affect, and assemblage.

Chapter Five

For further discussion, the fifth chapter offers a conceptual analysis and interpretation of published literature. It explores Eisenman’s ideas of history, memory, and monument with the complexity theory and poststructuralist theory. This chapter scrutinizes the interstitial spaces in

Eisenman’s critical practice through their temporary arrangement and flows in urban zones as a set of conceptual and affective assemblages associated with social localities in cultural productions. The flows of complex urban lines and singularities in Eisenman’s critical practice undermine the traditional oppositions, challenge homogeneous architecture, and revise the entire concept of modernist form.

Chapter Six

Lastly, the conclusion is the sixth chapter and gives a summary of the main points of this dissertation, implications for the potentials, contribution, and further work. It will expand the research on ‘nomadism’ in many ways for future academic agenda. By focusing primarily on the reconfiguration of historical materiality in the realm of contemporary design, and the process of difference and differentiation in architectural design, this chapter will explore the possibility of creating architectural image regarding Deleuze’s Spinozism frame of ethical-aesthetic.

CHAPTER TWO Literature Review

2.1 The Time of Architecture: Deleuze’s Reading of Nietzschean Eternal Return

In his book Difference and Repetition, the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze distinguishes between two theories of repetition, one associated with the ‘Platonic’ theory and the other with the

Same, while repetition in the ‘Nietzschean’ theory, via the criterion of authenticity, is aligned with the virtual rather than real, producing simulacra or phantasms as a repetition of heterogeneity. It is argued in this chapter that the distinction that Deleuze forms between modes of repetition has a vital role in his innovative approaches to the Nietzschean’s notion of ‘eternal return’ as a differential ontology, offering numerous insights into work on issues of homogeneity and heterogeneity in architecture. This chapter compares the literature review that is directly relevant to the fundamental concepts of this dissertation.

The purpose of this comparison is to explore the possibility of distinguishing the repetition of the neo-avant-garde as a process of self-generation, or as a ‘simulacra of the electronic paradigm,’1 which allows emergent connections and transformations to unfold as a virtual difference and pure movement of becoming from the representational thinking of postmodern experiment that has led to historicism in architecture. It does so by conceptually analyzing the transformational strategies of architect and theoretician Peter Eisenman in direct contrast to that of postmodern historicism, focusing on Eisenman architectural folding techniques in the Rebstock

1- Peter Eisenman, “Folding in Time: The Singularity of Rebstock,” in Written into the Void: Selected Writings 1990- 2004 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 32.

33 project, Frankfurt, Germany (Figure 2.1), that diverge from any prior geometry toward a self- referentiality status. It will compare and contrast representational architectural and urban design thinking with a notion of architectures of becoming, using Deleuze’s theory of Difference and

Repetition that offers a new intellectual framework for experimental design, specifically it will use

Deleuze’s thinking on ‘radical difference.’ The leading exploration for this literature review relies on the Deleuzian concept of the representational image of thought and his philosophy of difference that offers a new intellectual framework for architectural and urban design practices.

Figure 2.1: Eisenman Architects (EA), Rebstockpark Concept Diagram, 1991-1992. Source: http://www.eisenmanarchitects.com/rebstockpark.html#images.

2.2 Deleuze’s Philosophy in Difference and Repetition

Difference and Repetition is a comprehensive text in which Deleuze explains, develops, and keeps track of two ideas: pure difference and complex repetition. Ever since its publication in

1968, it has been valued as a classic book in the realm of contemporary philosophy and the masterpiece of Deleuze’s works. In the introduction, Deleuze claims that “repetition is not generality.”2 Repetition is not a particular body of the same entities resembling one another in a relevant way or applicable (subjected) to a particular law, reoccurring over and over again. Instead, repetition is the “historical condition under which something new is actually produced.”3

Repetition is comprehended in the context of radical difference, as an innovative process that produces entirely new variation and new differences in and through each recurrence. Often considered a philosopher of radical difference, Deleuze’s work emphasizes how critical

‘difference’ is in his research, placing repetition outside the domain of generality, identity, and law.

Along these lines, “repetition is a more powerful and less tiring stylistic procedure than antithesis, and moreover, better suited to renew a subject,”4 allowing new experiences to emerge.

Following Deleuze, repetition can be read in terms of experimentation, variation, and discovery; it is a creative repetition since it emerges from the multiple planes (sheets) of memory instead of out of the imitation or representation of the habitual mode of living that produces a complete reformation of repetition. To repeat: “We are not, of course, doing history: we are not saying that people invent this regime of signs, only that at a given moment a people effectuates the assemblage

2- Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 1. 3- Ibid., 90. 4- Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 308.

35 that assures the relative dominance of that regime under certain historical conditions.”5 To repeat is to make a change; to reject remaining principally the same; to renew not to represent; to reveal the revisionary force of difference; to affirm the new in the face of clichés. To repeat the biases of something is to begin again, like life itself begins accurately with the untimely performance of a dynamic act of repetition, leading to mutation or ‘becoming.’

“To reach a repetition which saves, or which changes life, beyond good and evil, would it not be necessary to break with the order of impulses, to undo the cycles of time, reach an element which would be like a true ‘desire,’ or like a choice constantly beginning again.”6

Deleuze scholar Adrian Parr poses two questions regarding the concept of repetition in Deleuze’s work. The questions that Parr raises are difficult to answer in a direct way without intellectual analysis that would comprise a wide variety of Deleuze’s notions, such as ‘becoming,’

‘differentiation,’ ‘eternal return,’ and ‘deterritorialization.’ Deleuze’s claim that repetition is eternally produced to affirm difference and to make a radical disruption, not to reiterate the same, is the first analysis of the first question: “how is repetition produced?”7 Repetition is the ungrounded moment that falls out of the authority of representational schema, by which every reproduction is read as the replication or copy of some original scene. In fact, Deleuze undermines the Platonic method for repeating with the purpose of producing false copies.

In Difference and Repetition, Deleuze focuses on the issue of the Platonic model of repetition as a model of representation; he argues that the Platonic model of repetition lacks the

5- Gilles Deleuze, and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis, Minnesota University Press, 1987), 121. 6- Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 1: The Movement-Image, trans. H. Tomlinson and B. Habberjam (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986), 133. 7- Adrian Parr, “Repetition,” The Deleuze Dictionary, Revised Edition, ed. Adrian Parr (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), 225.

36 ability to conceive difference in itself, raising Nietzsche’s motto “overthrow of Platonism.”8 Plato contends that identity has an upper hand over difference. Plato does not hesitate to undermine difference by tying up identity with thought, knowledge, intellect, and being. Furthermore, Plato reduces difference to subordination by relating it with identity, opposition, resemblance or analogy as phantom and with reduced-existence. Repetition has been subordinated to designed representation, for it is “grasped only by means of recognition, distribution, reproduction or resemblance.”9 For Deleuze, the Platonic model serves to justify or legitimize repetition that established habitually around the call for categorical generalization, rigidity, and hegemony.

Deleuze considers that maintaining the Platonic model of repetition is a kind of instigation to use the power of representation, erasing difference as a conception or as reality. This happens, indeed, according to the principles of judgment that are entirely accurate from a specific point of view, mirroring images in a series of reflection; the judgment of these reflex determinations is made in which difference is subordinated to the authority of representation.

“The Platonic copy is the Like-the claimant who receives at one remove. To the pure identity of the model or the original, there corresponds exemplary similitude, to the pure resemblance of the copy, there corresponds a similitude called imitative. But for all that, one cannot say that Platonism continues to develop this power of representation for itself.”10

Wherever repetition fails in achieving the original, representation is situated instead, subsuming and categorizing difference under an inert four-part judgment: identity, opposition, resemblance, and analogy. “In the concept of reflection, indeed, the mediatory and mediatized difference submits itself fully to the identity of the concept, to the opposition of predicates, to the analogy of judgment, and to the resemblance of perception, here we rediscover the necessarily

8- Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 59- 71. 9- Ibid., 138. 10- Gilles Deleuze, “Plato and the Simulacrum,” October 27 (Winter 1983), 56.

37 quadripartite character of representation.”11 Deleuze rejects the originary point of the thing that is, to begin with, original identity or an already given structure to the homogenous and static spatialization of time in which “repetition can cyclically reproduce itself.”12 Deleuze’s poststructuralist approach rethinks the process of repetition as a process of self-generation that is not tied to a subject or object. In this sense, repetition is a dynamic process of a powerful resistance and a self-maintainability that resists the nostalgia and any attempt to reproduce a past tense. Thus, repetition seems to be extending and flowing beyond any finite perception of judgment or actual image.13 Deleuze relates his interest in repetition to the power of difference, specifically to his attempt to rethink difference in itself. For Deleuze, repetition is a new beginning, and it is produced through nonlinear successions of qualitative changes rather than “a linear sequence: the end of one cycle marking the beginning of the next.”14

2.3 Nietzschean Eternal Return

In his influential reading of Nietzschean eternal return, Deleuze refuses the teleological doctrine of repetition that is directed not only by mechanical forces but that also moves toward a particular goal or purpose, criticizing such understanding in which the distinguishing of difference is concealed, that is the instant when difference descends under the control of representation. As an alternative, Deleuze asserts that the distinguishing of difference in the

Nietzschean process noticeably cracks the representation: the return is a differentiating of difference as a dynamic affirmation of what becomes as a heterogeneous series that intensifies and

11- Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 34- 35. 12- Adrian Parr, “Repetition,” The Deleuze Dictionary, Revised Edition, ed. Adrian Parr (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), 225. 13- Claire Colebrook, Understanding Deleuze (Crows Nest, N.S.W.: Allen & Unwin, 2002), 91. 14- Adrian Parr, “Repetition,” The Deleuze Dictionary, Revised Edition, ed. Adrian Parr (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), 225.

38 activates as the process returns, opening it up eternally to occasions and chaos. The system of heterogeneous series contains differential elements that are “intensities.” To state it in another way, heterogeneity emerges out of intensity.

Furthermore, the reoccurrence indicates a whole that occurs through variation and difference, in which the affirmation of what becomes is the multiple of chance and connections.

Deleuze clarifies in his book, Difference and Repetition, that the Nietzschean eternal return is the

“power of beginning and beginning again.”15 This cycles of return lead Parr to pose the second question: “What is repeated?”16 The facility of making endless connections is precisely what repetition is about; repetition is not moving or operating in a single direction. In other words, the movement of repetition is not unidirectional, it cannot guide us anywhere final, and it does not rely on a specific object or subject to repeat. Rather, it sets in motion, in “perpetual disequilibrium,”17 in heterogeneity of time and space, so that differences can be created from every direction or point of view. “What repeats, then, is not models, styles or identities, but the full force of difference in and of itself, those pre-individual singularities that radically maximize difference on a plane of immanence, it is this innovative understanding of the process of difference and differentiation that mutates the context through which repetition occurs.”18 What emerges from this intellectual analysis is the realization that repetition is an innovative action of transformation, it is a chance of reinvention.

15- Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 136. 16- Adrian Parr, “Repetition,” The Deleuze Dictionary, Revised Edition, ed. Adrian Parr (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), 225. 17- Dorothea Olkowski, Gilles Deleuze and the ruin of representation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 14. 18- Adrian Parr, “Repetition,” The Deleuze Dictionary, Revised Edition, ed. Adrian Parr (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), 226.

Explicitly, repetition liquefies the identity as it attempts to transform it, producing entirely something else, something new, unidentifiable and inventive. Therefore, Deleuze maintains repetition is vital to the idea of the virtual power of transformation. In reference to Thomas

Pynchon’s book Mason & Dixon, the American architect and theoretician Peter Eisenman aptly reminds us that “time is the space that is not seen.”19 Eisenman means that “time is a condition of space.” 20 Furthermore, Eisenman refers to Fredric Jameson, who thinks that the “postmodern condition involved the transformation of time into space.”21 Eisenman significantly transforms the architectural forms by relocating them in a non-representational sequence of expressions as opposed to fixed schemas, theorizing and offering an alternative model of repetition. His work not only ruins and cracks the hierarchical system of representational thinking debated above and below, but also performs as a creative activity of something else that will not be represented even if it is presented in images. The eternal return in Eisenman’s architecture is not a historical addition, or simply an ornament; in contrast, it creates an active and essential task of transformation.

Traditionally, architecture has always been tied to or situated within a particular condition, identifying the conventional categories of functional, structural, and symbolic orders which are fixed, ‘hierarchically-organized structures in time and space,’22 and turned into an ideational representation that proposes a reductive formalism with ultimate ground and a specific outcome.

Participating in the system of signification to give a transcendent meaning to ‘the phenomenal subject,’23 the conventional sense of architecture conceals difference with a false identity. The

19- Peter Eisenman, “Time Warps: The Monument,” Anytime, ed. Cynthia C. Davidson (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1999), 250. 20- Ibid., 250. 21- Ibid., 250. 22- Dorothea Olkowski, Gilles Deleuze and the ruin of representation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 14. 23- Simone Brott, “Toward a Theory of the Architectural Subject,” Deleuze and Architecture, ed. Hélène Frichot and Stephen Loo (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013), 151.

40 repetition process in postmodern historicism is a method of mimicry representing faked or artificial replicas of timeless precedents, forming homogenous architectural and urban designs in which the meaning is embedded, and the work is exemplified, and assuming the formation of difference based on prior resemblances, icons, and oppositions.

By contrast, Nietzsche’s theory of repetition clearly proposes hybrid products or (contents) that the architects of the neo-avant-garde use in their design, in which the architects have ‘will to form’ heterogeneous architectural and urban designs based on entire emergences and effects that are released from any authority, while representing the virtual, not the real or not repetitively constructing a plane of identification. Aiming to set in motion divergent architectural series that occur as continual processes of differentiating, Eisenman announces the end of all architectural styles and traces a time in which architecture is a creative transformation rather than reflection.

Eisenman marks a radical change in the idea of repetition that involves both space and time. In his essay, Folding in Time: The Singularity of Rebstock, Eisenman argues that repeating the past is not the probable solution to the present urban form. In that introductory essay, Eisenman proposes an alternate manner of repetition that diverges from the design of the modernist avant-gardes and visualizes repetition as the invention of pure difference rather than false identity, and in his design process of the Rebstock project, he produces creative rather than representational thinking and practice (Figure 2.2). Eisenman formulates the idea that the repetition has been altered due to the paradigm shift when the world moved from mechanical reproduction to the electronic reproduction in all fields of the design arts.

“The idea of repetition has changed because the idea of time has changed.”24 Time in the electronic paradigm is active, nonlinear, and non-sequential, and it is liable to forfeit its

24- Peter Eisenman, “Folding in Time: The Singularity of Rebstock,” in Written into the Void: Selected Writings 1990-2004 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 28.

41 immediacy. Consequently, the individual has lost the expressive response to an immediate action, and the solution is not to restate representational models in order to create “the old forms of individual expression.”25 Eisenman has continually argued that architecture is traditionally conceived as Cartesian space in classical time that contains representational image taken for granted as a neutral or natural condition.

Figure 2.2: Eisenman Architects (EA), Rebstockpark’s surroundings, 1991-1992. Source: http://www.eisenmanarchitects.com/rebstockpark.html#images.

In his other essay, Unfolding Events: Frankfurt Rebstockpark and the Possibility of a New

Urbanism, Eisenman stresses that architecture can no longer be subordinated to the static terms of space and time. Furthermore, he insists that architecture must deal with the ‘presentness,’ in which people become part of the present environment.26 “Eisenman posits the term ‘presentness’ as one possibility for a ‘weak’ practice, the hazard of architecture as an event.”27 The event is a component of time that is not observed as a sequential series, by which the end of one instant decides the start of the next one; nor is it a calculated time or quantifiable time. According to Eisenman, the notion

25- Ibid., 28. 26- Peter Eisenman, “Unfolding Events: Frankfurt Rebstockpark and the Possibility of a New Urbanism,” in Written into the Void: Selected Writings 1990-2004 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 13. 27- Robert Edward Somol, “Dummy Text, or The Diagrammatic Basis of Contemporary Architecture,” in Diagram diaries, Peter Eisenman (London: Thames and Hudson, 1999), p.19.

42 of the event offers ‘other time’ that it is not narrative nor dialectical. This “otherness” of the time reveals itself in real repetition, and it is “the time of the present which must contain the before and the after.”28

Our habitual memory is tied to general forms, in which we routinely repeat these forms of exact past experience; therefore, the habitual memory reduces all the small differences in life to be the same. However, if we recall a specific moment in the past that resonates with another moment in the present, our memory is different in kind; therefore, we succeed to achieve the real repetition of time and produce singularity. Following Gilles Deleuze, Eisenman mentions that

“singularity refers to the possibility in a repetition or a multiple for one copy to be different from another copy.”29 According to Deleuze, regarding the logic of subjectivity in Bergson’s philosophy, “subjectivity is time. ....time is not the interiority in us, but just the opposite, the interiority in which we are, in which we move, live and change.”30 Putting that differently, the flexibility of Deleuzean time characterizes the event of new time, in which innovative developments, or forms of transformations, reveal in that singular flow of time as impersonal effects and material powers, opening towards the pure becoming. “Time is truly sensed when memories rather than habits are repeated; for a habit is pretty much the same from moment to moment, while a memory recalls the specificity of a distinct moment of the past, when a singular and involuntary memory invades the present, then what is repeated is the force of time itself, for time is nothing other than this radical and singular difference.”31

28- Peter Eisenman, “Folding in Time: The Singularity of Rebstock,” in Written into the Void: Selected Writings 1990- 2004 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 29. 29- Ibid., 29. 30- Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 2: The time- image, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), 110. 31- Claire Colebrook, Understanding Deleuze (Crows Nest, N.S.W.: Allen & Unwin, 2002), 178.

2.4 Urban Design Thinking in Eisenman’s Critical Practice

The design process in the Rebstock project attempts to create an innovative combination in order to reconceptualize the idea of the repetition of urban components (Figure 2.3). According to Eisenman, Deleuze’s notions of ‘the fold and the event’ open up alternative modes of neutrality and new conceptions of time and space.32 Specifically, in the sphere of Eisenman’s architecture and urbanism, the notion of ‘the fold’ has gained conceptual ground in parallel with the notion of

‘becoming.’ According to Parr, the notion of ‘the fold,’ coined by Deleuze, came to light as he was evolving his “philosophical project of univocal being and an ontology of becoming and change.”33

Deleuze terms this becoming a ‘pure incorporeal Event,’34 which has limitless perennial qualities.

The motions of this pure becoming create ‘incorporeal beings’ as events that are attributed to the bodies, and they have an infinitive identity. These unlimited events-verbs are about what the bodies can do. They are not an ‘adjective,’ not about what the bodies are.

32- Peter Eisenman, “Folding in Time: The Singularity of Rebstock,” Written into the Void: Selected Writings 1990- 2004 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 28. 33- Adrian Parr, “Politics + Deleuze + Guattari + Architecture,” Deleuze and Architecture, ed. Hélène Frichot and Stephen Loo (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013), 197. 34- Craig Lundy, History and becoming: Deleuze's philosophy of creativity (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012), 3.

Figure 2.3: Eisenman Architects (EA), Rebstockpark Concept Diagram, 1991-1992. Source: http://www.eisenmanarchitects.com/rebstockpark.html#images.

In addition, the author of History and Becoming: Deleuze’s Philosophy of Creativity, Craig

Lundy, points out that we can describe this becoming as ‘surface becoming;’ he makes his point based on Deleuze’s hypothesis that pure becoming floats over and assails the whole depth below it. The events of pure becoming are expressed through the bodies’ actions, they are on the exterior surfaces of these bodies, and they are always unfinished. Deleuze insists on elaborating the

‘enfolded’ forces of difference that are successively and creatively associated with the change and transformation. This operation functions ‘between’ a gamut of bodies’ actions and movements, around these bodies’ identities, liberating the ‘real’ from the dualisms, “such as inside/outside, figure/ground and organic/inorganic.” 35

From there, folding causes boundaries to be porous and blurred, to be mixed territories of dynamism and instability.36 For example, Eisenman opens the boundaries of the Rebstock site to the future (Figure 2.4), dissolving them into different spaces, where the soft becomings fold and

35- Adrian Parr, “Politics + Deleuze + Guattari + Architecture,” Deleuze and Architecture, ed. Hélène Frichot and Stephen Loo (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013), 198. 36- Ibid., 198.

45 smudge the limit relations between the dialectic syntheses ‘figure/ground and plan/section’37 that resolutely surround each building.38 Eisenman reconstitutes the figure within the ground, the plan within the section, refreshing them ‘in-between’ bodies and spatial experiences. The external connections between space and bodies practices and the openness to the outside enable the binaries to escape the oppositional relation, acted upon and re-functioned as a third spatiality. Deleuze’s concept of ‘the fold’ supports Eisenman’s conscious realization.

Figure 2.4: Eisenman Architects (EA), Rebstockpark Drawing, 1991-1992. Source: http://www.eisenmanarchitects.com/rebstockpark.html#images.

The true problematization is about the indefinite possibilities of becoming that is not grounded in the depths or the virtual processes of the surface, yet can occur ‘in-between.’

According to Lundy, the endless movement of this ‘in-betweenness’ has the potential to disrupt the outlines between history and becoming, and can permeate externally and successively ‘in- between’ deranging their routine relation. As for history and becoming, Deleuze refers to the

37- James Williams, “Deleuze’s Ontology and Creativity: Becoming in Architecture,” Pli 9 (2000): 206. 38- Ibid., 206.

46 notion of history as ‘the power of domination or control (pouvoir)’ 39 that tames the passive synthesis of the depths. However, becoming is ‘a productive force for change (puissance),’40 certain virtuality that functions as a ‘pure incorporeal Event,’41 consisting of ongoing successions of transmutations to create the new.

In representational design thinking, the architectural form is shaped and recognized as a finished artifact with a predefined meaning and function. For Immanuel Kant, a German philosopher, the personal subject experiences the real world outside his/her consciousness, making a distinction between his/her perceptions (inside) and the apparent world (outside), and connecting received effects into a reasonable order.42 Deleuze re-orientates the logic of division in Kant’s philosophy by calling into query the way in which the personal subject perceives the real world

(reality) as a starting point of the relationship between inside and outside (or subject and object), insisting that there is not a personal subject. Rather, there are combinations (desires) from which individual subjects are shaped; happening at the limits of signification, producing singular points or terms that remain relatively stable, and making an open set of “critical connections in order to engender transformation of a subject.”43

According to Simone Brott (an Australian architect), architectural and urban design practices are subjected to a system of signification: “Notwithstanding architecture’s vexed history of phenomenology and its recourse to a Heideggerian reading of being – the belief that

39- Craig Lundy, History and becoming: Deleuze's philosophy of creativity (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012), 3. 40- Ibid., 3. 41- Ibid., 3. 42- Claire Colebrook, “Disjunctive Synthesis,” The Deleuze Dictionary, Revised Edition, ed. Adrian Parr (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), 80. 43- Simone Brott, Architecture for a Free Subjectivity: Deleuze and Guattari at the Horizon of the Real (England: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2011), 39.

47 architecture’s purpose is to stabilize ‘meaning’ for the phenomenal subject.”44 Deleuze’s transcendental empiricism affirms the process of becoming as learning from unexpected experience. These encounters have not reconstructed from abstractions (being) or restricted to the actual; the subject in the process of becoming is shaped from pre-subjective shares which are caught together by a network of intensities.45 Architecture is reduced to a scheme of symbolization that represents traditional assumptions and has “already” embodied meaning in the formalistic architectural image.

In Deleuze’s view observations have to be formed as a self-inspired process that diverges from any assumed configuration, dualistic signification, and previous resemblance, inserting in active relations with percepts and affects. In an architectural sense, this refers to the person who no longer spaces herself /himself into a symbol-arrangement with the aim of creating a precise meaning. However, in Deleuze’s transcendental empiricism, this subject is an exact double selection which arises from within the field of architectural effects. These encounters have not reconstructed from abstractions (being) or restricted to the actual; the subject in the process of becoming is shaped from pre-subjective shares which are caught together by a network of intensities.46

In Empiricism and Subjectivity, “Deleuze discusses the linkages between ideas, habits of thought, ethics, patterns, and repetitions of systems; all the while describing the relationship between affect and difference in terms of temporally specific subjective situations.”47 Similarly,

Eisenman states that architecture’s well-known mantra, ‘form follows function,’ points out that

44- Simone Brott, “Toward a Theory of the Architectural Subject,” in Deleuze and Architecture, ed. Hélène Frichot and Stephen Loo (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013), 151. 45- Gilles Deleuze, Empiricism and Subjectivity: An Essay on Hume’s Theory of Human Nature, trans. Constantin V. Boundas (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), 103. 46- Ibid., 103. 47- Felicity J. Colman, “Affect,” The Deleuze Dictionary, Revised Edition, ed. Adrian Parr (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), 12.

48 shape defines usage, which means that shape is “already” informed with meaning, and therefore form is determined by rules of imitation and function.48 Furthermore, Eisenman suggests, in his

“Notes on Zaera-Polo’s Idea of the Machinic,” following different thinking about design may liberate architecture from the representational image of thought as a“natural” status and its relation to functionality (Figure 2.5). Likewise, Brott expounds:

“While traditionally the personal subject is independent of and, in some senses, antecedent to the architectural encounter, the encounter has primacy, and through it, the individual subject is constructed.”49

Figure 2.5: Eisenman Architects (EA), Rebstockpark Drawing, 1991-1992. Source: http://www.eisenmanarchitects.com/rebstockpark.html#images.

48- Peter Eisenman, “Processes of the Interstitial: Notes on Zaera-Polo’s Idea of the Machinic,” El Croquis 83, Madrid (1997): 21-35. 49- Simone Brott, “Toward a Theory of the Architectural Subject,” in Deleuze and Architecture, ed. Hélène Frichot and Stephen Loo (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013), 152.

2.5 Deleuze’s Transcendental Empiricism

Brott explains that Deleuze’s transcendental empiricism starts with the point of inquiry without any already given or transcendent idea. Focusing more on the issue of architecture’s

“natural” status, Zaera-Polo, in his conversation with Eisenman, refers to the fact that Vitruvius established the iconic role of architecture as a representation of society, precisely expressed in his legendary statement regarding “commodity, firmness, and delight.”50 Even more thought- provoking, Zaera-Polo corroborates that Vitruvius was not saying that “buildings should stand up”51 because it is obvious that “buildings stand up.” 52Vitruvius’ real message was that buildings must resolutely demonstrate firmness and permanence.53 In his response to what Zaera-Polo says,

Eisenman emphasizes that the practice of architecture is usually captured by the conventional model, precisely by the traditional logic of creation.

Moreover, architecture has been grounded on the notion of inherent meaning, that is, a static structure made to serve a specific purpose. Thus, it can be said that architecture has an

‘iconicity’ encased in its ‘instrumentality.’ To be precise, this ‘iconicity’ is part of the sign system of image and form. Representational thinking must be deserted by conceptualizing architecture differentially, precisely, resisting the submission to a fixed identity (Figure 2.6).

50- Alejandro Zaera-Polo, “A Conversation with Peter Eisenman,” El Croquis 83, Madrid (1997a): 8. 51- Ibid., 8. 52- Ibid., 8. 53- Ibid., 8.

Figure 2.6: Eisenman Architects (EA), Rebstockpark Model, 1991-1992. Source: http://www.eisenmanarchitects.com/rebstockpark.html#images. While the configuration of concepts in philosophy creates its own consistency, it facilitates further theoretical constructs to arise implicitly out of the system on the ‘plane of immanence’ that offers divergent expressions through different experiences.54 People first experience places through their immediate stable environments where they interact routinely in everyday life.

Furthermore, the illusory of false identity that constructs in dominant stabilized orders not only cause resemblance to represent reality but also suppresses any variation that may occur.

Conversely, and in the midst of all this criticism to identical thinking, Deleuze observes ‘real life’ events. He questions the architects and planners of modern society whose attitudes tend to erase diversity and limit people’s potential creativity.

Deleuze’s ontology of becoming and change that produces pure difference enables the real to be in a flow of consciousness. Lived practices consist of effective complex networks and connections that operate through temporality in terms of spatial- relations. The architecture here is free from the fixed substance and open to change without subjection to the resemblance and utility.

54- Todd May, Gilles Deleuze: an introduction (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 19.

In other words, the boundaries between architecture and philosophy are blurred to create spaces for an opportunity outside the devouring force of the hierarchized space.

Deleuze’s ontology of becoming and change articulates the “virtual reality” underlying and inherent in lived, “actual reality,” to that degree, and it may be seen as a concept relating to a way of dealing with the different intensities that underlie our identities. As Todd May says in his introduction about Deleuze, this ontology gives rise to the thoughts of conceiving the concealed difference behind fixed and deterministic identities structure, eluding the dominance of stable conceptions.55 Deleuze’s philosophy is one of “setting in motion,” resisting specific transcendental forms, vibrating, and deterritorializing the material of bodies that are grounded to the depths. It consists of indeterminate outlines without fixed or limited expressions.

Deleuze’s philosophical perspective challenges the identical and the rigid frame of origins, so as to produce new terms from the outside – outside the materiality of existing terms in consideration of the actual practices and advents.

According to Deleuze, the process of thinking is unpredictable and may lead to a territory not envisaged at the beginning. This means that the thought process is not an anticipated process to be qualified as stable, but rather has a variable constant which can encompass other aspects of life beyond its intended premise. It can profoundly affect human life socially, politically and economically. Unpredictable effects of genuine thinking happen by coming into contact with a concealed difference in response to the process of deactivating and eliding the false identity which is masking that difference. “As a consequence of this central role of becoming, Deleuze’s effect on architecture is far from the most obvious connection of a philosophy of difference with the nostalgic fragmentation and pluralism of postmodern architecture.”56 In contrast to the modernist

55- Todd May, Gilles Deleuze: an introduction (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 19. 56- James Williams, “Deleuze’s Ontology and Creativity: Becoming in Architecture,” Pli 9 (2000): 203.

52 discourse, Deleuze’s work avoids idealisms but tries instead to evoke untapped and abstract identities. His ontology of becoming and change has no center or origin, and even more importantly, has no system of reference but is defined by movement and fluidity.

The interesting concept of architectural form within this pliability occurs in the ‘in- between’ spaces, the spaces of difference. Lundy poses an intelligent query about the role of history in Deleuze’s solo work and his cooperation with Guattari. Lundy searches the option of using history as an active force and the ways in which we can grasp an impending future which productively mix with a historic touch.

Lundy proposes numerous new Deleuzian ways to deterritorialize the representational image functionary towards the historicism, aiming to re-engineer a creative dialogue between history and becoming.57 Similar to Lundy, Eisenman in his conversation with Zaera-Polo, declares that architects cannot repeat the same historical styles in their contemporary design because that will lead to impractical replication.58 In response to this challenge, Eisenman calls for an architecture that sits in motion and has shattering practices. In Deleuze’s ontology of becoming and change, shattering happens when a new perception of difference blows away a centered order or abstract concept and ruins the dominant image.59 Through his design of the Rebstock site,

Eisenman finds “that the complete isolation of a building”60 from its historical roots may result in lifelessness to the site; recalling the past by using its image fails to achieve the historical value.61

Eisenman commences from the middle, where the body can respond to the virtual possibility of architecture. He adds fold forms, creating different places and assemblages. The ‘in-

57- Craig Lundy, History and becoming: Deleuze's philosophy of creativity (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012), 1. 58- Alejandro Zaera-Polo, “A Conversation with Peter Eisenman,” El Croquis 83, Madrid (1997a): 14. 59- Dorothea Olkowski, Gilles Deleuze and the ruin of representation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 14. 60- James Williams, “Deleuze’s Ontology and Creativity: Becoming in Architecture,” Pli 9 (2000): 204-205. 61- Ibid., 204-205.

53 betweenness’ and indeterminacy in Eisenman’s architectural practice destabilizes and disbands the restrictive dualisms (Figure 2.7). The Rebstock, in this sense, is the site for the movement between old and new, “where folds in the plan, façade, and figure-ground relations bring to mind older relations as well as new ones.”62 In contrast, the method of copying or repeating the former elements and principles is inadvisable for the re-development of a building or site with an old portion or historical units because it leads to simplifying the relations between the building’s spatial contexts (between the old and new boundaries).

This perception within the context of architecture merges, generally, with the notion and the ontology of place into one whole without interruption, a simplification which does not take into account the social approach to place character.

62- Ibid., 206.

Figure 2.7: Eisenman Architects (EA), Rebstockpark Design Concept, 1991-1992. Source: http://www.eisenmanarchitects.com/rebstockpark.html#images.

As an alternative to such views, Deleuze’s philosophy of history advocates a loose conception of ‘place,’ whereby place identity and character is temporary and not finalized with any parameters. This is more of a progressive approach to ‘place’ which opens up to diverse identities and past experiences, with its ‘character’ determined by current and immediate circumstances instead of what has been already established. Furthermore, Lundy expresses how

Deleuze gives an advantage to ‘creativity over representation.’63 Deleuze’s creativity undoes the despotic power of history, invariably and alternatively, as he reorients history to be viewed as historicism. Indeed, Parr dissipates the dominant question of what the folding is, asking instead what folding can do.

In order to articulate the latter question, Parr revisits Deleuze’s work on Nietzsche, specifically his use of Nietzsche’s ideas pertaining to the ‘reactive and active forces.’64 Of importance is how these forces connect and constitute in their relationship with both ‘folding and becoming.’65 The active powers have the capacity to generate the new and the transformative identities through ‘folding and becoming.’66 However, contrary to active powers, reactive forces act as representation in stable and equilibrium states, giving the primacy to identity and enabling dualisms to appear which reduce the difference to negation. Based on Deleuze’s perceptions about creativity, Eisenman addresses the issue of “relationship between figure and ground to social and technological influences in a postmodern”67 context. He argues that in postmodernism, problems

63- Craig Lundy, History and becoming: Deleuze's philosophy of creativity (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012), 1. 64- Adrian Parr, “Politics + Deleuze + Guattari + Architecture,” Deleuze and Architecture, ed. Hélène Frichot and Stephen Loo (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013), 198. 65- Ibid., 198. 66- Ibid., 198. 67- James Williams, “Deleuze’s Ontology and Creativity: Becoming in Architecture,” Pli 9 (2000): 204.

56 in architecture are solved by mimicking the “historical ground-figure relations in new contexts,”68 whereas an innovative approach to space is needed.

In this approach, the relation between architecture and its reference and depth is blurred, re-conceptualized and shuddered. The process of blurring, where the outlines are traversed and destabilized, causes the whole system to be more permeable and less static. As a consequence, the inside that represents a specific function spills towards the outside to generate and produce complex assemblages with a variety of purposes. Further, pure architecture is not contained and subjected to the dualistic relation, and it can be re-intellectualized in terms of emergence and creativity. Eisenman attaches importance to both Deleuze’s and Derrida’s notions of ‘the figural’ and ‘the undecidable.’ He demonstrates that the binarized categories have the potential deterritorialization to connect and change to a different position or state producing dynamic machine assemblages.69 Eisenman’s theoretical practice results in a form of resistance to static notions of form, while at the same time maintaining the concept of the Zeitgeist, avoiding traditional dualisms. This resistance reveals itself in his exploitation of the notion of ‘the fold,’ where there is no solid ground, but rather ‘a machine of limitless resistance,’70open to all possibilities.

2.6 Machinic Urbanism in Eisenman’s Design Process

In addition, the product of ‘machinic urbanism’ in Eisenman’s philosophy is always new and different and possesses the ability to be a part of machines to come. In these machines the relations between the components are not stable or static, rather they have the potential for

68- Ibid., 204. 69- Jeffrey A. Bell, “Assemblage + Architecture,” The Deleuze Dictionary, Revised Edition, ed. Adrian Parr (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), 19. 70- Alejandro Zaera-Polo, “Eisenman’s Machine of Infinite Resistance,” El Croquis 83, Madrid (1997b): 50-63.

57 movement and interaction. Thus, they are temporary and fragile.71 Eisenman argues even though the ‘machinic’ is a repetitive process, the singular occurrences of becoming are not similar, they are entirely unforeseen and surprising products.72 As it can be understood, describing the conception of ‘machinic’ is not easy and requires close examination. In the Deleuzo-Guattarian sense, the word ‘machinic’ implicitly refers to productive actions and endless dynamic connections. To formulate a conceptual articulation of the ‘macihinc,’ Eisenman introduces Brian

Massumi, who provides an effective analysis of ‘machinic’ in his book, A User's Guide to

Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Massumi notes that the expression of ‘machinic’ “is a metaphor between the body as an organism and the machine as technological apparatus,”73 which highlights its lack of rationality and linearity.74

The word machine has many connotations in modern life. For example, a house represents a machine for a dwelling.75 It comes into existence by the construction of intangible and tangible assemblages, such as plans, materials, manpower, and investment. However, without accommodating humans, a house serves no real function. Hence, it is the dynamism of the lives of the inhabitants that give meaning to the machine, much like that of the image. Signs only hold value when they are interpreted; the human relation to the machine is, therefore, an inherent part of its existence.76 Thus, the ‘machinic’ is seen as the in-between of a technological device and the organic desires of human life. The mechanistic alludes to constructs that individually separate and

71- Jean Hillier, and Gareth Abrahams, Deleuze and Guattari: Jean Hillier in Conversation with Gareth Abrahams (Association of European Schools of Planning, Poland: Wroclaw, 2013), 36. 72- Peter Eisenman, “Processes of the Interstitial: Notes on Zaera-Polo’s Idea of the Machinic,” El Croquis 83, Madrid (1997): 21-35. 73- Brian Massumi, A user's guide to capitalism and schizophrenia deviations from Deleuze and Guattari (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1993), 192. 74- Peter Eisenman, “Processes of the Interstitial: Notes on Zaera-Polo’s Idea of the Machinic,” El Croquis 83, Madrid (1997): 21-35. 75- Le Corbusier, The City of Tomorrow and its Planning, trans. Etchells F. and John Rodker (London, 1929). 76- Jean Hillier, and Gareth Abrahams, Deleuze and Guattari: Jean Hillier in Conversation with Gareth Abrahams, Association of European Schools of Planning (Poland: Wroclaw, 2013), 36.

58 then link closely together in the unlocalizable process. The co-occurrence of the organic side is relevant to a ‘living body’ and lies in nonspecific location. The ‘machinic’ process, however, arises with new random, ‘arbitrary,’ or even dissipative actions and capacities.77

“Central to such a passible ‘machinic’ process is a shift from ‘forming’—which entails the classical systems, such as the classical value system of aesthetics; the classical system of signs and signified; and conditions of use, that have traditionally demanded certain conditions of signing which are all “already given” or embodied in architecture, to what can be called ‘spacing’, in an attempt to produce an architectural object that is no longer complicit with its previous terms of embodiment, there is no classical system for a process called ‘spacing.’ ”78

Wood and Dovey pose the question of whether such capacities can be drawn up or traced in urban space. Can this mapping occur? And if so, can it achieve the primary technique of getting to the sources of the assemblage to find out how it operates in concrete relations? “The space of the possible, while not the same as the actual, is a form of capacity that needs to be treated as part of reality.”79 The hierarchical homogeneous space that is a reflection of the traditional practice of architecture and urban design has been brought into question by one of Eisenman’s most prominent techniques: the accomplishment of being able to create a situation of ‘interstitiality.’

The point of this question is to steer away from ‘forming’ space to an architecture of ‘spacing.’

What is critical for Eisenman is to reconceptualize the space that has always been conceived as a passive container. He is intent on reversing the primacy awarded to the formality since the time of

Vitruvius by conceiving spatiality and pure perception as it is experienced.80

77- Peter Eisenman, “Processes of the Interstitial: Notes on Zaera-Polo’s Idea of the Machinic,” El Croquis 83, Madrid (1997): 21-35. 78- Ibid. 79- Stephen Wood, and Kim Dovey, “Creative Multiplicities: Urban Morphologies of Creative Clustering,” Journal of Urban Design, 20, no.1 (2015): 52-74. Doi: 10.1080/13574809.2014.972346 (accessed June 01, 2015). 80- Adrian Parr, “Politics + Deleuze + Guattari + Architecture,” Deleuze and Architecture, ed. Hélène Frichot and Stephen Loo (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013), 199.

2.7 Conclusion

In conclusion, “the neo-avant-garde institutionalizes the avant-garde as art and thus negates genuinely avant-gardiste intentions, this is true independent of the consciousness artists have of their activity, a consciousness that may perfectly well be avant-gardiste…. neo- avant- gardiste art is autonomous art in the fullsense of the term, which means that the avant-gardiste intentions of the returning art to the praxis of life is negated.”81 Eisenman, as a neo-avant-garde architect, rethinks architecture in light of the Deleuzian notions of ‘the fold and the event.’

Eisenman contributes that the intensity of urban life can be formalized by the potentiality of spatial and temporal relations that challenge the old system. The potentiality of urban spaces, or ‘machinic urbanism,’ can be reassessed in design thinking process through the ontology of becoming and change. Furthermore, the connectivity and hybridity in ‘machinic urbanism’ produce open-ended forces and events, disrupting bound identity and pushing up the submerged difference to the surface. In his attempt to deconstruct formalist mannerisms, Eisenman seeks to show the flexible relationship between figure, ground, structure, and content as a means for a “non-dialectic” impetus to architecture. In other words, his goal is to produce ‘undetermined’ figures and spaces.

He contemplates design practices in architectural styles to generate the space. What Eisenman calls spacing (becoming-space) in the design process is the sketching with stammering on empty white papers, and the intervention of pure thoughts without any reference or pre-knowledge of the image.

Moreover, he asserts that design with an assumption is framing, which is to design with a full list of origins and an expectation of the outcome.

81- Peter Bürger, Theory of the Avant-Garde, trans. Michael Shaw (Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 1984), 58.

Until the representational image is broken, classifications that previously existed will control thought. In this tactic, architecture is reduced to a model of negation and a structure of rigid opposition, excluding its ‘in-betweenness’ and potentiality. Architecture was established on the foundation of binaries and dualisms; Deleuze has criticized, deconstructed and eliminated those binaries and dualisms through his interstitial and indeterminate approach. Following a Deleuzian path to define the problematic, Eisenman rejects the claims that allege that there is a specific and immediate solution for every architectural and urban problem. In his extensive urban renewal project of the Rebstock Park periphery in Frankfurt, Eisenman comes up with a new approach of analyzing the complex connection of environment and architectural ideas (Figure 2.8). The work is based on the paradigm shift from omnipresent and repeated problems that usually challenge architects when designing in complex urban contexts. There is no single solution to the infinite problems that architectural constructions provoke; it is only productive to think about the impossibility of solving problems, leaving issues open for interpretation and experience. As Grosz says, “architecture itself should not be so much concerned with seeking to build, perform, or enact ideals or ideal solutions to contemporary or future problems; indeed, it is a goal-directedness that utopic visions orient us toward, in neglecting the notion of process, precisely because they do not understand the role of time.”82 Like Grosz, Lundy indicates that people tend to forget the generative role of history that is linked to (or associated with) the actions of alteration and invention. Lundy inscribes history within Deleuze’s theoretical and creative work of becoming. In his articulation of the concept of ‘historical creativity,’83 Lundy elucidates the innovative role of

82- Elizabeth Grosz, Architecture from the outside - essays on virtual and real space (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2001), 148. 83- Craig Lundy, History and becoming: Deleuze's philosophy of creativity (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012), 12.

61 history that links to Deleuze’s new philosophical constructs of creativity. Eisenman introduces this innovative collaboration between history as an active and mobile force (Figure 2.9), and creativity as a continuous practice to create the Rebstock site, where the repetition has insistently challenged the traditional architecture by both purifying and obscuring its boundaries while introducing it to external dialogues.

Figure 2.8: Eisenman Architects (EA), Rebstockpark Perspective View, 1991-1992. Source: http://www.eisenmanarchitects.com/rebstockpark.html#images.

Figure 2.9: Eisenman Architects (EA), Rebstockpark Perspective View, 1991-1992. Source: http://www.eisenmanarchitects.com/rebstockpark.html#images.

CHAPTER THREE Qualitative Methodology

3.1 New Territories for Old Architecture: Nomadic History as a Design Strategy in the Redevelopment Urban Project for the Al Kadhimiya Historical Site, Baghdad, Iraq

This chapter begins by analyzing two different design strategies that architects and urban designers use to deal with history in urban projects that have been submitted to an international- wide competition for the redevelopment of the Al Kadhimiya historical site. Afterward, the chapter presents and extends on the dissertation qualitative methodology. The methodology part introduces the data collected from the two proposals and data analysis procedures that included findings and discussion. The analysis of the projects will then be examined through theoretical texts to develop a poststructuralist analytical framework to analyze the urban formalisms of these two redevelopment projects. The central theoretical thought will come from Deleuze’s conceptualization of difference. This chapter aims to explore how the possibility of using history as a dynamic, intensive force in an urban design thinking process can escape the historicism and representational image functionary towards a re-engineered creative historical/ architectural dialogue. By comparing two existing urban project strategies for the redevelopment of the Al

Kadhimiya historical site, this chapter will examine the difference between mimicking historical styles in a decontextualized manner and repeating them with difference using the theory of

Difference and Repetition outlined by the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze.

This chapter will compare the historically conservative, winning proposal by the Dewan

Architects & Engineers Firm to another entry by the Assemblage Architects Firm. It may be said that the latter firm shows a much less retrospective and conservative use of history than the winning firm, but I will argue that it presents a more creative and prolific source regarding future design, as well as a less detrimental approach towards the historic urban fabric. It will be shown that the

Assemblage Architects’ design does not use history in a reactionary or nostalgic way: “history as historicism.”1 Instead, Assemblage Architects Firm employs history in creative ways, blending it with the present and future. The comparison of these two projects reveals the need for a more precise definition to the term ‘preservation’ since the two firms followed different approaches to architectural reconstruction and historical revivalism. In his book Historic Preservation:

Curatorial Management of the Built World, James Marston Fitch, an American architect, and preservationist, mentioned in chapter four; Conceptual Parameters of Historic Preservation, that:

“ ……in the United States, the term ‘historic preservation’ will continue to serve as the umbrella name for the field for the simple reason that it has become institutionalized, ……It is true that somewhat different terms are employed abroad. The concept of protection of the historic and artistic patrimony is embedded in European practice, while the term conservation is standard in Great Britain. In the United State, however, this term already belong to a highly structured field of expertise, the conservation of works of art, with its own specialized profession in being.”2

This dissertation offers a precise nomenclature to the concept of protection in each proposal to accommodate the various and levels of architectural and urban intervention. Concerning the winning proposal by the Dewan Architects & Engineers Firm, the dissertation considers their approach to redeveloping the Al Kadhimiya historical site as a conservative practice. The term conservation is used in this chapter to describe the physical intervention in the urban fabric and

‘the continued structural integrity’3 that Dewan proposed in their project for redevelopment the Al

Kadhimiya historical site. The chapter presents Dewan’s proposal as a conservative practice.

1- Craig Lundy, History and becoming: Deleuze's philosophy of creativity (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012), 14. 2- James Marston Fitch, Historic Preservation: Curatorial Management of the Built World (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1998), 39. 3- Ibid., 46.

Away from the British term conservation and inspiring from the American spirit, the term preservation that “implies the maintenance of the artifact in the same physical condition,”4 is used to describe the unobtrusive interventions that offered by the Assemblage Architects Firm’s proposal to preserve the physical integrity of the Al Kadhimiya historical site. The root of the word preserve comes from Latin prae + servare, “pre-serve,” “to keep safe” or “to protect,” counting the idea of ‘contributing to the future.’5 As mentioned by “John Lawrence, former dean of Tulane’s

School of Architecture, the basic purpose of preservation is not to arrest time, but to mediate sensitivity with the forces of change, it is to understand the present as a product of the past and a modifier of the future.”6

Regarding the conservative proposal, by the Dewan Architects & Engineers Firm, it is argued that the formality of a “Disneyfied” historical character has become “a string of actualities.”7 The redevelopment design in the winning entry exists as an allusion. In contrast, it will be shown that the proposal by Assemblage Architects Firm applies a creative alternative detached from this predetermined method. The use of history in Assemblage’s proposal is beyond the false frozen-time image. In this chapter, the main goal is not to refute or confirm the static and fixed image of history that is proposed by the winning entry, but rather to scrutinize the way in which this representational image of history becomes operative and dynamic. This chapter is a critical analysis about a provisional and creative return of history, ‘a nomadic history.’8 The term

4- James Marston Fitch, Historic Preservation: Curatorial Management of the Built World (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1998), 46. 5- Norman Tyler, Ted Ligibel, and Ilene R. Tyler, Historic preservation: an introduction to its history, principles, and practice (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2009), 14. 6- Ibid., 14. 7- Craig Lundy, History and becoming: Deleuze's philosophy of creativity (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012), 20. 8- Craig Lundy, History and becoming: Deleuze's philosophy of creativity (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012), 64.

‘nomadic history’ is coined by the Deleuze scholar Craig Lundy and is a conception that has been formulated by Deleuze’s logic of creation.

3.2 Capturing Old Architecture

The Al Kadhimiya historical site is located in the Al Kadhimiya district, a northern neighborhood west of the Tigris River, about five kilometers from the city center of Baghdad, the capital of Iraq. In the midst of the old complex sits the mosque of the Al Kadhimain shrine, which contains tombs and dominates the historic urban landscape (Figure 3.1), greatly influencing “the functional as well as the socio-religious composition.”9

Figure 3.1: MIT Libraries, Aga Khan Visual Archive, The Al Kadhimain Shrine, 1982. “Aerial view of the shrine and its surrounding fabric before demolition.” Source: MIT Libraries, Aga Khan Visual Archive. Copyright: Architecture & Planning Partnership. < https://archnet.org/media_contents/5325>

9- John Warren, “Baghdad Two Case Studies of Conservation,” The Arab City: Its Characters and Islamic Cultural Heritage: proceedings of Symposium Held in Medina, Kingdom of Saudi an Arabia, 24-29 Rabi II, 1401 AH, 28 Feb.-5 Mar. 1981 AD., eds. Ismail Serageldin and Samir El- Sadek, with the assistance of Richard R. Herbert (Arlington, VA: I. Serageldin, 1982), 246.

In 1980, the site went through an urban intervention that demolished its historic features and urban fabric (Figure 3.2).10 This destroyed 9 hectares of the most significant architectural elements of the site’s historic core.11

Figure 3.2: MIT Libraries, Aga Khan Visual Archive, The Al Kadhimain Shrine, 1982. “Plan showing demolitions around the shrine 1982.” Source: MIT Libraries, Aga Khan Visual Archive. Copyright: Architecture & Planning Partnership. < https://archnet.org/media_contents/5329>

“The present problem is to reestablish the integrity of the whole site as an urban complex, providing adequate facilities for servicing, and scope for growth in prosperity.”12 The central redevelopment dilemma stems from the desire to protect the past and the conflicting notion of bringing to life the urban or neighborhood “character” of the site. The current federal government

10- John Warren, and Roy Worskett, “Conservation and Redevelopment of the Kadimiyeh Area in Baghdad,” in Adaptive reuse: integrating traditional areas into the modern urban fabric, August 16-20, 1982, ed. Margaret Bentley Sevcenko (Cambridge, Mass.: Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard University and MIT Laboratory of Architecture and Planning, 1983), 32. 11- John Warren, “Baghdad Two Case Studies of Conservation,” The Arab City: Its Characters and Islamic Cultural Heritage: proceedings of Symposium Held in Medina, Kingdom of Saudi an Arabia, 24-29 Rabi II, 1401 AH, 28 Feb.-5 Mar. 1981 AD., eds. Ismail Serageldin and Samir El- Sadek, with the assistance of Richard R. Herbert (Arlington, VA: I. Serageldin, 1982), 248. 12- Ibid., 246.

67 is safeguarding and developing Kadhimiya by conducting many studies (Figure 3.3).13 The most important study was performed by the Mayor’s Office of Baghdad in 2008-2009, which sought proposals for the regeneration of the Al Kadhimiya historical site. To encourage the Baghdad officials of the economic viability of their offer, Dewan Architects & Engineers Firm emphasized the fact that their project for the Al Kadhimiya site would renovate its historical and religious images. The task of the winning proposal would be that, by reviving the past, a precise structure and renovation would be achieved.

Figure 3.3: Fine Arts Library, Harvard College Library, The golden domes and minarets of The Al Kadhimain Shrine, 1923. ‘The golden domes and minarets of the Kadimain Mosque and Shrine.” Source: Fine Arts Library, Harvard College Library. Copyright: Fine Arts Library, Harvard College Library. Photographer: A. Kerim < https://archnet.org/media_contents/5325>

13- Kadhimiya is a predominantly Shiite area; thus, part of the current Shiite government’s political goals is to preserve the past to create and maintain a certain political image.

In fact, reproducing history may not only stymie the “productive force of creation,”14 but also re-enforce pride, becoming a catalyst in the development of the sentiment of nationalism, as well as opening the way for more accepted forms of imitation and representational urban design thinking. Using Deleuze’s theory on the logic of representation and the logic of surface, this project proposal potentially constitutes a ‘Disneyfication’ of the historical buildings and site (Figure 3.4).

It decomposes traditional architecture into its elements and principles, at the level of either facades or plans, and merges these elements into the Al Kadhimiya urban design project. This “merging” may be evident or may involve a level of modification. The result may be simpler than the original in detail, but it must visually recall, in an almost cut and paste manner, the historical source from which it is derived.15

Figure 3.4: Dewan Architects and Engineers Firm, The Al Kadhimiya Redevelopment, 2009. View of the Qiblah Gate of the Al Kadhimain shrine, Baghdad, Iraq. The representational image of thought in the winning entry. Source: Dewan Architects and Engineers Firm (DAEF). < http://www.dewan-architects.com/work-planning-kadhimiya.html>

14- Craig Lundy, History and becoming: Deleuze's philosophy of creativity (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012), 138. 15- Khaled Asfour, “Identity in the Arab Region: Architects and Projects from Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar,” in Constructing identity in contemporary architecture: case studies from the South 2009, eds. Peter Herrle and Stephanus Schmitz (Berlin: LIT Verlag Münster, 2009), 152.

One of Deleuze’s most substantial ideas, which is part of his theory of Difference and

Repetition, is the idea that repetition in itself, copies an original, specifically the ideal and its copies and reproductions.16 Dorothea Olkowski, an American philosopher, argues that representational thinking in any field, such as aesthetics, philosophy, ethics, or psychology, works by forming a static model.17 This repetition represents a predetermined “norm” as a formula for hegemonic architectural practice. For my example, ‘Disneyfication’ can be described as the transformation of the Al Kadhimiya site (Figure 3.5) into a conservatively controlled environment that is imprisoned and limited to a very narrow imagistic mode of history with homogenized qualities that “strip the place of its original character and repackages it in a sanitized format.”18 Although it could be understood and indicated from this proposal that the situation for the Al Kadhimiya historical site

“in depth,” meaning “to have experience, familiarity or knowledge of its past.”19 The repetition and renovation of the historical styles and the essential need to protect and shield the tradition of the Al Kadhimiya site have produced kind of a ‘Disneyfied site,’ suggesting fixed identities rather than a slippery urban character,20 as reported by Kim Dovey, an Australian architectural critic.

16- Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 130. 17- Dorothea Olkowski, Gilles Deleuze and the ruin of representation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 5. 18- Hein Schoer, The sounding museum: four worlds: cultural soundscape composition and trans-cultural communication (Bielefeld: Transcript; Hanau: Gruenrekorder, 2014), 296. 19- Craig Lundy, History and becoming: Deleuze's philosophy of creativity (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012), 14. 20- Kim Dovey, Becoming places: urbanism/architecture/identity/power (London: Routledge, 2010), 57.

Figure 3.5: Fine Arts Library, Harvard College Library, the Al Kadhimain Shrine, 1923. “The Kadimain, the Holy City near Baghdad from an airplane.” Source: Fine Arts Library, Harvard College Library. Copyright: Fine Arts Library, Harvard College Library. Photographer: A. Kerim < https://archnet.org/media_contents/5325>

The winning project depicts the shrine in the center, circled by religious facilities, historical houses, and markets within a radius of a half kilometer. The holy site will have within its vicinities traditional residential homes as well as traditional social and economic gathering places like markets and religious cultural exhibitions. The initial plan displays how the Al Kadhimiya site will be transformed from its current state to a more modernized architectural recreation, whereby some wider streets are traced with some open spaces to offer entry to the shrine; these are bordered with new constructions (Figure 3.6). At the same time, this will require demolishing older buildings and erecting new and more “welcoming” first-sight structures. The historic buildings would be concealed by the “new” and “bright” facades, to attract more regional and international worshippers and visitors. The Masterplan suggested more demolition and new large-scale buildings. A small amount of current fabric is conserved within the inner site blocks. The entire

71 site will have to be converted into a big construction site with existing inhabitants relocated. New construction for religious purposes and facilities will take place on the site.

Figure 3.6: Dewan Architects and Engineers Firm, The Al Kadhimiya Redevelopment, 2009. The winning entry project for the Al Kadhimiya historical site, Baghdad, Iraq. Source: Dewan Architects and Engineers Firm (DAEF). < http://www.dewan-architects.com/work-planning-kadhimiya.html>

What Dewan Architects & Engineers firm suggests in their design of the Al Kadhimiya historical site is actually more demolition of the existing urban fabric except for a few valuable old buildings. Dewan’s reason for that demolition is to build new buildings instead of keeping the old. The most prominent of these new building will be the mosque, multi-purpose hall, library, and host building (food hall). Dewan Architects & Engineers Firm, in its proposal, is utilizing Islamic and traditional Iraqi architectural elements and urban principles. It decomposes traditional architecture into its elements and principles, either at the level of facades or plan types, and then copies them into the Al- Kadhimiya design project. The copying can be literal or may involve some modification. The winning entry replicates tradition. This approach involves several stages.

At the level of principles, copying from traditional architecture includes:

3.2.1 Mixed Land Uses

The strategy of mixed land use is considered, by far, the most cost-effective one and the most important tool to the social and economic lives of the dwellers in the urban area. The bazaar, which is actually part and parcel of the Islamic culture, plays a powerful role as a vehicle of human interactions in that context, standing as the cornerstone of the society and equally reflecting the proportionate growth of that society. All the while, the neighborhood remains the nucleus of the city, its center fulfilling the daily needs of each inhabitant. Historically speaking, the

Caravanserais, at the outskirts of Baghdad, provided accommodation to travelers. This kind of traditional structure could be found in urban areas until the eve of the 20th century. The fast pace of modernization and restructuring of the environment with the introduction of mechanized means of transportation have lessened the importance of the bazaar and relegated it to second class in the city’s life. The bazaar no longer has the economic impact of its former days, but it still carries a symbolic socio-economic might of bonding people.21 To put all this into perspective, one must scrutinize the Dewan Architects & Engineers Firm in its design of the Al Kadhimiya historical site. In fact, mixed land uses were prepared in the project’s plans (Figure 3.7). The goal is to blend the religious, commercial and social activities. The whole idea is to adopt new strategies of land uses that presuppose mixed uses by implementing new regulations supportive of making available opportunities for neighborhood integration of all aspects of people’s lives in their design. This means a mixing of same residential, commercial, cultural and religious building structures.22 The holistic proposal by Dewan Architects & Engineers Firm will expand the surrounding areas of the

21- Fereshteh Ferdowsian, Modern and Traditional Urban Design Concepts and Principles in Iran, a thesis submitted to the faculty for Architecture and Town Planning of the University of Stuttgart (Shushtar/Iran: University of Stuttgart, Institute of Urban Planning, 2002). 22- A. Hussein, Wadhah, and Zaynab R. Abaas. "Effectiveness of Sustainable Urban Projects in the City of Baghdad." Tha Iraq Journal of Architecture 9, no. 27 (2013): 111-28.

73 shrine by imitating the configuration of the traditional city in coherence with the integrated religious functions of the historic site.

Figure 3.7: Dewan Architects and Engineers Firm, The Al Kadhimiya Redevelopment, 2009. Mixed land use in the winning entry project for the Al Kadhimiya historical site, Baghdad, Iraq. Source: Dewan Architects and Engineers Firm (DAEF). < http://www.dewan-architects.com/work-planning-kadhimiya.html>

3.2.2 Compact Building Design

In some Arab cities, the geographical setting determines, or at best imposes, a certain urban structure to minimize, if not prevent, the deterioration of people’s mode of life. Such is the case of cities in the desert, whereby houses are designed and built to form one unit, losing their individuality. Even alleys and roads are reduced to the minimal. This concept is rooted in societies where this tightness translates the closeness of the people composing them. Family ties and blood relations are sacred and revered. The basic elements and remnants of these societies remain the neighborhood center, the bazaar, the mosque and the madrasah or Islamic learning centers which have eroded in the history of urbanism in the Arab world.

“The integrated conservation and development scheme presented by Dewan Architects & Engineers Firm was intended to materialize the basic idea to conceive the shrine as the innermost “kernel” of the city, enveloped and protected by

different urban layers that mediate between the interior and the exterior world and together form a coherent whole. The inner urban layer includes important elements of the historic urban fabric, which will be upgraded, renovated and substituted on a plot-by-plot basis according to information to be collected in the future, with the aim of retaining the scale and the main characteristic of historical Baghdad. Other, more peripheral layers introduce contemporary residential structures that cater to modern needs of vehicular accessibility, public facilities, and commercial functions.”23

Dewan Architects & Engineers Firm’s proposal is according to the designers, geared towards rehabilitating the urban areas but paradoxically, it will rid the site of more than 95% of its traditional building structure (Figure 3.8). Nevertheless, the firm’s argument in proceeding this way is to respond to the current needs of the society, bringing the past into the modern world while maintaining the mystical, religious and spiritual aura of the site, renowned all over the world.24

Figure 3.8: Dewan Architects and Engineers Firm, The Al Kadhimiya Redevelopment, 2009. The winning entry project for the Al Kadhimiya historical site, Baghdad, Iraq. Source: Dewan Architects and Engineers Firm (DAEF). < http://www.dewan-architects.com/work-planning-kadhimiya.html>

23- Sebastian Jordana, “Dewan Architects, wins first prize in Baghdad competition,” February 27, 2010. Arch Daily, http://www.archdaily.com/?p=51225, accessed on November 27, 2014. 24- “Dewan Creates Winning Design in Baghdad Municipality Contest.” Ameinfo.com. February 16, 2010. http://ameinfo.com/blog/agriculture-&-horticulture/dewan-architects-&-engineers/dewan-creates-winning-design-in- baghdad-municipality-contest/, accessed on November 10, 2014.

3.2.3 Form and the Architectural Style

In Arab-Islamic architecture, several elements are recurrent but comprise of a variety of styles depending on the traditional values attached to the city and which has a psychological impact on the inhabitants. Regarding the elements and the heritage vocabulary, copying from the traditional Iraqi architecture includes: the mashrabiyya, dome, or, the shanasheel, the arch, are evocative in people’s lives. The minaret, for example, is associated with Islamic religion and serves as directional guidance for worshippers who rarely mistaken its function. Today, that consideration is less important because mosques do not necessarily need minarets or even domes to project that understanding. Nevertheless, the younger generation of Arab architects consciously choose to revisit these two elements in their projects to construct, keep, and maintain the Arab-Islamic architecture, and thus evoke this sentiment of belonging in the society.25 It is in that spirit that the

Dewan Architects & Engineers Firm, in designing the Al Kadhimiya project, makes use of domes and riwaqs in the structure of the peripheral buildings just as it uses the shanasheel (Figure 3.9), and the arches in the additional buildings (Figure 3.10).

25- Fereshteh Ferdowsian, Modern and Traditional Urban Design Concepts and Principles in Iran, a thesis submitted to the faculty for Architecture and Town Planning of the University of Stuttgart (Shushtar/Iran: University of Stuttgart, Institute of Urban Planning, 2002).

Figure 3.9: Dewan Architects and Engineers Firm, The Al Kadhimiya Redevelopment, 2009. Constructing of new hotel in the Al Kadhimiya historical site, Baghdad, Iraq. Using the shanasheel in the Dewan’s proposal. Source: Dewan Architects and Engineers Firm (DAEF). < http://www.dewan-architects.com/work-planning-kadhimiya.html>

Figure 3.10: Dewan Architects and Engineers Firm, The Al Kadhimiya Redevelopment, 2009. Using the arches in the Dewan’s proposal. Source: Dewan Architects and Engineers Firm (DAEF). < http://www.dewan-architects.com/work-planning-kadhimiya.html>

Harmoniously marrying the objects and their environment is the main reason to resort to the traditional architecture.26 Traditional methods and materials used to build public and private buildings include bricks and local materials to colorfully adorn the buildings and their facades to

26- “Dewan Creates Winning Design in Baghdad Municipality Contest.” Ameinfo.com. February 16, 2010. http://ameinfo.com/blog/agriculture-&-horticulture/dewan-architects-&-engineers/dewan-creates-winning-design-in- baghd ad-municipality-contest/, accessed on November 10, 2014.

77 reflect the image of the old cities. Typical buildings have flat roofs with sections that are arch-like.

It is also documented that the Al Kadhimiya historic site has buildings constructed using mud- bricks with roofs, studs, and floors made out of timber.27 The characteristics of the above-described buildings differ depending on what part of Iraq you are in. The internal design of the buildings relates more to the local culture, and differentiation is noticeable through the harmony sought in the use of color on the outside for a given region.28

3.3 Deleuze’s Rejection of Representational Thinking

In his rejection of representational thinking, Deleuze estimates that it is a source of false identity, “incorporeal and virtual forces that stretch over a sea of corporeal bodies and actual states of affairs.”29 Deleuze describes this as a “dogmatic image of thought,” and he ardently refutes it because of its correlation to the model of representation which has its roots in the concepts of identity, which he vilifies due to its tendency to exclude difference.30 His critique of identity stems from his view that the power attributed to identity is a usurpation when it comes to the representation of the supposed pre-existing image, and that process is the source of rejecting difference.31 Deleuze’s stand on the logic of representation is straightforward. He thinks that the logic of representation has nothing to do with the ‘difference in itself’ or anything in connection with the life since in depth it sorts out thoughts in conjunction with some type of fixed elements

27- John Warren, and Roy Worskett, “Conservation and Redevelopment of the Kadimiyeh Area in Baghdad,” in Adaptive reuse: integrating traditional areas into the modern urban fabric, August 16-20, 1982, ed. Margaret Bentley Sevcenko (Cambridge, Mass.: Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard University and MIT Laboratory of Architecture and Planning, 1983). 28- Fereshteh Ferdowsian, Modern and Traditional Urban Design Concepts and Principles in Iran, a thesis submitted to the faculty for Architecture and Town Planning of the University of Stuttgart (Shushtar/Iran: University of Stuttgart, Institute of Urban Planning, 2002). 29- Craig Lundy, History and becoming: Deleuze's philosophy of creativity (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012), 40. 30- Daniela Voss, Conditions of thought Deleuze and transcendental ideas (Edinburgh University Press, 2013), 37. 31- James Williams, “Identity,” The Deleuze Dictionary, Revised Edition, ed. Adrian Parr (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), 127.

78 as well as some parameters that depend on a false image.32 This is what Craig Lundy, called

‘surface becomings.’ “Surface becomings, according to Deleuze, are sterile, fixed and immobilized, they create identifiable states, and here the logic of surface is defined by its processes of virtual becoming in contrast to the depths of actualities.”33 Deleuze goes further in defying the imposed moralistic nature of such an image assumed to be part and parcel of everyday life. A

British sociologist, John Marks, points out that, “the image that Deleuze challenges, is essentially dogmatic and moral, in this sense, it is representational in nature, and in that it presupposes that

‘everyone knows.”34 As humans, we first experiment places through our immediate stable environments, where we interact routinely in daily life and which allow us to firmly establish our actual identities; this we almost take for granted. Human classification fails to attain identity in its whole, ‘difference in itself.’ Even though pure difference cannot be identified and is clearly unattainable in the present, it stretches beneath all actual identities and enables us to expound their coming to being. The theory of Difference and Repetition, developed by Deleuze, defies the logic of representation, whereby we contemplate each element as (re)presenting something that is subordinated to a category or a grouping considered as the original. Seen as such, difference is subordinated to some kind of conventional concept considered as the standard by which everything else is measured to indefinitely. This is the reasoning behind the selection of the Dewan Architects

& Engineers Firm; their “keenness,” and “willingness” to preserve the historical, cultural, and social features of the area. The jury, primarily composed of local politicians and businessmen, decided that Dewan’s proposal was the most “aesthetically pleasing” among the submissions and

32- Jing Wu, The Logic of Difference in Deleuze and Adorno: positive constructivism VS negative dialectics (Saarbrücken: Lambert, 2011), 127. 33- Craig Lundy, History and becoming: Deleuze's philosophy of creativity (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012), 39-45. 34- John Marks, “Thought,” The Deleuze Dictionary, Revised Edition, ed. Adrian Parr (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), 284.

79 demonstrated that it is an excellent illustration of a rich, and well-improved proposal. At the award ceremony, the Iraqi Prime Minister, joined by the mayor of Baghdad, reiterated the necessity of promoting religious tourism in Iraq, and he praised the Baghdad Municipality for announcing this competition to conserve the pristine heritage of the Al Kadhimiya site, including its sacred and remarkable premises.35 This dissertation purposes to show that the winning entry’s architectural and urban design practices lead to a potential ‘Disneyfication’ of the Al Kadhimiya site. To enhance that claim, this dissertation counts on Parmett’s definition of ‘Disneyfication,’ which she mainly compares to consumerism—for the aim is to produce “an optimal space for the marketing and consumption of consumer goods and branded experiences, and thus, it is criticized for creating uniformity, privatization, and commodification of public space, as well as for its exclusionary nature and its mimicry of authentic qualities.”36 Additionally, this dissertation extends the definition of ‘Disneyfication’ by adding Bryman’s definition. In his explanation of the term:

“Disneyfication is typically associated with a statement about the cultural products.”37 That is to say, ‘Disneyfication’ is the process of interpretation to change historic features into something shallow and oversimplified.38 The American critic and theorist Fredric Jameson provides the most insightful analysis of postmodernity in his book Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late

Capitalism, a public cultural sphere where every historic feature “becomes semi-autonomous and floats above reality,”39 as an image and a commoditized product.40 This idea relates to

35- “Dewan Wins Baghdad Design Contest,” iraq-businessnews.com, February 25, 2010, http://www.iraq- businessnews.com/2010/02/25/dewan-wins-baghdad-design-contest/, accessed on November 10, 2014. 36- Helen Morgan Parmett, “Disneyomatics: Media, Branding, and Urban Space in Post-Katrina New Orleans,” Mediascape (winter, 2012), http://www.tft.ucla.edu/mediascape/Winter2012_Disneyomatics.html, accessed on February 20, 2015. 37- Alan Bryman, The Disneyization of Society (London: Sage, 2004), 5. 38- Ibid., 5. 39- Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1991), 275 - 76. 40- Ibid., 275 - 76.

‘Disneyfication’ and authenticity in its argument that we live in an environment of superficial appearance, where everything is motivated by the authentic image of the old but is entangled with the socio-economic state of the capitalism system.41 “Above all, we must be wary of any discourse which nostalgically calls for a return to some ‘golden age,’ an originary state of oneness with the world, which was somehow erased by contemporary existence.”42 According to

Jameson, urban renewal projects risk slipping into ‘Disneyfication,’ the blatant opposite of authenticity, mainly if there exists a search for appealing to or repeating some historicism.43 The work of scholars such as Jameson, Parmett, and Dovey warns us to be careful of participating in a similarly nostalgic dialogue of ‘authenticity.’ Jameson’s work suggests a theoretical framework that involves the comprehensive variety of subjects included in architecture, much like Deleuze scholar Adrian Parr’s concept of “machinic urbanism,” a nomadic practice that challenges the oppositional dualisms of history and becoming in representational urban design thinking.

This dissertation argues that the project proposed by Dewan Architects & Engineers Firm, due to its enormous size and unsuitable nature, will be a design of an ideal or artificial site. The method of duplicating the same site by repeating its former elements and principles is inadvisable for the re-development of an urban historical project because it leads to the potential

‘Disneyfication’ of historical identity (Figure 3.11, Figure 3.12, and Figure 3.13). Thus, this dissertation argues that the return to tradition is more or less a dynamic of a system that always calls for reproduction, and thus it becomes a dogma. However, this is not the end, according to

41- Ibid., 279. 42- Neil Leach, “Less aesthetics, more ethics,” in Architecture and its Ethical Dilemmas, ed. Nicholas Ray (London and New York: Taylor & Francis Inc., 2005), 140-41. 43- Fredric Jameson, “History lessons,” in Architecture and revolution: contemporary perspectives on Central and Eastern Europe, ed. Neil Leach (London: Routledge, 1999), 79.

Lundy. There is another kind of history; a “nomadic history,” in Deleuze’s work, “that is irreducible to both historicism and pure becoming, but rather falls between them.”44

Figure 3.11

Figure 3.12

Figure 3.13

Dewan Architects and Engineers Firm, The Al Kadhimiya Redevelopment, 2009. Representational Model: “Disneyfied” Historical Identity Source: Dewan Architects and Engineers Firm (DAEF). < http://www.dewan-architects.com/work-planning-kadhimiya.html>

44- Craig Lundy, History and becoming: Deleuze's philosophy of creativity (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012), 9.

The battle among contemporary architects and their critics cannot pass unnoticed. Alan

Colquhoun, an English architect, historian, critic, and teacher, and Khaled Asfour, an Egyptian architect, stand out as their tenacious critics who argue on their lack of understanding of the true traditional and passionate meaning conveyed by the relation existing between form and function in architecture. Asfour, in particular, points out that contemporary architecture in the Arab world can be termed as “cut and paste,” a process that has been in practice all over the world in ages where newer generations borrow architectural ideas from older ones.45 Although Asfour acknowledges borrowing as a global phenomenon, he does question its practice in the Arab world because of its hollowness and lack of critical approach.

According to Asfour, the process is more guided by emotions than reason, and as such, it does not accurately weigh the input and the output. As for his counterpart Colquhoun, he flatly states that: “The recent tendencies toward stylistic reference seem to be motivated by a need to reintroduce the notion of figure into architecture and to see architectural configurations as already containing a set of cultural meanings.”46 Colquhoun’s point is justifiable and is exemplified in the abundant use of the courtyard in contemporary designs. As a reference to traditional architecture, a practice cannot be understood unless the evaluation is made to connect the form to its function between past and present to account for the rationale of this use, assuming we take for granted that this reference to the past goes beyond the form. Yasser Elsheshtawy made a poignant and overarching remark in which his critique sees modern Arab architects and urban designers clinging to their heritage and tradition when it comes to examining cities designated as historical sites.47

45- Khalid Asfour, ‘Abdel- Halim’s Cairo Garden: An Attempt to ‘Defrost’ History,’ MIMAR 36, Concept Media, Singapore (1990): 72-77. 46- Alan Colquhoun, Essays in Architectural Criticism: Modern Architectural and Historical Changes (The MIT Press, MIT, Cambridge, 1985). 47- Yasser Elsheshtawy, Planning Middle Eastern cities: an urban kaleidoscope in a globalizing world (London: Routledge, 2004).

This consideration inevitably leads to the territory of the equation of understanding the impact of the form and function in relation to the creativity of the architect at work.

All in all, it is safe to say that the identity of a place is not determined by the history of the terroir. Rather, it comes from the type of interactions it maintains with the outside world. Doreen

Massey rightfully says that place is a process, something in the making rather than a product that is static, fixed and immovable.48 This means place, after all, is a complex and unattainable concept.

This is exactly the goal of this thesis, to use Deleuzian philosophy to critique, rather than to refute or confirm the Al Kadhimiya historical project proposed by the Dewan Architects & Engineers

Firm. Although this thesis supports the revival of the site, it does not subscribe to the approach of

Dewan in copying the past of Al Kadhimiya in the present because it is a static approach when considering Deleuze’s theory on the problematic of the fixed identity and representation.

3.4 Machinic Urbanism: Cracking the Past

Deleuze makes clear in his argument that, when it comes to architectural styles, it is unrealistic to cut and paste the past of our ancestors into the present, whereby we merely reproduce the forms and the adornments of the past. Deleuze wants to regain the history from the governing authority of the representational image of thought, and thus to liberate urban design thinking from the dualisms of historicism and surface becomings to produce unpredictable territories.

Furthermore, Deleuze characterizes this return as nomadic history that functions as a dynamic mediator between the historicism and surface becomings. “A new middle emerges, where a new monism and pluralism can be pursued that brings about continual creativity.”49 In fact, Deleuze’s goal is to reverse the primary importance given to identity and representation in the European logic

48- Doreen Massey, A Place Called Home? New Formation 17, (1992):3-15. 49- Craig Lundy, History and becoming: Deleuze's philosophy of creativity (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012), 102-3.

84 of difference.50 His approach thus defies two conditions that are assumptions, namely the special place given to “Being” and the representational image of thought.51 Nonetheless, in Deleuze’s approach, the two conditions have important and unexpected consequences on the “political, aesthetic and ethical”52 lives of people, for they constitute the established canon that Deleuze undertakes to disrupt by means of “his notion of empirical and non-conceptual difference in itself.”53

The main key regarding the concept ‘difference in itself,’ as discussed by Deleuze in the first chapter of his book Difference and Repetition, describes the approach as a ‘determining of a conception of difference,’54 while avoiding the outlining of it via the assumed canonical terms of identity and/or representation. In her development, Olkowski holds the position that the system of representation is put to question by Deleuze’s logic of difference. To counter the proponents of representation, Deleuze coined a new term: ‘internal difference.’ It is free of the four illusionary concepts of representation, namely: “identity, resemblance, analogy, and opposition.”55 In

Difference and Repetition, Deleuze achieves two essential shifts from the Kantian transcendental philosophy.56 First, instead of striving for the circumstances of “possible experience,” Deleuze offers a vital “account of the genesis of real experience, that is, the experience of this concretely existing individual here and now.”57 Second, to emphasize his concept of difference, Deleuze argues that “the genetic principle must itself be a differential principle.”58 In doing so, Deleuze

50- Cliff Stagoll, “Difference,” The Deleuze Dictionary, Revised Edition, ed. Adrian Parr (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), 74. 51- Ibid., 74. 52- Ibid., 74. 53- Ibid., 74. 54- Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994). 55- Dorothea Olkowski, Gilles Deleuze and the ruin of representation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 20. 56- “Gilles Deleuze,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, last modified September 24, 2012, accessed on March 18, 2015, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/deleuze/#Dif. 57- Ibid. 58- Ibid.

85 seeks to refrain from viewing difference as perpetually being in opposition to what is accepted as a social norm, something that counters what is perceptible or identifiable by humans. Difference is a genetic mechanism through which any representation becomes a dual force of illusion-identity in perpetual interaction with deepening and widening gaps as time goes by.

The most important element to this analysis revolves around the concept and definition of the term Adrian Parr calls “machinic urbanism.” “Machinic urbanism produces connections and relations between elements to stimulate challenges to traditional economic, environmental, social and cultural doxa, creating lines of ﬂight and alternative discourses from which to imagine, or fabulate, different futures.”59 An analysis of the proposal of the Assemblage Architects Firm will show that these alternate possibilities have this potential. Avoiding the visual reference of the

Baghdadi house and using its spirit, this finalist entry did not utilize history in a reactionary or nostalgic way. Instead, AAF creatively employed history, blending the present and future. In their proposal they design a very effective urban matrix, overlapping with everyday life and manners and facing numerous challenges to preserve the sacred and urban structures.60

To redevelop the main area around the Al Kadhimain shrine, Assemblage Architects Firm designed a plan on a large scale, taking advantage of the vacant land available around the historic core (Figure 3.14). They considered it necessary to move the demanded services to the edge of the historic site (Figure 3.15).

59- Jean Hillier, Book Review: Adrian Parr (2009) Hijacking Sustainability (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), Deleuze Studies, Volume 4, Issue 1, (2010):138-145. 60- “Holy City Masterplan, Al-Kadhimiya, Iraq,” Assemblage, accessed on January 01, 2015, http://www.assemblage.co/holy-city-masterplan/.

Figure 3.14: Assemblage Architects Firm, Holy City Masterplan, 2009. The Masterplan for the Al Kadhimiya historical site, Baghdad, Iraq. Source: AAF, Holy City Masterplan (HCM). < http://www.assemblage.co/holy-city-masterplan>

Figure 3.15: Assemblage Architects, Holy City Masterplan, 2009. The Masterplan for TAKHS, Baghdad, Iraq. The courtyards in the finalist entry as a “wandering distributions,” that moves back and forth between old and new anarchic relations. Source: AAF, Holy City Masterplan (HCM). < http://www.assemblage.co/holy-city-masterplan>

The redevelopment plan had two objectives: to enhance the living environments of inhabitants and to achieve a higher level of effectiveness around the shrine. The current

87 neighboring buildings conflict with the shrine, which needs more space for security checkpoints as well as additional service offices. In this light, a new protective wall, called Sacred Wall (Figure

3.16), with internal and external lines, has been recommended, which would surround and support the shrine, creating a machinic link between the actuality and virtuality. “The Sacred Wall encircles the shrine, working to enhance the intensity of the space around the shrine, filtering access and providing numerous functions for visitors. The Wall acts to mark the space of the sacred from everyday life.”61

Figure 3.16: Assemblage Architects, Holy City Masterplan, 2009. The Sacred Wall. Source: AAF, Holy City Masterplan (HCM). < http://www.assemblage.co/holy-city-masterplan>

The Assemblage Architects Firm’s courtyards strategy emphasized (and at the same time enhanced) the commercial phase of urban life by infusing different services and substructure to the inhabitants of the Al Kadhimiya site. Besides, government financed educational facilities would support and give more importance to these courtyards, which would promote the

61- Yana Golubeva, “Evolutionary approach towards redevelopment of historical sites versus complete erasure. Case study Kadhimiya historical center, Baghdad, Iraq” (presentation, 47th ISOCARP Annual World Congress, Wuhan, China, October 24-28, 2011).

88 development of small businesses, including but not limited to small stores, tea shops and small guesthouses, filling the dynamic urban space. Waleed Al Sayyed, a Palestinian/Jordanian architect, undertakes extensive research into the thermodynamics of certain elements and geometric forms in the spatial organization of the environment. The author notes that the courtyard, for example, plays the role of regulating the temperature and filtering the polluted city air. He also remarks that the main reception room, or Qa’a, is surrounded by two iwans.62 Spatial organization is another dimension of Arab-Islamic architecture. The courtyard, the Qa’a, the entrance, or the iwan and riwaq, are part of this space organization. Buildings are organized in a way that allows the design of small pedestrian paths with protective functions against bad weather. Space is thus organized to act as a climate control both inside and outside of the building structures.63 The private and public space concepts are designed to reflect the continuation of the suitable climatic situation for the dwellers and pedestrians.64 These airy buildings are infiltrated by transitional open courtyards providing public spaces and thus creating a microclimate. Daylight and natural ventilation are integrated whenever possible. Arcades also provide shade for the pedestrians taking strolls along the edge of the project. The goal of the energetic public spaces would be to allow economic assemblages to occur over time, the inhabitants comprised of different urban bodies. “The Sacred

Wall and the courtyards are inscribed in the existing urban pattern, these new elements in the historical site are embedded in the urban fabric and feel as though they have evolved there over

62- Waleed Al Sayyed, "Contemporary Arab Architecture: Space, Form, and Function." Lonaard Magazine 2, no. 7 (2011): 24-75. 63- John Warren, and Roy Worskett, “Conservation and Redevelopment of the Kadimiyeh Area in Baghdad,” in Adaptive reuse: integrating traditional areas into the modern urban fabric, August 16-20, 1982, ed. Margaret Bentley Sevcenko (Cambridge, Mass.: Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard University and MIT Laboratory of Architecture and Planning, 1983). 64- Fereshteh Ferdowsian, Modern and Traditional Urban Design Concepts and Principles in Iran, a thesis submitted to the faculty for Architecture and Town Planning of the University of Stuttgart (Shushtar/Iran: University of Stuttgart, Institute of Urban Planning, 2002).

89 time.”65 The machinic strategies adopted by Assemblage Architects Firm crack the past, propose new, pragmatic, and open experiments in uncertain, pliable and transitional spaces for all present and future proposes, connecting historical materiality with the flows of time.

According to Parr, a central feature underlying “machinic urbanism” is the non- regularizing methodology of everyday life where the human and non-human singularities are connected. “Machinic urbanism” characterizes the hybrid multiplicity occurring in the urban fabric, while it challenges the detachment “between the everyday life of the city and the city as a whole.”66 Assemblage’s proposal in its entirety is adapted to the environment and is prudent regarding its possible impact on the rich existing urban diversity. Very few demolitions were required, and Assemblage’s proposal upgraded the uniqueness of the ancient roads and dwellings along with the activity of its commercial zones, reproducing the spirit of the old Iraqi suqs

(markets). The walkable neighborhoods are resulting from the traditional urbanization where pedestrians have more access to space. In the case of the Al Kadhimiya historical site, streets inherited from the past are not suited for the modern system of transportation. Those streets were designed primarily for pedestrians to accommodate them during cold and hot seasons.67 It is pretty much the same historical street patterns that Assemblage’s proposal is actually reproducing to the benefit of the pedestrians, including bicycling opportunities for people instead of driving. To achieve this goal, more precaution was taken by creating more friendly environments such as corridors, urban areas with a traditional touch, and green spaces with shade and palm trees for pedestrians’ delight, enjoyment, and free movement. These artistic elements for people’s use are

65- Yana Golubeva, “Evolutionary approach towards redevelopment of historical sites versus complete erasure. Case study Kadhimiya historical center, Baghdad, Iraq” (presentation, 47th ISOCARP Annual World Congress, Wuhan, China, October 24-28, 2011). 66- Adrian Parr, Hijacking Sustainability (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2009), 142. 67- Waleed Al Sayyed, "Contemporary Arab Architecture: Space, Form, and Function." Lonaard Magazine 2, no. 7 (2011): 24-75.

90 shaped like axes for further appreciation by the pedestrians. Even though these architectural merits are characteristic of historic structures because of their relation to the movement of pedestrians and human scale of the site, they nonetheless pass between the dualisms of historicism and surface becomings, stimulating minor usage of history and energizing new social collectives.

Deleuze’s concept of nomadic history, shown in this alternative, is to liberate urban design thinking process from the doxa, a ‘taken-for-granted’ model of reflection. Deleuze proposes an ontology of becoming, “founded in celebration of the creativity and contingency of pure difference.”68 This ‘study of being’ facilitates thinking of ‘difference in itself’ – “in terms of how we differentiate in ourselves in our inevitable and perpetual process of transformation, rather than the difference between things, and being different from each other.”69 The logic of representation subjugates difference to identity, a practice that Deleuze finds retrograde in terms of creative thinking. Instead of thinking about what differs, minds are attached to what is represented, and thus lack the ingenuity to innovate by negating true inherent difference. “Becoming is concerned with the not-yet, with ensuring that something remains for the people-to-come.”70 Following this thought, Parr as an activist ardently recommends a practice of “machinic urbanism” for every architect and urban designer who seeks to achieve the “logic of collectivity” in his/her design

(Figure 3.16).

68- Michael Buser, “Thinking through non-representational and affective atmospheres in planning theory and practice,” Planning Theory 13, no. 3 (2014): 229-30. 69- Ibid., 229-30. 70- Jean Hillier, Book Review: Adrian Parr (2009) Hijacking Sustainability (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), Deleuze Studies, Volume 4, Issue 1, (2010):138-145.

Figure 3.16: Assemblage Architects, Holy City Masterplan, 2009. “Machinic Urbanism” Source: AAF, Holy City Masterplan (HCM). < http://www.assemblage.co/holy-city-masterplan>

Nomadic history attempts to cause a rupture in structures of domination and oppression to provide “wandering distributions” that move back and forth between old and new anarchic relations. These emerging movements are mixed with intensive and heterogeneous assemblages in an attempt to find more machinic forms of “opportunistic events” for our future. By struggling to crack the repressive and representative traditions, which is a political action at the core of both

Deleuze’s and psychoanalyst/political activist Feliix Guattari’s concept of becoming minoritarian, social-design activism will challenge any doxa, any taken-for-granted distributions of power.

Minor architects are activist architects that excavate the underground of our representational thinking, “implying a break with static, fixed, closed and dangerously essentialist notions of place, preserving a provisional ontology of place-as-becoming: there is always, already and only becoming-in-the-world.”71 The suggested strategy is to acknowledge, analyze, express, and resist

71- Kim Dovey, Becoming places: urbanism/architecture/identity/power (London: Routledge, 2010), 6.

92 the lines of force that are intrinsic to static history towards lines of flight, towards a nomadic history.72 (Figure 3.17, Figure 3.18, Figure 3.19, and Figure 3.20).

Figure 3.17 Figure 3.18

Figure 3.19 Figure 3.20

Figure 3.16: Assemblage Architects, Holy City Masterplan, 2009. “Nomadic History” Source: AAF, Holy City Masterplan (HCM). < http://www.assemblage.co/holy-city-masterplan>

3.5 Conclusion

This chapter scrutinizes both the winning proposal and finalist proposal for redevelopment of the Al Kadhimiya historical site, questioning whether or not the process of redevelopment has achieved what it sought to accomplish: a nomadic history, or, in fact, the opposite, by erasing its historical personality through the illusionary neo-traditional styles, which in fact represent the now and lead to the closure of the processes of becoming. To provide a clear distinction (the

72- Jill Stoner, Toward a minor architecture (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012).

‘singularity’ of each competition entry, not the dualist distinction between them), this chapter advocates the particularities of activity and event that can be mapped in each proposal as a movement of life. Through a comparative analysis, the objective is to offer suitable techniques of adding to the urban matrix of Kadhimiya without destroying the existing life structure. The goal is to “engage the creative lines of flight,”73 and stimulate the interplay of the old and new in contemporary spaces that are endowed with curiosity and contingency instead of simply seeking expressions of the nostalgic past, which are loyal to the fictional idea of a frozen past.74 Using history as historicism to preserve the urban form features is the most widely advocated pattern among the historic preservation patterns; mainly, because of its direct impact on the viewer.

According to Deleuze, the characteristics of the form can be comprehended by the human senses as an illusion; the observer can perceive the context and the architectural values through the form, by viewing representational image of the architectural object. In general, the preservation of the form features that the winning entry used can be divided into:

 Complete Preservation (Classical): This has two patterns; first, preservation of an existing

building; second, preservation of the form features of the previously existing building

(coping). For example, the winning entry deliberately simulated the traditional Arabian

city, confirming the existence of a gap between the shrine and the historic urban fabric.

 Partial Preservation: This can be done by maintaining certain elements or features, or a set

of elements and features selected by a designer, and it could be classified into patterns and

levels as in the ‘complete preservation.’ In this proposal the city would lose a lot of its

73- Adrian Parr, Hijacking Sustainability (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2009), 141. 74- Galdieri Eugenio, “Project and Tradition,” in Understanding Islamic architecture, eds. Attilio Petruccioli and Khalil K. Pirani (London and New York: Routledge Curzon, 2002), 114.

urban fabric, expanding the gap between the shrine and the historic urban fabric. The

buildings that are not included in the reservation list will be replaced by new ones that

simulate the style and construction material of the old buildings.

The analysis of the proposals reveals that the proposal which showed a construction of history on displaced immanence as a dynamic, virtual set of contingent ‘machinic’ connections, can supplant the representational image of thought, generating new realities and virtual possibilities to think differently. At the end of this chapter, nomadic history stays an open-ended practice– a unique approach that must certainly stay open. By dismissing the old question of what the history of the city is, asking instead the question of what nomadic history can do, this approach keeps architectural and urban design practices open to complex environmental, economic, and social lives. Through this vital question, and by thinking via temporal engagements and spatial organizations of different urban scales, future generations of architects, urban designers, planners, and educators will be detached from representational image of history. They will encounter a doubt and an uncertainty about the notion of “history” that must continue to share an ethics of design.

Nomadic history enables architects, urban designers, and planners to stay creative and critical, as an important part of an architectural and urban design resistance to the representational thinking where history is being “idealized” in a capitalist system. The capacity to think via different scales, to generate affective experiences and to connect the present events to the past that produce them, is an important design strategy. Seeking nomadic history means to start from the “middle” or with what urban context have toward the future becoming rather than start from the past designing for a finished image.

CHAPTER FOUR Main Findings

4.1 Memory in an Experimental Preservation: Deleuze, Duration, and Nonlinear History By adapting the Deleuze-Bergsonian new interpretation of memory and engaging subjectivity, art, and duration, this chapter explores the ‘machinic’ mode of experimental preservation by which architectural and urban design practices can operate difference, affect, and assemblage. This is especially manifest in a proposal by the Assemblage Architects Firm to redevelop the Al Kadhimiya historical site in Baghdad, Iraq. The political forces of Assemblage’s project both document and create an ontology of becoming and change within a real yet virtual past that produces durational events. In contrast, the winning proposal by the Dewan Architects and Engineers Firm (DAEF) offered “a string of actualities.”75

This chapter remarks on the findings, reporting what the data analysis exposed.

Architecture and urban design are traditionally exposed to dominant representational systems,76 which are fixed assemblies of time and space. Therefore, this mostly representational thinking condones any practice that involves the ontology of becoming and change in architectural preservation. Accordingly, this chapter examines the traditional ways of thinking about and preserving architecture that carries within it a principle of fixed and false identity and the

‘machinic’ mode of experimental design that generates difference. This chapter describes the morphological stages and the historical background of the planning and urban studies around the

Al Kadhimiya historical site as different approaches to resolve the dilemma of preservation for the

Al Kadhimiya historical site in Baghdad, Iraq (Figure 4.1, and Figure 4.2).

75- Craig Lundy, History and becoming: Deleuze's philosophy of creativity (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012), 20. 76- Alejandro Zaera-Polo, “The making of The Machine: Powerless Control as A Critical Strategy,” in Eleven Authors in Search of a Building: the Aronoff Centre for Design and Art at the University of Cincinnati, ed. Cynthia C. Davidson (New York: Monacelli Press, 1996), 32.

Figure 4.1: Fine Arts Library, Harvard College Library, The Al Kadhimain Shrine Surrounding, 1923. “Bird’s eye view of the shrine and its surrounding fabric from North West showing twin domes over tombs and the low dome covering the mosque.” Source: Fine Arts Library, Harvard College Library. Copyright: FAL, HCL. < https://archnet.org/media_contents/5325>

Figure 4.2: Fine Arts Library, Harvard College Library, The Entrance Gate of The Al Kadhimain Shrine, 1923. “The entrance gate of the Kadimain Mosque leading to the tomb of the Imam Moosa Al Kadim.” Source: Fine Arts Library, Harvard College Library. Copyright: FAL, HCL. Photographer: A. Kerim < https://archnet.org/media_contents/5325>

Subsequently, the chapter critically assesses and analyzes two different modes of urban design practice that have been submitted to an international-wide competition by two different firms to redevelopment the Al Kadhimiya historical site. The analysis precisely attempts to illustrate how the architects, urban designers, and preservationists in the winning entry intentionally used customary mean and inflexible mode to preserve the visual character of the historical site. In contrast to this view, there has been a critical engagement with the ‘machinic’ mode of experimental design in the finalist entry that escaped the historicism and the frozen-time image functionary towards a re-engineered creative historical/architectural dialogue, sketching affective assemblage with non-representational and temporary installations.

4.2 The Morphological Stages for the Al Kadhimiya Historical Site

Old Al Kadhimiya went through several morphological stages like any other historical area.

The stages can be identified as follows:

4.2.1 The First Morphological Stage: 1869-1940

This stage (Figure 4.3) extends until 1940 where the city was exposed to the updating of projects that began in 1869, which is the beginning of modernization at Kadhimiya.77 In this period the separation from Baghdad was finalized, and the Al Kadhimiya was incorporated with the Karkh

(the name of the western half of Baghdad) through the Tramway. The creation of streetcars in 1869 caused obvious, radical changes in the city’s morphology, especially in the southern borders where several public baths and commercial buildings were established.78 The commercial buildings were erected near the Tramway Station, like El-Esterbadi Market, in 1920, which extends southwest of

77- John Warren, “Baghdad Two Case Studies of Conservation,” The Arab City: Its Characters and Islamic Cultural Heritage: proceedings of Symposium Held in Medina, Kingdom of Saudi an Arabia, 24-29 Rabi II, 1401 AH, 28 Feb.-5 Mar. 1981 AD., eds. Ismail Serageldin and Samir El- Sadek, with the assistance of Richard R. Herbert (Arlington, VA: I. Serageldin, 1982), 246. 78- Sahar Mohamed Al-Kaisi, The influence of natural and cultural environment on the fabric of the city, with special reference to Iraq, Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis, Vol.3 (Sheffield University, 1984), 679.

98 the holy shrine for a 200-meter distance. As for the public baths, they are an important factor that completes the traditional markets, which are open services and entertainment connected to the commercial corridor. Of the most famous public baths are Bab Eddarazwa, El-Mirza Hadi, and

Al-Amir.79 This new path for travel and transportation caused many commercial enterprises and businesses to develop near the tram terminal, such as big hotels khans. In addition, The Wooden

Bridge was constructed by connecting wooden boats on the Tigris River in 1883 to facilitate transporting the increased number of visitors. This bridge connected Kadhimiya and Adhamiyah in 1884. In 1920 the weaving factory was constructed along with the Royal Hospital in 1930 and the Post Office in 1935. However, most of this modern development effected only the function and periphery of the area and did not disrupt the historic fabric of the core.80

4.2.2 The Second Morphological Stage: 1940-1975

In this stage (Figure 4.4), Al Kadhimiya and Al Adhamiyah were connected with a permanent bridge in 1957. Thus, obvious commercial and residential developments took place, especially in the southern part.81 Also, new important streets were built, like Al Shareef Alradi

Street (12 m.), Al- Qiblah Street (22 m.) and Al Zahra Street (30 m.) These streets caused partial damage to the urban fabric, especially in both Al Shiyoukh and Al Qatana areas. Besides, more damage to the urban fabric occurred around the shrine.82 During this period, three types of streets are included: 1) the individual streets and the narrow alleys in the traditional site, 2) the streets of geometric system in the modern neighborhood, and 3) the long streets that penetrated the old

79- Ibid., 665. 80- Sahar Mohamed Al-Kaisi, The influence of natural and cultural environment on the fabric of the city, with special reference to Iraq, Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis, Vol.3 (Sheffield University, 1984), 673. 81- Ibid., 683. 82- John Warren, “Baghdad Two Case Studies of Conservation,” The Arab City: Its Characters and Islamic Cultural Heritage: proceedings of Symposium Held in Medina, Kingdom of Saudi an Arabia, 24-29 Rabi II, 1401 AH, 28 Feb.-5 Mar. 1981 AD., eds. Ismail Serageldin and Samir El- Sadek, with the assistance of Richard R. Herbert (Arlington, VA: I. Serageldin, 1982), 246.

99 traditional fabric (the radiant streets), which extended from the center towards the edges. In 1957, the permanent Iron Bridge was opened; named Al Amma Bridge it replaced the Al Adhamiyah

Floating Bridge which was removed in advance.83

Figure 4.3: Sahar Mohamed Al-Kaisi, The Al Kadhimiya Historical Site, Before 1936. The First Morphological Stage. Source: Al-Kaisi, Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis, 1984, 671.

Figure 4.4: Sahar Mohamed Al-Kaisi, The Al Kadhimiya Historical Site, 1940-1975. The Second Morphological Stage. Source: Al-Kaisi, Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis, 1984, 683.

83- Sahar Mohamed Al-Kaisi, The influence of natural and cultural environment on the fabric of the city, with special reference to Iraq, Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis, Vol.3 (Sheffield University, 1984), 699.

100

4.2.3 The Third Morphological Stage: 1976-2003

The roads and the clearance of areas surrounding the mosque not only destroyed more than

9 hectares of some of the old urban fabric, but it also brought an inevitable array of modern multi- story blocks which have drastically and unsympathetically changed the overall historic character of the town.84 Another important impact on the historic fabric is overcrowding, which leads to a rapid deterioration of the structural condition of buildings and the decay of the environment

(Figure 4.5). Destroying this space caused the formation of wide open space around Al Kadhimain shrine, leaving it difficult to identify the place and discover its character.85 Also, this open space destroyed the humanistic scale which was found in the old historical fabric. The architectural fabric was distinguished during this period by being directed to the outside, away from the shrine, without, as previously taking into consideration the functional side. To some degree, this can be traced to the introduction of the modern air conditioning techniques and the popularity of using the automobiles in most Iraq provinces. The opening to the outside became a basic feature to the modern part of this traditional area where the line of building was restored and left a wide field as a front garden and a garage.86

4.2.4 The Fourth Morphological Stage: 2003 to present

Some vehicle routes were closed, and some were changed to one-way directional roads.

Despite these drastic alterations and population problems, there is still a unique opportunity to

84- John Warren, “Baghdad Two Case Studies of Conservation,” The Arab City: Its Characters and Islamic Cultural Heritage: proceedings of Symposium Held in Medina, Kingdom of Saudi an Arabia, 24-29 Rabi II, 1401 AH, 28 Feb.-5 Mar. 1981 AD., eds. Ismail Serageldin and Samir El- Sadek, with the assistance of Richard R. Herbert (Arlington, VA: I. Serageldin, 1982), 249. 85- John Warren, and Roy Worskett, “Conservation and Redevelopment of the Kadimiyeh Area in Baghdad,” in Adaptive Reuse: Integrating Traditional Areas into the Modern Urban Fabric, August 16-20, 1982, ed. Margaret Bentley Sevcenko (Cambridge, Mass.: Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard University and MIT Laboratory of Architecture and Planning, 1983), 32. 86- Sahar Mohamed Al-Kaisi, The influence of natural and cultural environment on the fabric of the city, with special reference to Iraq, Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis, Vol.3 (Sheffield University, 1984), 691.

101 rescue the situation by stopping further destruction, conserving the remaining fabric and by carefully weaving back the delicate urban pattern following characteristics of traditional Arab architecture as explored in this dissertation (Figure 4.6, and Figure 4.7).

Figure 4.5: Sahar Mohamed Al-Kaisi, The Al Kadhimiya Historical Site, 1976-2003. The Third Morphological Stage. Source: Al-Kaisi, Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis, 1984, 690.

Figure 4.6: John Warren, The Al Kadhimiya Historical Site, 2003 to present. The Fourth Morphological Stage. Source: John Warren, “Baghdad Two Case Studies of Conservation,” 1984, 249.

102

Figure 4.7: The Al Kadhimiya Historical Site, 2003 to present. Source: Google Earth image. 2013 to present.

4.3 Historical Background of the Planning and Urban Studies (approaches to the issue)

The dilemma of preservation for the Al Kadhimiya site is easily seen when one examines its history of development and commercialization (Figure 4.8, and Figure 4.9).

Figure 4.8: Yasser Tabbaa Archive, Aga Khan Documentation Center at MIT, The Al Kadhimain Shrine, 1980s. Source: Yasser Tabbaa Archive (YTA), AKDC at MIT. Copyright: DG Antiquities, Iraq. < https://archnet.org/media_contents/5325>

103

Figure 4.9: The Al Kadhimain Shrine, 1970s. Source: International Quran News Agency. < http://iqna.ir/en/news/3362320/old-photos-of-holy-shrines-in-al-kadhimiya>

This historical area is caught between conservation and redevelopment. In 1973, the Iraqi government approved the detailed Polish master plan, proposed by Polservice Consulting

Engineers (Warsaw-Poland). Unlike the Doxiadis master plan (Figure 4.10), (proposed by

Doxiadis Associates of Greece, 1958), that encouraged the whole destruction of Baghdad’s historical sites, the Polish planners suggested, in their first project for mapping Baghdad in1967, and their second detailed masterplan in 1973 (Figure 4.11, and Figure 4.12) , to preserve the historical neighborhoods of the Al Kadhimiya, and surrounding them with four main streets

(Figure 4.13).87 The 1967 study of Polservice accomplished the following operations:

 Constructing a green belt around the traditional city to preserve its religious and

historical identity and ensuring the domination of the Al Kadhimain shrine over the

adjacent area;

87- Łukasz Stanek, “Miastoprojekt goes abroad: The transfer of architectural labor from socialist Poland to Iraq (1958-1989),” Journal of Architecture 22:4 (2017): 786-811. DOI: 10.1080/13602365.2016.1204075, accessed 10 July, 2017.

104

 maintain the historical and religious buildings;

 adapt the traditional city and the areas adjacent to the Al Kadhimain shrine for

modern life requirements;

 place a suitable transportation network in the traditional city while keeping the lines

of the traditional activity in the residential sections in its style and identity that was

built to serve the pedestrians and suit the climate; and,

 increase the level of services offered to the visitors by establishing hotels and

restaurants.

In contrast, the Doxiadis proposal specifically suggested that: “The old, central areas of Al Rusafa and Al Karkh, together with the smaller areas of Al Adhamiyah and Al Kadhimiya, largely comprise a dense mass of congested buildings, intersected by narrow, winding alleys. They are without any open space or other amenities. These areas should be demolished and comprehensive layouts prepared for their development.”88

Based on the oil-boom, political demands dictated many municipal authorities in Iraq to approve a “policy of freeing important historical religious buildings from their surroundings,”89 which proved to be detrimental to several historic religious structures. Their demolition represents an unrecoverable loss of pristine Iraqi setting and urban environments. It was an obvious violation of the Polish master plans, “an action that caused the head of the Polish team in Baghdad to resign in protest.”90

88- Panayiota Pyla, “Back to the Future: Doxiadis's Plans for Baghdad,” Journal of Planning History 7 (1) 2008: 3- 19. http://www.ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/jsd/article/view/24042. 89- Akram J. M. Al-Akkam, “Urban Heritage in Baghdad: Toward a Comprehensive Sustainable Framework,” Journal of Sustainable Development 6:2 (2013): 39. 90- Łukasz Stanek, “Miastoprojekt goes abroad: The transfer of architectural labor from socialist Poland to Iraq (1958-1989),” Journal of Architecture 22:4 (2017): 786-811. DOI: 10.1080/13602365.2016.1204075, accessed 10 July 2017.

105

Figure 4.10: Doxiadis Masterplan of Baghdad, DA 1958. Source: Doxiadis, Constantinos. Ekistics: an Introduction to the Science of Human Settlements, 485. .

Figure 4.11: Polservice Consulting Figure 4.12: Polservice Consulting Engineers Warsaw-Poland, 1967. Engineers Warsaw-Poland, Masterplan of Baghdad, 1967. Masterplan of Baghdad, 1974.

Source: Stanek, Łukasz. “Miastoprojekt goes abroad: The transfer of architectural labor from socialist Poland to Iraq (1958-1989),” Journal of Architecture 22:4 (2017).

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Figure 4.13: “Design of the restructuring of the Al Kadhimiya neighborhood in Baghdad, The mid-1970s.” Polservice Consulting Engineers Source: Stanek, Łukasz. “Miastoprojekt goes abroad: The transfer of architectural labor from socialist Poland to Iraq (1958-1989),” Journal of Architecture 22:4 (2017).

In 1980 the site went through an urban intervention that demolished its historical features

(Figure 4.14).91 During this period a radical change occurred in the planning idea due to the destructive operations which took place immediately around the Al Kadhimain shrine. This resulted in the destruction of 9 hectares of the most architecturally motivating parts of the site’s core, and the construction of new multi-story buildings that are unsympathetic and out of character with the historical fabric of the area.92 The government at that time appointed the Architectural and Planning Partnership, A.P.P Firm, to redevelop the Al Kadhimiya site (Figure 4.14). The founder of the firm, British architect John Warren, said: “to predict naturally desired lines in

91- John Warren, and Roy Worskett, “Conservation and Redevelopment of the Kadimiyeh Area in Baghdad,” in Adaptive Reuse: Integrating Traditional Areas into the Modern Urban Fabric, August 16-20, 1982, ed. Margaret Bentley Sevcenko (Cambridge, Mass.: Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard University and MIT Laboratory of Architecture and Planning, 1983), 32. 92- John Warren, “Baghdad Two Case Studies of Conservation,” The Arab City: Its Characters and Islamic Cultural Heritage: proceedings of Symposium Held in Medina, Kingdom of Saudi an Arabia, 24-29 Rabi II, 1401 AH, 28 Feb.-5 Mar. 1981 AD., eds. Ismail Serageldin and Samir El- Sadek, with the assistance of Richard R. Herbert (Arlington, VA: I. Serageldin, 1982), 248.

107 conjunction with community needs, our task was to create a new segment of the city, sympathetic to the character of the past, but designed for the needs of the future.”93 The A.A.P. plan proposes the use of smaller than usual traditional housing units that do not completely surround the courtyard (Figure 4.15). These smaller units with semi-open courtyard plans yield a rather different relationship between the dwellings of the traditional pattern. The new housing caters to modem needs such as the motor car (parking), air-conditioning and smaller families. The A.P.P projects can be considered one of the first attempts in the Arab world to re-create a substantial part of a traditional Arab medina with modem conveniences and standards, without directly imitating the designs of the old buildings.94

Figure 4.14: Architectural and Planning Partnership (A.P.P) proposal for the restructuring of the Al Kadhimiya Neighborhood in Baghdad, 1983. Source: MIT Libraries, Aga Khan Visual Archive. Copyright: Architecture & Planning Partnership. < https://archnet.org/media_contents/5330>

93- Sherban Cantacuzino, “Baghdad Resurgent,” Mimar 6: Architecture in Development, ed. Hasan-Uddin Khan (Singapore: Concept Media Ltd., 1982): 56-71. 94- Ibid., 56-71.

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Figure 4.15: MIT Libraries, Aga Khan Visual Archive, Traditional House in the Al Kadhimiya site, 1982. “House to be restored by Architecture & Planning Partnership.” Source: MIT Libraries, Aga Khan Visual Archive. Copyright: Architecture & Planning Partnership. < https://archnet.org/media_contents/5330>

Unfortunately, authorities were torn between keeping the traditional values which conserve both the fabric of this historic town and Iraqi way of life (its customs, architectural values, and

Islamic cultural practices), and eliminating the historical elements to make way for modern innovations. The indecision of authorities stems from diametric positions: to completely clear the area and construct afresh with “global” modern buildings and urban environment or to retain and restore all the historical buildings and urban fabric. Essentially, from the 1980’s until now, due to the opposing opinions regarding the planning of the area, the decision-making process has been thwarted; so much so that the demolished area remains unbuilt (Figure 4.16, Figure 4.17, and

Figure 4.16).

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Figure 4.16: Al Kadhimiya Neighborhood in Baghdad, west of the Tigris River, 2007. Source: Google Earth image. < http://iraqslogger.powweb.com >

Figure 4.17: Al Kadhimiya Neighborhood in Baghdad, 2013. Source: www.skyscrapercity.com

Figure 4.18: Al Kadhimiya Neighborhood in Baghdad, 2013. Source: www.skyscrapercity.com

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In 2008-2009 the federal government announced an international competition, performed by the Mayor’s Office of Baghdad, which sought proposals for the regeneration of the Al

Kadhimiya historical site. The mayor of Baghdad announced a request for proposals for the redevelopment of the historical site. The mayor’s vision was to combine the religious, commercial and local inhabitants’ interests in a design that would be representative of the true nature of the environment where people live. The mayor’s call for proposals emphasizes the uniqueness of the

Al Kadhimiya historical site, but also reveals the need to provide durable solutions to its ongoing urban challenges.

4.4 The Allusion of the History in the Traditional Mode of Preservation

In order to persuade the Baghdad authorities of the viability of their proposal, the winning proposal stressed the fact that the preservation project for the Al Kadhimiya site would revive its historical image. The mission of the potential bid winner would be that, by a repetition of the past, an exact construction and restoration would be accomplished. One of the most important themes, which is part of Deleuze’s theory of Difference and Repetition, is the perception that repetition, by its nature, precisely replicas an original, the model and its reproductions.95 Deleuze states that individuals frequently normalize their thinking as a set of rules and dogmas, which have their roots in identical notions. Their classifications and judgments tend to exclude difference. Deleuze consequently criticizes this ‘dogmatic image of thought’ since it correlates with a system of imagistic representation.96 As British sociologist John Marks points out, Deleuze thus goes further to defy the imposed and moralistic nature of one such image which is assumed to be part and parcel

95- Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994): 128. 96- Daniela Voss, Conditions of thought Deleuze and transcendental ideas (Edinburgh University Press, 2013): 19.

111 of people’s everyday life, and therefore “ought to be known by every member of society.”97

Deleuze proposes that individuals do not see what the future holds, and properly this is a respectable point of view. Architecturally, uncertainty might lead the design thinking process to fairly different zones. Sketching from the Deleuze’s ontology of becoming and change, architectural and urban design ‘elements and features would be used in an unexpected and influential way. Conversely, the prototype of representational architectural and urban design thinking for renewal projects, precisely in the preservation and conservation of historical sites, aims to guard a stationary image of history by repeating the historical styles and recycling the traditional elements. This practice is disapproved as being “Disneyfied” and a generalization of history. The immobile result of these forms evokes a predetermined image, an artificial frozen- time image. Dewan’s proposal reflects the challenge to make the Al Kadhimiya historical site an eye-catching and prospering local and global focus in the domain of sacred and profitable tourism.

The holy site would have traditional residential homes as well as traditional social and economic gathering places like markets, as well as religious exhibitions within its vicinities (Figure 4.19).

By involving the private sector in finishing the project,98 Dewan Firm sheds light on the importance of helping domestic economy by using positive branding and globalization. Branding motivates the mind of the consumer and creates trust,99 feeling, and experience that the consumer had with the original. Alan Bryman explains that “Disneyization is depicted as a process by which the principles of the Disney theme parks dominate more and more sectors of society.”100 Bryman claims that the concept of Disneyization becomes so powerful and its influence is scattering

97- John Marks, “Thought,” The Deleuze Dictionary, Revised Edition, ed. Adrian Parr (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), 284. 98- The Municipality of Baghdad (Amant Al- Assima), The Development of the Al Kadhimiya district (Development Administration – Heritage Section. Baghdad, Iraq, 2008). 99- Leonard L. Berry, “Cultivating service brand equity,” Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 28:1(2000), 128-137. Doi: 10.1177/0092070300281012. 100- Alan Bryman, The Disneyization of Society (London: Sage, 2004), 1.

112 globally into zones that we do not easily notice.101 Moreover, globalization is “a trend towards increased economic and political interdependence, which at once fosters and is fostered by cultural homogenization.”102 Understanding the globalization of the Disney brand, makes easier to grasp the principals of the re-development in Dewan’s proposal to attract international tourists using a branded experience. “Branding is not just for tangible goods; it is a principal success driver for service organizations as well.” 103

From a social perspective, Dewan’s proposal highlighted two phases of social-religious tradition. It decomposed traditional architecture into its elements and principles, at the level of either facades or plans, and merged these elements into the Al Kadhimiya design project. This

“integration” might be obvious or might merely include a level of alteration. Initially, at the main phase, this proposal expanded the areas around the shrine by imitating the configuration of the traditional city in coherence with the integrated religious functions of the historical site. During the second phase, this proposal copied the traditional architecture by including Islamic motifs, such as the domes and riwaqs that were used in the structure of the peripheral buildings, arches, and shanasheel that were used in the additional buildings. The end outcome might be simpler than the old in some aspects, but it necessity visually evoke, in a nearly cut and paste method, which it is obtained from the old source.104 This repetition represents a predetermined “norm” as a formula of hegemonic urban design practice.

From an economic standpoint, the historic buildings would be hidden by the “new” and

“bright” facades, to attract more local and international worshippers and visitors and to enhance

101- Alan Bryman, The Disneyization of Society (London: Sage, 2004), 1. 102- Joshua P. Hochschild, “Globalization: Ancient and modern,” The Intercollegiate Review, 40-48. 103- Alan Bryman, The Disneyization of Society (London: Sage, 2004), 1. 104- Khaled Asfour, “Identity in the Arab Region: Architects and Projects from Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar,” in Constructing identity in contemporary architecture: case studies from the South 2009, eds. Peter Herrle and Stephanus Schmitz (Berlin: LIT Verlag Münster, 2009), 150.

113 the religious tourism. In fact, what Dewan Architects & Engineers Firm actually suggested in their design of the Al Kadhimiya historical site consisted of more demolition of the urban fabric with the exception of a few valuable old buildings. In Dewan’s proposal, the formation of authentic identity had turned into an important marketing device as a Disneyfication practice that directed design strategy for developers and businessmen whose interests were only motivated by the ability to make a fast profit. Disneyfication can be labeled as the alteration of the Al Kadhimiya site into a conventionally measured environment that is captive and restricted to a representational image of history with homogenized assets that divest the place (the Al Kadhimiya site) from its unique character and repackages and reproduces it in a scoured design.

The urban design practice adopted by the winning entry focused on the urban form of local structures, such as shanasheels (Iraqi windows) and arches. They constantly used these structures as measurable and determinate material properties at the residencies because of their distinctive local style, not because of their architectural values. Moreover, the project did not observe or take into account the relationship between urban form and architectural values as it would in any historic fabric, creating routinized repetitions and customary habits. In fact, the urban design practice and methods subjected the Al Kadhimiya site to a formalized image, reducing the historical site and the urban form to a representational portrait that conveys an authorized narrative.

As a result, this project is an example of an easy solution that gives no room for reorientating the view of urban design practice towards the creative transformation of the site, instead it enforces the stability of a standard series of conventional events, images, and episodes that are frequently repeated in the identical order of organized cycle and time. The urban design practice in the winning entry exists as an allusion. Urban design practice is designed conventionally to reflect the image of the thought and social platform that refers to a traditional

114 object, which always already defines cultural patterns. Moreover, historical architecture in the winning entry is reduced to a system of symbolization that represents traditional assumptions.

Figure 4.19: Dewan Architects and Engineers Firm, The Al Kadhimiya Redevelopment, 2009. The winning entry project for the Al Kadhimiya historical site, Baghdad, Iraq. Source: Dewan Architects and Engineers Firm (DAEF). < http://www.dewan-architects.com/work-planning-kadhimiya.html>

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According to K. Michael Hays, an American architectural historian, the representational image and conventional realm of the architectural form appear as a reference through the materiality, function, and connotation.105 The characteristics of the form can be comprehended by the human senses as an illusion; the observer can perceive the context and the architectural values through the form by viewing a representational image of the architectural object. Architectural and urban design practices have always conventionally located the personal subject at the focus of its interpretations. The designer aims to preserve a specific sense by visualizing and materializing the distinct character of a site, converting its genius loci into an inert image to reflect a determinate meaning to be deciphered by the subject. Christian Norberg-Schulz, a Norwegian theorist, defines genius loci as the distinctive ‘character’ of a setting before it has been imagined and converted into architectural form.106 Consequently, the preservation of a specific environment can be included under the architectural representation if genius loci is truthfully real, meaning it has “already” embodied specific meaning and has become an operation of impersonal packaging effects throughout its exclusionary mode. Besides, the impressive mimicry of authentic qualities to preserve a specific site serves the representational image because it is performed through selection of a set of elements and features or shared relations that can be repeated in a certain pattern for various successive ‘form’ units as a sort of imitation and act of copying.

“Because the idea of genius loci has often been criticized as an anthropomorphic projection of human agency onto the landscape, it registers as an example of the fantastic elements that circle pure agency. If, however, genius loci is phantasmatic, it returns only insofar as the subject brings it back to the new subjective field formed by the architectural encounter, effectively re-imagining it as surplus affect.”107

105- K. Michael Hays, Architecture's desire: Reading the late avant-garde (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010): 55. 106- Christian Norberg-Schulz, Genius Loci: Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture (New York: Rizzoli, 1980).

107- Simone Brott, Architecture for a Free Subjectivity: Deleuze and Guattari at the Horizon of the Real (England: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2011): 46.

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In Italian architect Aldo Rossi’s book, The Architecture of the City,108 the established shape of the city is synthesized as a mnemonic tableau, yet the impersonal effects of urban architecture do not take into account the collective human will or spirit and their cultural memory-the agency of genius loci. Rossi’s phenomenological assumption and postmodernist representation of the urban subject persists in considering urban architecture as a limited-formalism, using historical elements as reductive objects to serve the transcendental ego that excludes the process of becoming for the reason of being. Genius loci, thus, has been excluded by the coding rules from the productive model of impersonal effects; it remains either “as the shadow of a primordial, predetermined whole forming worlds, or as phantasmatic surplus consistent with the fragments of symbolic and discursive orders within the subject’s psyche.”109 The cultural memory in Rossi’s depiction is defined regarding the collective ego that forges relations outside the fixed force of the higher principle (such as the superego). However, Rossi’s depiction does not have the capacity to surpass

“the realm of the cognizing subject, and forms of memory that are, in part, invented or constructed.”110

Consequently, the architectural form is hunted by meaning and the architectural values visualized by cultural patterns; thus, both of them are experienced and pass themselves off as representational and unquestionable objects, reflected by the mirror of nature, performing a predictable scheme of meaning. In the winning entry, the historical tradition of the Al Kadhimiya site is used as a stabilized framework of reference in the preservation process, representing fixed identity in which its formal features are kept without any changes and as a result, are considered

108- Aldo Rossi, The Architecture of the city, trans. Diane Ghirardo and Joan Ockman (Cambridge, MA, 1982). 109- Simone Brott, “Toward a Theory of the Architectural Subject,” in Deleuze and Architecture, ed. Hélène Frichot and Stephen Loo (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013), 159. 110- Simone Brott, Architecture for a Free Subjectivity: Deleuze and Guattari at the Horizon of the Real (England: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2011): 48.

117 and measured as ‘ending’ image (or completed practice). Hays mentions that “any traditional or conventional form is likely to have more authority, to engage our assent more readily, than a form that tries to expose the complex matrix of disciplinary procedures and institutional apparatuses through which the object is actually constructed.”111 The winning entry symbolizes a dominant result in the process of mimetic preservation work, providing a representational image of the traditional architecture that blocks future perspectives.

4.5 Deleuze, Duration, and Nonlinear History

Henri Bergson’s philosophy of time as duration was adopted by the French theorist Gilles

Deleuze when evolving his theory of Difference and Repetition. The tremendous achievement via

Deleuze’s philosophy of difference is the outlining of the most fundamental mechanisms of the theories of time and memory which were developed in Bergson’s works and the exposing of them to an idiosyncratic approach and rigorous analysis. According to Deleuze, the novelty of Bergson’s conception of a pure past that is preserved in itself and not perceived in the closure of present lies in the lack of actualization of this real yet virtual past in space. Instead, this non-representational past can only exist in various planes of temporality and memory and be actualized by the pure perception that materializes it, opening the way for “Bergsonian intuition,” the ability “to think intuitively---to think in duration.”112 Deleuze insists that we can mentally grasp the notion of duration if we use Bergson’s critical method of ‘philosophical intuition,’ an intentional deep awareness or self- willed consciousness. “Bergsonian intuition” revolves around a nomadic resonance that can be perceived between various, concealed, and inner impulses of becoming, or planes of memory, which produce new models of subjectivity. “Bergsonian intuition” asserts that

111- K. Michael Hays, Architecture's desire: Reading the late avant-garde (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010): 55. 112- Samuel Enoch Stumpf, Philosophy: history and problems (New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 1982): 371.

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“questions relating to subject and object, to their distinction and their union, should be put in terms of time rather than space.”113

The problematic situation, as Bergson claims, is that, in representational thinking, an ontological version of temporalization has been established based on a pre-given form of homogeneous and static spatiality. Thus, Bergson criticizes the derivative interpretation of time that originates from that pre-given understanding, which is “to think in terms of space rather than time.”114 Therefore, Bergson’s critical method of ‘philosophical intuition’ aims to recognize the unnoticeable differences and qualitative changes that structure an organized and perceived whole.

According to Bergson, we intuitively grasp the nature of life as a whole—as a comprehensive process of the dynamic truth of things in our spiritual consciousness. Bergson argues that the individual needs to affectively enter into the heart of the thing and engage the whole experience, to immediately ‘coincide’ and directly ‘sympathize’ with it.115 The main point lies with the body’s affectivity to empower the forces of perception and memory that are often overlooked by representational thinking. “Bergsonian intuition” exposes consciousness (or mental life, in a general sense), to be basically temporal. In this regard, consciousness is a continuing body’s affectivity, an ongoing process of mental action and activities that create an internal time connected to a passive subject, indicating a link between affectivity, temporality, and life itself. Following

Deleuze’s assertion, every human subject on the plane of life itself must not be considered as a stable being or rational individual. Instead, each individual self is an active present and must be perceived as a continually altering assemblage of forces that already create a past and future.

113- Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory, trans. N. M. Paul and W. S. Palmer (New York: Zone Books, 1988): 71. 114- John Marks, “Representation,” The Deleuze Dictionary, Revised Edition, ed. Adrian Parr (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), 229. 115- Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory, trans. N. M. Paul and W. S. Palmer (New York: Zone Books, 1988): 71.

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4.6 Machinic Mode to Preserve the Nonlinear History

In the text Gilles Deleuze and the Ruin of Representation, postmodern philosopher

Dorothea Olkowski looks for concepts and alternative structures that promote abstract and flowing models of time and space to combat “static, hierarchically- dualistic ordered structures.”116 She seeks flexible ontologies that can absorb diversity and difference in an open yet pragmatic way.

“The task will be to create an image of difference”117 she writes, one “that sweeps away the metaphysics of being and identity and their representation, so as to practically and conceptually acknowledge the stuttering practice of an ontology of becoming.”118 Olkowski posits that the rigid modes and categories in every major discipline, whether theoretical or practical, do not simply disrupt the openness of thinking, they also subordinate the difference to the representation authority.119 In his refusal of this type of representational thinking, Deleuze considers that it is a basis of stable and false identity.120 Using Deleuze’s work on difference, Olkowski grasps the point that the scheme of representation is placed in query by Deleuze’s ‘logic of difference.’ In experimental practice, the transformation from a ‘logic of identity’ to a ‘logic of difference’ activates a process of differentiation. Olkowski explain:

“In order for there to be movement and mobility, the nomadic nomos, distortion must destabilize representation, representation must be torn from its center and from the identity of the concept, as well as from the perfect hierarchy of distribution that Aristotle establishes.”121

116- Dorothea Olkowski, Gilles Deleuze and the ruin of representation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999): 2. 117- Ibid., 2. 118- Ibid., 14. 119- Ibid., 1-2. 120- Jing Wu, The Logic of Difference in Deleuze and Adorno: positive constructivism VS negative dialectics (Saarbrücken: Lambert, 2011), 48. 121- Dorothea Olkowski, Gilles Deleuze and the ruin of representation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 25.

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Furthermore, the examination of the notion of pure difference is a vital part of Deleuze’s ontology of becoming and change. Despite the fact that pure difference cannot be identified and is unattainable, it underlies all identities, “affirming that any identity is always riven with forces, with processes, connections, movements.”122 Olkowski believes that Deleuze confirms what

Michele Montreley calls the ‘ruin of representation;’ the shaking up of the whole system —“that is, of the static, hierarchically put-together structures of time and space,”123 in order to support the production of ‘machinic’ relations, linking diverse bodies in diverse spatial and temporal practice.

Deleuze contemplates that the ontology of becoming and change has “its own duration, a measure of the relative stability of the construct, and the relationship between forces at work in defining it; becoming must be conceived neither in terms of a ‘deeper’ or transcendental time nor as a kind of

‘temporal backdrop’ against which change occurs.”124 Consequently, architectural and urban design practices, intervening and inserting between both formality and spatiality, seem to be as an abstract machine. The non-authoritative occurrence of architecture is produced from its multiple functions and emerges in the perpetual interactions and living desires such as, ‘shelter, security, privacy, and boundary control,’125 to name a few. As part of Deleuze’s ontology, a machine can freely develop thematic connections and dynamic assemblages which, because desire can link and drive ‘multiplicities of elements’126 with different arrangements, recognize ‘machinic’ relations and potential. The American architect Peter Eisenman articulates that the uncertainty in design

122- Elizabeth Grosz, Architecture from the outside - essays on virtual and real space (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2001), 95. 123- Colin Gardner, Review of the book Gilles Deleuze and the Ruin of Representation by Dorothea Olkowski (New York: College Art Association, Inc., 2000), 1. http://www.caareviews.org/reviews/212#.V2btHY-cHmQ. Doi: 10.3202/caa.reviews.2000.53, accessed 11 May 2015. 124- Cliff Stagoll, “Becoming,” The Deleuze Dictionary, Revised Edition, ed. Adrian Parr (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), 27. 125- Kim Dovey, “Assembling Architecture,” in Deleuze and Architecture, ed. Hélène Frichot and Stephen Loo (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013), 133. 126- Philip Goodchild, Deleuze and Guattari: an introduction to the politics of desire (London: Sage, 1996): 4.

121 practice can facilitate the mode of ‘machinic’ to be activated. In this manner, architecture cannot be reduced to a system of symbolization that represents traditional assumptions and has “already” embodied meaning in the architectural formalistic image.127 The idea of assemblage destabilizes the fixed categorizations of ‘identity’ and ‘being’ in relation to time and space, giving priority to‘difference’ and ‘becoming’ in pure duration. Bergson states that: “Pure duration is the form taken by the succession of our inner states of consciousness when ourself lets itself live when it abstains from establishing a separation between the present state and anterior states.”128 The crystalline temporality of duration is a constituent of time that is not perceived as a chronological succession, by which the terminus of one instant determines the outset of the following one; nor is it a mathematical time or measurable time that is divisible into separate units of seconds, minutes, hours, and so on which do not construe as the movement of real-time or lived consciousness.129

The logic of subjectivity that Deleuze notices in Bergson’s thinking is this: “the only subjectivity is time, non-chronological time grasped in its foundation, and it is we who are internal to time, not the other way round...... time is not the interiority in us, but just the opposite, the interiority in which we are, in which we move, live and change.”130 In other words, the fluidity of Deleuze’s ideas about duration marks the occurrence of time and becoming, in which all forms of life, or creative evolutions, unfold in that movement of time as intensive affects and material forces, opening towards the status of indeterminacy. Deleuze terms this becoming as a ‘pure incorporeal

127- Peter Eisenman, “Processes of the Interstitial: Notes on Zaera-Polo's Idea of the Machinic,” El Croquis 83, Madrid (1997): 21-35. 128- Henri Bergson, Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Data of Immediate Consciousness, trans. F. L. Pogson (London: Dover, 2001[1910]): 74-75. 129- Henri Bergson, Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Data of Immediate Consciousness (New York: Dover Publications, 2001), 100. 130- Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 2: The Time-Image, trans. H. Tomlinson and R. Galeta (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989): 110.

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Event,’131 which has limitless perennial qualities. The motions of this pure becoming create

“incorporeal beings”132 as events that are attributed to the bodies, and they have an infinitive identity. These unlimited events-verbs are about what the bodies can do. They are not ‘adjectives,’ not about what the bodies are. The events of pure becoming are expressed through the bodies’ actions, they are on the exterior surfaces of these bodies, and they are always unfinished.

In his book, A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History,133 Manuel De Landa, a Mexican-

American philosopher, constructs his own interpretation of ‘history and new materialism’ based on the philosophies of Deleuze and the French theorist Felix Guattari. De Landa perceives the potential of human evolution as a ‘generative’ process of materiality to be inserted in the flows of dynamism and vitality. De Landa develops a new method of ‘meshworks’ that thrive within synergistic relations of their component parts outside the hierarchical-historical system, generating possible assemblage with infinite variations. The component parts in one assemblage can be distinguished by their material aspect and territorializing and deterritorializing alignments. They can generally form contingent exteriors and arrange heterogeneous elements, affirming the potential to pick one assemblage and attach it to another, avoiding any destruction of its individuality. The substantial characteristics and forming principles of creating points and relations between an assemblage and its parts are ungoverned complexity and non-linearity. Therefore, the new components and rearranged signs interact as an assemblage to create a pure spatial positivity.

This inventive assemblage generates and reproduces multiple experiences and identities.134

Eisenman calls for a ‘machinic’ process in design to operate a different relation between the

131- Craig Lundy, History and becoming: Deleuze's philosophy of creativity (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012): 3. 132- Ibid., 3. 133- Manuel De Landa, A thousand years of nonlinear history (New York: Swerve Editions, 2014).

134- Manuel Delanda, A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity (London: Continuum, 2006): 106.

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“natural” and “technical” aspects of architecture. Eisenman states that in the Deleuzo-Guattarian logic of the ‘machinic’ there exists a chaotic nature that enables the system to be open to the external connections and to deterritorialize its elements to interact with others. That does not mean that the process is already collapsed, but it is free of the rules and laws that hegemonic systems of organism and mechanism possess. As a result, ‘machinic’ architecture occurs in the mediation of a “mechanism and organism on the one hand, and chaos on the other hand.”135 Eluding the direct graphics style of the Baghdadi house and via its essence, Assemblage Architects Firm deals with history creatively (Figure 4.20).

To improve the core part nearby the Al Kadhimain shrine, Assemblage Architects Firm proposed a master plan using the large area that is available around the core. Assemblage

Architects Firm planned a very active urban matrix that intersects with everyday life actions and at the same time solves many problems in preserving the shrine and urban buildings. The master plan had dual purposes: to attain an advanced sphere of influence nearby the shrine and to improve the atmosphere of the residents. The Assemblage Architects’ proposal emphasized the social aspect by offering a string of courtyards containing temporary installations with multiple functions.

Although installations typically avoid the stability associated with the architectural form, both emphasize the urban spatiality and the created movement of ‘embodied’ viewers and users. These installations completely engaged with their various senses and bodies, who activate, intensify, and participate as affective assemblages and potentials in the creation of urban space. By creating moving models of duration and repeatedly altering temporary design with cognitive spatial movement, the Assemblage Architects’ proposal presented a unique opportunity for a ‘machinic’ process to occur in the urban design practice and to be utilized in the experimentation of new

135- Peter Eisenman, “Processes of the Interstitial: Notes on Zaera-Polo's Idea of the Machinic,” El Croquis 83, Madrid (1997): 21-35.

124 relations and the abandonment of limited functions and all social norms, in order to produce and generate a pure sense of art and architecture. The design of each courtyard followed different patterns, consisting of social assembly places for residents, green open spaces with shaded areas, landscapes and a variety of facilities for visitors. This would enhance and empower the bottom-up social activities. The courtyard design strategy seemed to deliver new facilities and infrastructure to the residents of the historical site, highlighting and improving the economic aspect of the urban life. Furthermore, the government is intended to fund learning services and small businesses to fill the urban spaces with dynamic activities.

The aim of these active public spaces with their experimental design is to generate economic and social assemblages over time within different and diverse urban bodies, reaching beyond their practical function of advertising as a representational image and offering a production to comprise a little bit of creativity of life, freedom, fluid change, and the fantastical. The urban design practice in this proposal stressed the social, economic and cultural bonding of the people living in the immediate environmental aspect of the site. Assemblage’s proposal improved the character of the historic streets and houses as well as the vitality of its commercial areas, giving them the sense of belonging. These qualities, so typical of historic cities, are closely related to the human scale of the built environment and to pedestrian modes of movement that foster strong social interaction. At the same time, the renewed historical site would increase its fame and attract more regional and international worshippers and visitors who identify themselves as culturally connected to Kadhimiya. By liberating the potentialities of images from the “transcendental illusions of representation,”136 diagrammatic production of different affects can be produced. The preservation of the architectural pattern is revealed by giving priority to cultural difference through

136- Elizabeth Grosz, Architecture form the Outside - Essays on Virtual and Real Space (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2001): 62.

125 the continuous preservation of the initial function of the buildings and the temporary installations.

In this case, the urban renovation of the Al Kadhimiya site and the preservation was freed from the representation. The old urban fabric is maintained and supported by a new urban assemblage matrix that is coherently integrated with the old one in terms of its block heights and its method of processing its main function in serving as the Imams’ mosque while dedicating the surrounding to enhance it efficiently. The finalist entry intends to preserve most of the old urban fabric, and the gap would be filled by new buildings that have mixed modern style with heritage structures, such as arches. The preservation included the distribution of the main streets that diverge from one central point; namely, the Imams’ mosque. Therefore, the outlines of spaces are undefined and regularly defied, violated and prolonged as new affections and associations are born and deep- rooted ones break. The fortuitous intensities of conditions, events, sensations, and activities generate the unpredicted arrangements of relations among various human and non-human bodies, and, more importantly, Deleuze’s stuttering practice ‘and, and, and’ is formed socially; which means that the logic of relationality entails social practices.137 Through the logic of ‘and,’ one part of any assemblage is not distributively categorized or typically represented by another, but occurs in attached and temporary form with it.138

137- Gilles Deleuze and Claire Parnet, Dialogues, trans. H. Tomlinson and B. Habberjam (London: Athlone Press, 1987): 56. 138- Jean Hillier and Gareth Abrahams, Deleuze and Guattari: Jean Hillier in Conversation with Gareth Abrahams, Association of European Schools of Planning (Poland: Wroclaw, 2013): 19.

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Figure 4.20: Assemblage Architects, Holy City Masterplan, 2009. The necklace of the courtyards in the finalist entry, and the new street axis, and the new quarter. Source: Assemblage Architects, Holy City Masterplan. < http://www.assemblage.co/holy-city-masterplan>

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Following Deleuze, assemblages not only imply an arrangement of component parts that cannot be reduced to a conventional duality,139 but also can operate under that arrangement various complexities and vitalities of lived experiences. Assemblages work through lived reality and occur within virtual-actual variations. The component of virtual-actual assemblages are characteristically built from material and expressive part, and they are fundamentally unsteady and dissolved.

Assemblage frontiers are penetrated and tarnished, they are unspecified and repeatedly challenged, transcended and/or stretched as innovative relations happen and used ones break.

From a linguistic perspective, the French word agencement refers to the various and plentiful component parts of an assemblage that are put adjacent to each other in specific relations, to create an affective interaction, having no determined limits or boundaries. Consequently, an affective assemblage is a variety of desires and percepts, which continue to come together spatially, relating architects, urban designers, planners, and educators’ visions to the logic of sensation. An assemblage is a set of open component parts whose uniqueness arises from the relations between these component parts on the one hand, and the whole relations with the outside forces on the other. It is a set of relations that array spatially and temporally as one piece without a determined or former direction. The experimental preservation of the architectural and urban contexts as a set of continuous entities would ensure the improvement of the evolutionary form of socio-spatial emergence, regardless of in what way the new term follows the previous format. Consequently, it offers great pliability in cooperating and interrelating with these new terms, under the state that it generates unique conceptual assemblage.

139- Jeffrey A. Bell, “Assemblage + Architecture,” The Deleuze Dictionary, Revised Edition, ed. Adrian Parr (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), 19.

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4.7 Conclusion

From the beginning, this dissertation adopts the idea that memories are not housed in our brains or consciousness, nor is time an internal to the consciousness. Instead, as Deleuze has claimed, “it is we who are internal to time,”140 to the fluidity of duration, it is we who move cognitively within the occurrence of real-time as we recall different planes of memories and intensities—we must live them and act them—producing a pure line of subjectivity. For Deleuze, remembering something is primarily an action—we act before we think---it is an initial action of memorizing; it becomes a part of productive associations with our present, which also becomes a part of our acts of reminiscence, recollection, memory, and perceptual recognition, in which the past might be lived afresh and differently as a durational event in life that carries a date and that will certainly not happen all over again.

The chapter provides a theoretical framework for contemporary architects, urban designers, planners, and educators who are directing their talent, work, and course towards what functionally fits the present time, instead of merely remodeling and replicating traditional design.141 Merely imitating and duplicating past models would control the quality of architectural designs and make it limited to a specific frame since creativity becomes disabled or imprisoned in a specific context, subordinating dynamic change and flow of life to the logic of mimesis.142 The task of persistently reproducing and implementing traditional design will not contribute much to the field of architecture and urban design, and unoriginal and repeated designs will “confine difference to identity, and they impose a goal on movement.”143 Deleuze discovers the option for a perspective

140- Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 2: The Time-Image, trans. H. Tomlinson and R. Galeta (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989): 110. 141- Galdieri Eugenio, “Project and Tradition,” Understanding Islamic architecture, edited by Attilio Petruccioli, and Khalil K. Pirani (London: Routledge Curzon, 2002). 142- Ibid. 143- Adrian Parr, “Politics + Deleuze + Guattari + Architecture,” in Deleuze and Architecture, ed. Hélène Frichot and Stephen Loo (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013), 198.

129 that comprehends life in terms of duration, superhuman, and inhuman. Deleuze outlines the inquiry of ‘life itself,’ that is to say, the force that perseveres over time and the alterations that follow, as an ontological experimental, critical, spontaneous, and aesthetic, the consequence of active force that affirms its own difference and opens a process of alteration. The fluidity of the intense moments of duration carries the past within the present, creating a great affect in the evolution of the subject by using memory creatively and productively for willed self-consciousness. Similar to

Bergson, Deleuze addresses the creative aspect inherent in evolution, namely the force of life that perseveres, accordingly, through alteration and change, the vital life of the spiritual consciousness is affirmed.

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CHAPTER FIVE Discussion

5.1 Eisenman Critical Practice: Beyond Urban Formalism In-Between Actualizing Function and Virtualizing Chaos

By examining the work of architect Peter Eisenman, this chapter offers a conceptual analysis and discussion for published literature. This chapter links Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts of assemblage and affect to what Eisenman calls ‘interstitial spaces’ in order to underline some of his diagramming techniques in which posthumanist, materialist, and environmental rearrangement of subjectivity assist architects, urban designers, planners, and educators in learning and thinking creatively and critically about “history.”

This chapter aims to question the predictable practice in architectural and urban design thinking process. Drawing on Deleuze’s and Guattari’s theoretical concepts of assemblage and affect, this chapter will conceptually analyze the conditions of ‘interstitiality’ in Eisenman’s critical architecture, moving to non-representational thinking, multi-disciplinary research, and sustained connections in order to encompass the old materialist and new intensive urban forms. In his practice, Eisenman experiments with a notion of form that is outside the traditional dominion of modern architecture, in which any shape is “already” informed with meaning, and therefore form is determined by rules of imitation and function. According to Eisenman, the traditional process of design relies on a strict dichotomy between two dualisms, such as ‘figure/ground,’ instead of a ‘in-between’ condition in which the two binary oppositions are potentially merged together and embedded within one another - producing an interstitial figural or ‘figure/ figure’ groundless condition. This chapter will examine the interstitial spaces in Eisenman’s project, the

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (Figure 5.1), through their transitory engagement with flows and territories as a set of affective assemblages and social locales in cultural productions.

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The flows of complicated lines and singularities in Eisenman’s project challenge homogeneous architecture, destabilize the traditional dialectics, and alter the whole traditional concept of modernist form, holding potential for ‘radical passivity.’144 According to Deleuze and Guattari, the affective assemblage is designated as a production machine, when the unpredictable, fluid frame of destratification movement is shattered and socialized, one that more accurately mirrors life and its countless virtualities. The advantages of Eisenman’s version of an architectural machine are that it correlates considerably with the notions of assemblage and affect, thereby rupturing the conventional approaches of dominant formalism and bringing together the logic of temporality and the logic of sensations.

Figure 5.1: Eisenman Architects, Berlin Memorial Perspective View, 1998-2005. Source: http://www.eisenmanarchitects.com/berlin-memorial.html#images.

5.2 The Interstitial Spaces in Eisenman Architecture and Urban Formalisms

Through his defamiliarization practices, architect and theoretician Peter Eisenman constantly reconceptualizes the notion of form, producing perceptions of difference in the

144- Adrian Parr, Deleuze and Memorial Culture: Desire, Singular Memory and the Politics of Trauma (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008), 159.

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Holocaust Memorial,145 as well as demonstrating status of separation from its representational image and conservative mean that may represent “the memory of the Holocaust as a nostalgia.”146

Eisenman has continually argued that: “Traditionally, processes of architectural design have used what can be called on/off procedures, of choosing between two alternatives, solid/void, figure/ground, rather than operating where the two conditions are possibly embedded within one another.”147 (Figure 5.2).

Figure 5.2: Eisenman Architects, Berlin Memorial Drawing, 1998-2005. Source: http://www.eisenmanarchitects.com/berlin-memorial.html#images.

145- Stefano Corbo, From formalism to weak form: the architecture and philosophy of Peter Eisenman (London: Routledge, 2016), 94. 146- Peter Eisenman, and Silvio Cassarà, Peter Eisenman: feints (Milano: Skira,2006), 152. 147- Peter Eisenman, “Processes of the Interstitial: Notes on Zaera-Polo's Idea of the Machinic,” El Croquis 83, Madrid (1997), 21-35.

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In his project the Holocaust Memorial, Eisenman situates his architecture landscape in the space of intensities: in the field of the weak form.148 In other words, Eisenman became more related and involved in what people feel and how they react in his interstitial spaces, “to what he calls affect.”149 Eisenman borrows from Deleuze’s particular queries in respect to the creative transformation that is noticeably placed in the social milieu, in which constant creative transformation occurs in an empirical environment, starting “in the middle,” “in-between,” and “in the margins.”150 Deleuze engages with the conceptual theme of affect in Baruch Spinoza, and

Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophy is to characterize the creative “transformation of a body, a thing, or a group of things over a period of space and time through the processes of becoming, movement, and over duration.”151 Deleuze’s notion of ‘in-between’ is a powerful criticism of the numerous dualisms that mainly abound the history of architecture in Western thinking,152 such as public/private, structure/ chaos, and rationality/affect. Likewise, architects, urban designers, planners, and educators can exceed dualistic relation in their design thinking process and practice by opening architectural system for life, affect, difference, and regenerative encounters.

As a result, the visitors’ perceptions of urban formalism in the Holocaust Memorial project reoriented from a standard convention. Blurring the boundaries between actual and virtual, public and private spaces in the Memorial project makes urban spaces fall in-between, destabilizing their dualism.153 Additionally, Eisenman’s notion of form that he experiments with in Holocaust

148- Stefano Corbo, From formalism to weak form: the architecture and philosophy of Peter Eisenman (London: Routledge, 2016), 94. 149- Ibid., 94. 150- Jean Hillier and Gareth Abrahams, Deleuze and Guattari: Jean Hillier in Conversation with Gareth Abrahams, Association of European Schools of Planning (Poland: Wroclaw, 2013), 20. 151- Felicity J. Colman, “Affect,” The Deleuze Dictionary, Revised Edition, ed. Adrian Parr (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), 12. 152- Elizabeth Grosz, Architecture from the outside - essays on virtual and real space (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2001), 92. 153- Adrian Parr, Deleuze and Memorial Culture: Desire, Singular Memory and the Politics of Trauma (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008), 159.

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Memorial is outside the bounded fields of modern architecture, by which any figure is already limited to a specific meaning, and thus architectural form is specified by rules of convention and utility. The complexity of “creative transformation becomes a system of involution where transversal movements engage material forces and affects.”154 Thus, the creative transformation that happens to the intensive topography of the Memorial site emerges in-between figure and ground, creating affective interstitial spaces, altering the whole traditional concept of modernist form, and holding potential for ‘radical passivity’ that implies social assemblage determination.155

5.3 Assemblage Theory

Assemblage is a signature concept of Deleuze in Manual De Landa’s view, and this constitutes the backbone of ‘assemblage theory’ itself.156 In 2006, De Landa delved deeper into the experimental, expressive, and spontaneous aspects of everyday lives in his social theory, searching immanently for causal explanations of what assemblage can do, and dispelling the traditional query of what assemblage is.157 Thoughtfully, in order to escape any reductionism pertaining to both dominant principles and “textual permanency,” assemblage theory calls for a new perception of social reality that cannot be reducible to any discourse that has a certain authority, and thus “it gives priority to experience and sensation.”158 (Figure 5.3).

154- Adrian Parr, “creative transformation,” The Deleuze Dictionary, Revised Edition, ed. Adrian Parr (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), 59. 155- Adrian Parr, Deleuze and Memorial Culture: Desire, Singular Memory and the Politics of Trauma (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008), 159. 156- Manuel De Landa, A new philosophy of society assemblage theory and social complexity (London: Continuum, 2006). 157- Kim Dovey, “Assembling Architecture,” in Deleuze and Architecture, ed. Hélène Frichot and Stephen Loo (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013), 131. 158- Kim Dovey, Becoming places: urbanism/architecture/identity/power (London: Routledge, 2010), 16.

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Figure 5.3: Eisenman Architects, Berlin Memorial Drawing, 1998-2005. Source: http://www.eisenmanarchitects.com/berlin-memorial.html#images.

Assemblage theory proposes that paradigms shift in architectural and urban design dominant thinking and practice, where place experience undermines and reduces to stable material text. It eludes the essentialism in architecture by avoiding reduction of architectural and urban design thinking and practice to a certain stratum of historicism that has encumbered such disciplines for different periods of time. Furthermore, through the substratum, fortuitous processes that generate assemblages, materiality/expression components endlessly take part in more than one architectural and urban assemblage, enabling further and more items or entities to be connected.

These component parts that are involved in architectural and urban assemblages are very creative in that they may lead to a phenomenon called ‘sense of place.’159 It is worth noting that the conceptual expression of assemblage, put forth by Deleuze and Guattari, derives from the French notion of agencement or ‘arrangement,’ which in mathematics is understood as different and

159- Kim Dovey, Becoming places: urbanism/architecture/identity/power (London: Routledge, 2010), 17.

136 productive ways to organize things, as such it is an affective conception, not a fixed articulation.160

“Deleuze appears to have developed the notion of agencement from his work based on Spinoza’s idea of the common notion; the quality of sharing commonality and ‘becoming a third body’ in a given event”161 Moreover, the word agencement entails activity and policy.

An agencement is a practice of ‘agencing’– a dynamic existence of a particular intervention or action as a link, expressly to produce a specific affect.162 In the notion of agencement, the composing components and sensations meet at a point of intersection, mobilized together, temporarily deterritorialized, and go through metamorphosis while transforming one another. The relations “between” the components, in terms of the transformation and change, are rather vital compared to the components themselves: “in a multiplicity, what matters is not the elements, but what there is between.”163 When inquiring “what makes an assemblage into an agencement,”164 the logic of collectivity would be critically examined, in terms of how Deleuze thinks about the middle as an extraordinary point to start an assemblage, in which intensities, affects, events, sensations, and elements of two layers or strata link in- between, sharing mutual environments. Accordingly, assemblage is a concept based on the fact that things in life are not solitary; they are a combination of diverse things that act together and affect each other.

5.4 Assemblage Design Thinking

Assemblage design thinking can only occur in risk relations that threaten the whole architectural system, affecting the identities that establish it and allowing new events to emerge. It

160- J. Macgregor Wise, “Assemblage,” in Deleuze and Guattari on architecture: critical assessments in architecture, ed. Graham Livesey (Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2015), 162. 161- Gilles Deleuze, Spinoza: practical philosophy, trans. R. Hurley (San Francisco: City Light Books, 1988). 162- Ronald Bogue, Deleuze’s Way: essays in transverse ethics and aesthetics (Ashgate: Aldershot, 2007), 145-146. 163- Gilles Deleuze and Claire Parnet, Dialogues, trans. H. Tomlinson and B. Habberjam (London: Athlone Press, 1987). 164- Ibid.

137 requires flows of substance/affect, relations/separations, and most notably the spaces in between; the interstitial spaces, “the in-betweenness, as its primary subject, embodying the immanent and productive forces of an assemblage.”165 The intermediary status within interstitial transitional spaces are affective spots for architectural and urban design thinking and practice since they espouse new intervened arrangements of lived experiment(Figure 5.4).166

Figure 5.4: Eisenman Architects, Berlin Memorial Perspective View, 1998-2005. Source: http://www.eisenmanarchitects.com/berlin-memorial.html#images.

Therefore, Eisenman evokes in his works “Deleuze’s concept of ‘the figural,’ and Derrida’s understanding of ‘the undecidable’ as effective starting points for rethinking architecture as a

165- Kim Dovey and Stephen Wood, “Public/private urban interfaces: type, adaptation, assemblage,” Journal of Urbanism: International Research on Placemaking and Urban Sustainability 8 (2014): 1-16. Accessed February 28, 2017. Doi: 10.1080/17549175.2014.891151. 166- Danica Lau, “Interstitial urbanism: inhabiting the "In-between"” (Ph.D. diss., Carleton University, 2012).

138 practice that is irreducible to an either/or relationship.”167 Eisenman here is obviously describing himself as the theorist of the “in-between” as he characterizes interstitial spaces as going from the middle, creating assemblages and links that contain complex movements and intensities instead of historic origin or rigid classification.168 Eisenman looks to philosophers such as Deleuze, Deleuze and Guattari, and Derrida in his critical text, Ten Canonical Buildings: 1950- 2000, to deconstruct how architecture has battled essentialist binaries, including “subject/object, figure/ground, solid/void, and part/whole,”169 since the beginning of its traditional history.170 It is shown that most stages of architectural design rely on a strict dichotomy between two options or dualisms, such as

‘solid/void, figure/ground’ (which is a reductive method), instead of a flexible ‘in-between’ and the fluid idea of interstitial spaces.171 Moreover, by creating innovative mediated forms of experiential affect forces, these in-between transitional spaces can become heterogeneous assemblages for social interactions.

“The ‘in-between,’ shaped by juxtapositions and experiments, is formed by realignments or new arrangements, as a potential to transform.”172 Eisenman demonstrates that the binarized categories have the potential deterritorialization to connect and change to a different position or state producing dynamic machine assemblages.173 Thus, the idea of ‘in-between’ can emerge as

“an assemblage that is a multiplicity irreducible to the dualistic terms that are employed to identify

167- Jeffrey A. Bell, “Assemblage + Architecture,” The Deleuze Dictionary, Revised Edition, ed. Adrian Parr (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), 19. 168- Elizabeth Grosz, Architecture from the outside - essays on virtual and real space (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2001), 94. 169- Peter Eisenman and Ariane Lourie Harrison, Ten canonical buildings 1950-2000 (New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 2008). 170- Ibid. 171- Peter Eisenman, “Processes of the Interstitial: Notes on Zaera-Polo's Idea of the Machinic,” El Croquis 83, Madrid (1997), 23. 172- Elizabeth Grosz, Architecture from the outside - essays on virtual and real space (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2001), 94-95. 173- Jeffrey A. Bell, “Assemblage + Architecture,” The Deleuze Dictionary, Revised Edition, ed. Adrian Parr (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), 19.

139 what it is the architect is doing.”174 Eisenman mentions: “So I’m looking for those conditions in architecture which are like the music in film, which are secondary.”175 Eisenman’s conceptual formalism and post-functionalism practice resist the dualisms in architecture; his project of the

Memorial site shifts the viewers’ engagement from the static notion of form and traditional utilization to consider the “contextual, narrative, or associational potentials of built form.”176

Deleuze portrays one of the main characteristics of an assemblage ‘a logic of AND;’177 a

‘geography of relations.’178 Consequently, in order to articulate the function of a social assemblage, it important to know the contexts where an assemblage can occur as a form. An assemblage works in contexts of collective forces with the capacity to perform activity that enables heterogeneous objects, things, or elements to be incompletely and affectively connected in interstitial spaces, resituated within exterior relations,179 and restructured by provisional arrangements that go beyond any previous thought or territory and always undermine every fixed context or stable schema.180 Interstitial space mark outs are cracked and smeared in Eisenman’s architectural practice, and they are immanently dissolved and unsettled.

By distorting obvious classifications, generating sensory interactions, and connecting shattered narratives, Eisenman’s approach in the Memorial site crosses the limits of binary either/or, innovating opportunities for interstitial spaces that co-function throughout intensive assemblages and affect transitional products. There is a form of differentiation in which different

174- Ibid., 20. 175- Stefano Corbo, Fr om formalism to weak form: the architecture and philosophy of Peter Eisenman (London: Routledge, 2016), 94. 176- K. Michael Hays, Architecture's desire: Reading the late avant-garde (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010), 54. 177- Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A thousand plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), 25. 178- Gilles Deleuze and Claire Parnet, Dialogues, trans. H. Tomlinson and B. Habberjam (London: Athlone Press, 1987), 70. 179- Jean Hillier and Gareth Abrahams, Deleuze and Guattari: Jean Hillier in Conversation with Gareth Abrahams, Association of European Schools of Planning (Poland: Wroclaw, 2013), 16. 180- Ben Anderson and Colin McFarlane, “Assemblage and geography,” Area 43(2011): 124-127, accessed on March 12, 2017. Doi:10.1111/j.1475-4762.2011.01004.x.

140 parts of assemblages can be removed from one assemblage and inserted into a different one, concealing, supplanting, and altering their system identity, according to De Landa; they can be affected by the contingent exteriority of diverse forces.181 The interlinks and sensory experiences between composite quantities in interstitial bodily spaces in Eisenman’s project of the Memorial site construct and create affective capacities for something new to emerge, in which “the identities and functions of both parts and wholes come out from the flows between them.”182

According to Roffe, an assemblage behaves like a tree in autumn, whereby any external environmental action such as: “A flash of red, a movement, a gust of wind”183 sets the constituent elements into a variable specific motion “to create the sensation of a tree in autumn.”184 While the prearranged nature of a tree only exists in representational thinking, creative alteration for the tree of autumn is fortuitous, happening on a plane of immanence and comprising virtual relations. In this instance, the tree in autumn becomes a noticeable creation of an exterior net– “wind, leaves, or color” – that operates as a collective assemblage, inspiring continuous alteration into something else.185 Therefore, there is an affective potential for exteriority when a single component, like the color red, may escape or transcend the material edge of one assemblage, in this case, the autumn tree, moving functionally and temporally among and within aggregative flows of becoming and entering into (catching up) different assemblages, such as the British post box. Thus, elements related by external agents keep some relative level of independence vis-à-vis the assemblage in which they take part.186 “All life is a process of connection and interaction. Anybody or thing is

181- Manuel De Landa, A new philosophy of society assemblage theory and social complexity (London: Continuum, 2006). 182- Kim Dovey, “Assembling Architecture,” in Deleuze and Architecture, ed. Hélène Frichot and Stephen Loo (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013), 131. 183- Jon Roffe, “Gilles Deleuze,” http://www.iep.utm.edu/d/deleuze.htm, accessed on January 04, 2016. 184- Ibid. 185- Jean Hillier and Gareth Abrahams, Deleuze and Guattari: Jean Hillier in Conversation with Gareth Abrahams, Association of European Schools of Planning (Poland: Wroclaw, 2013), 16. 186- Ibid., 16.

141 the outcome of a process of connections. A human body is an assemblage of genetic material, ideas, and powers of acting and a relation to other bodies.”187 Progressively, the relations between the elements of an assemblage are accidental rather than essential, made through mixed qualities and collaborative transindividual intensities.188 In other words, the instability of assemblages through interrelationships differentiate their “relations of exteriority” in which the composed assemblages function in their totality while simultaneously interacting with immeasurable mixtures of elements.189

5.5 The Logic of Sensation

For Deleuze, the work of any art is a block of sensations, movements, and affects. Affect here refers to the logic of sensation that embodies multiple intensities and dynamisms, releasing new assemblage through ‘urban form’ and ‘architectural values’ in the practices of affective configurations and spatial rhythms. According to David Olson, a Canadian psychologist, the configuration of the urban form is produced from the relationship between space and block of sensations.190 Likewise, Steven Peterson, an American urbanist, articulated that space is the medium of urbanism and the vital part needed for urbanization;191 it is the intermediary plateau where all urban fabrics can be created. Peterson also argues that the urban design thinking process is a synthetic and artistic mapping of bodily sceneries that have potential to be affective spaces by exploring the corporeal and incorporeal parts of the city.192 Moreover, Deleuze and Guattari also

187- Claire Colebrook, Understanding Deleuze (Crows Nest, N.S.W.: Allen & Unwin, 2002), xx. 188- Manuel De Landa, A new philosophy of society assemblage theory and social complexity (London: Continuum, 2006), 9. 189- Ibid., 9. 190- David R Olson and Ellen Bialystok, Spatial Cognition: the Structure and Development of Mental Representations of Spatial Relations (Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum, 1983), 246. 191- Steven Peterson, “Urban Design Tactics,” Architectural Design, Profile 20, nos. 3-4 (1979): 76. 192- David R Olson and Ellen Bialystok, Spatial Cognition: the Structure and Development of Mental Representations of Spatial Relations (Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum, 1983), 247

142 give highlighting to the occurrence of a space that penetrates with affect through the concept of mapping in the ‘zone of indetermination’ in their cartographic approach.193 So, the ‘zone of indetermination,’ in urban design thinking process, allows bodies to be situated in the middle, linked, and connected in the sphere of sensations. Architects and urban designers can transcend dualism relationship in their architectural and urban design thinking process by going beyond the limits of architectural systems, moving toward difference and reformative encounters: “a critical architecture that claims for itself a place between the efficient representation of preexisting cultural values and the wholly detached autonomy of an abstract formal system.”194 The intermediary status within transitional spaces is an affective spot for architectural and urban design thinking and practices since it espouses new intervened arrangements of lived experiment.195

The intermediary status within transitional spaces is an affective spot for architectural and urban design thinking and practices since it espouses new intervened arrangements of lived experiment.196 Whereas in representational design thinking, the urban form is shaped and recognized as a finished artifact with a predefined meaning and function, for example, the Iraqi architect Rifat Chadirji defines form as the end result of a dialectical interaction between two factors; namely, social demand and technological demand.197 Franco Trabattoni, an Italian ancient philosophy historian, used the Platonic doctrine in defining the form as a physical representation of an idea.198 Further, Herbert Read, an English art historian, sees the architectural form as a configuration illustrated by an actual object to express the content; and it has a mutual relationship

193- Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 1987). 194- K. Michael Hays, “Critical Architecture: Between Culture and Form,” Perspecta 21 (1984): 14-29, accessed on March 08, 2017. 195- Danica Lau, “Interstitial urbanism: inhabiting the "In-between"” (Ph.D. diss., Carleton University, 2012). 196- Ibid. 197- Rifat Chadirji, Al Ukhaider and the Crystal Palace (Landan: Riyāḍ al-Rayyis, 1991), 11. 198- Franco Trabattoni, Essays on Plato's epistemology (Leuven (Belgium): Leuven University Press, 2016), 234.

143 with the material and the technique.199 In his rejection of this kind of representational thinking,

Deleuze estimates that it is a source of false identity.200

As a result, architectural form is designed conventionally to reflect the image of the thought and social platform that refers to a traditional object and already always defines cultural values.

According to K. Michael Hays, an American architectural historian, the power of the conventional form appears when the individuals accept the meaning that associated with it, indicating a rigid medium, static technique, and organized tool to construct the architectural object.201 Consequently, the form is hunted by meaning, and the architectural values visualized by cultural patterns; thus both of them are experienced and pass themselves off as representational and unquestionable objects, reflected by the mirror of our natural bodies, performing a predictable scheme of meaning.

On the contrary, defamiliarization and non-representational practices have the potential for eliminating the traditionalist meaning, trying to make “the object’s production process and the mechanisms of its representation part of its content.”202 Additionally, Deleuze and Guattari insist on the non-representational characteristics of life through lines of flight, and they are reluctant to approve the historical interpretation of the objects as predefined artifacts. By drifting away from identified spatial configurations with representational practices, Deleuze and Guattari attempt to create innovative artistic sensibility of architectural values. “Based on the co- imbrication of the virtual reality and the actual real, the conception of the virtual is a differentiated flow of events, singularities and intensities; meanwhile, the actual is understood as the differentiated realm of

199- Herbert Read, Art now: an introduction to the theory of modern painting and sculpture (New York: Pitman, 1968), 89. 200- Craig Lundy, History and Becoming: Deleuze Philosophy of creativity (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), 40. 201- K. Michael Hays, Architecture's desire: Reading the late avant-garde (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010), 45. 202- Ibid., 55.

144 bodies, their mixtures, and states of affairs.”203 Moreover, the capacity to continuously transform and change in any specified condition or event, according to Deleuze and Guattari, can generate different affects on the body, free the mind, and create new ways of thinking, documenting, evaluating, and engaging in new realities.

This thesis focuses on and follows the non-representational and modernist definitions for the term form that is suggested by Deleuze and Guattari. They point out that the form is virtual capacity of the body in space, and that body can map concepts and ideas, generating transformation with unlimited “possibilities for translat(ing) and creat(ing),”204 as in the case of the term ‘urban,’ which is “a linkage of the spatial to the social, identifying a certain kind of place with a certain kind of person.”205 Therefore, this thesis considers the physical formations, patterns, and constructions that shape the urban space, collectively termed the urban form. Hence, the urban form is a physical-materialistic actual entity and abstract/virtual ethical entity. In this sense,

Deleuze and Guattari notably remark that any kind of art is a sensory experience and its creativeness is inspired and stimulated by sensations; the affect of tactics, technique, materials, sensible, memories, and entities: “We paint, sculpt, compose, and write with sensations.”206 In this instance, the city becomes a perceptible product of an exterior network: the urban form and architectural values that operate as collective assemblages, motivating perpetual transformation.207

203- Constantin V. Boundas, “Individuation,” The Deleuze Dictionary, Revised Edition, ed. Adrian Parr (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), 132. 204- Kim Dovey, Urban Design Thinking: a conceptual toolkit (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016), 9. 205- Ibid., 9. 206- Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, What is Philosophy? trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 166. 207- Jean Hillier and Gareth Abrahams, Deleuze and Guattari: Jean Hillier in Conversation with Gareth Abrahams, Association of European Schools of Planning (Poland: Wroclaw, 2013), 16.

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5.6 Deleuze’s Affective Assemblage

“Deleuze uses the term ‘affection’ to refer to the additive processes, forces, powers, and expressions of change – the mix of affects that produce a modification or transformation in the affected body.”208 Therefore, the outlines of interstitial spaces are undefined and regularly defied, violated and prolonged as new affections and associations are born and deep-rooted ones break.

Through the logic of ‘and,’ one part of any assemblage is not distributively categorized or typically represented by another, but occurs in attached and temporary form with it.209 The fortuitous intensities of conditions, events, sensations, and activities generate the unpredicted arrangements of relations among various human and non-human bodies, more importantly, Deleuze’s stuttering practice ‘and, and, and’ is formed socially; which means that the logic of relationality entails social practices.210

Following Deleuze, assemblages not only imply an arrangement of component parts that cannot be reduced to a conventional duality211 but also can operate under that arrangement various complexities and vitalities. Assemblages function through lived experience and come into existence with relational and affective variations. The component parts of “relational assemblages are inherently unstable and fluid, assemblage boundaries are perforated and smudged, they are indeterminate and frequently challenged, transgressed and/or extended as new connections occur and old ones rupture.”212 Connotatively, the French term agencement also means that the diverse

208- Felicity J. Colman, “Affect,” The Deleuze Dictionary, Revised Edition, ed. Adrian Parr (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), 13. 209- Jean Hillier and Gareth Abrahams, Deleuze and Guattari: Jean Hillier in Conversation with Gareth Abrahams, Association of European Schools of Planning (Poland: Wroclaw, 2013), 19. 210- Gilles Deleuze and Claire Parnet, Dialogues, trans. H. Tomlinson and B. Habberjam (London: Athlone Press, 1987), 56. 211- Jeffrey A. Bell, “Assemblage + Architecture,” The Deleuze Dictionary, Revised Edition, ed. Adrian Parr (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), 19. 212- Jean Hillier and Gareth Abrahams, Deleuze and Guattari: Jean Hillier in Conversation with Gareth Abrahams, Association of European Schools of Planning (Poland: Wroclaw, 2013), 20.

146 and numerous components of an assemblage are not just juxtaposed or linked with each other in particular connections, but also collaborate to produce an affective synergistic and open-ended tendency.213 Subsequently, an active assemblage is a multiplicity of affects and percepts in itself, which persist to congregate, combining the creativity of architects and designers’ work as autonomous expressions of visual experiments and the intensities of sensation. “An assemblage is not a set of predetermined parts that are then put together in a specific order or into an already- conceived structure,”214 but it is a set of connections that arrange temporally and spatially as a whole without a certain or previous order. According to Hays, the outlines of any symbolic system in Eisenman projects have been hollowed out, “in his cities of artificial excavation Eisenman strives to find an architecture of pure trace, which effaces itself before the theory, the critique, and the thought it is asked to convey.”215 In Eisenman manner, architecture cannot be reduced to a system of symbolization that represents traditional assumptions and has “already” embodied meaning in the architectural formalistic image.216

In contrast, architecture in Eisenman’s practices includes strategies of temporality and defamiliarization, in which an architectural object is shifted to alienation and self-reflexivity, reintroducing the notions of affectivity and sensibility in different ways (Figure 5.5).217

“Within a Deleuzian framework, affect operates as a dynamic of desire within any assemblage to manipulate meaning and relations, inform and fabricate desire, and generate

213- Kim Dovey, “Assembling Architecture,” in Deleuze and Architecture, ed. Hélène Frichot and Stephen Loo (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013), 133. 214- J. Macgregor Wise, “Assemblage,” in Deleuze and Guattari on architecture: critical assessments in architecture, ed. Graham Livesey (Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2015), 162. 215- K. Michael Hays, Architecture's desire: Reading the late avant-garde (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010), 92. 216- Peter Eisenman, “Processes of the Interstitial: Notes on Zaera-Polo's Idea of the Machinic,” El Croquis 83, Madrid (1997), 21-35. 217- K. Michael Hays, Architecture's desire: Reading the late avant-garde (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010), 59.

147 intensity – yielding different affects in any given situation or event.”218 In Deleuze’s thought of creative transformation, experiential affect that occurs as a transitory force prior to the meaning and away from the interpretative mode of cognition reveals the ‘limits of semiotics’ that have a tendency to actualize sensitive reactions out of their indefinite virtuality and materialize them to visual and physical contexts.219 Likewise, Eisenman stresses the syntactic aspect of form over the semantic one; his concept of ‘cardboard’ architecture drops the visual and physical use of the architectural object in the traditional sense that associates with stable materiality.220

Figure 5.5: Eisenman Architects, Berlin Memorial Design Concept, 1998-2005. Source: http://www.eisenmanarchitects.com/berlin-memorial.html#images.

Eisenman rethinks formalism in his ‘cardboard architecture,’ in which he creates interstitial spaces in dynamic machine assemblages that destabilize the hierarchy and the dominance of “the

218- Felicity J. Colman, “Affect,” The Deleuze Dictionary, Revised Edition, ed. Adrian Parr (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), 13. 219- Felicity J. Colman, “Affect,” The Deleuze Dictionary, Revised Edition, ed. Adrian Parr (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), 13. 220- K. Michael Hays, Architecture's desire: Reading the late avant-garde (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010), 54.

148 architectural material, scale, function, site, and all semantic associations in favor of architecture as

‘syntax.’”221 (Figure 5.6).

Figure 5.6: Eisenman Architects, Berlin Memorial Design Concept, 1998-2005. Source: http://www.eisenmanarchitects.com/berlin-memorial.html#images.

Assemblage is thus a whole that is shaped by multiple desires, engaging both unchanging strata and flows of intensities, and where heterogeneous relations remain immanent to existence, away from stability, and subordinate to the process of change in a creative sense. Accordingly, function reveals the occurrence of an assemblage. The definition of an assemblage is determined by the work that the assemblage is able to do, and its meaning comes from its usage rather than its significance.222 Assemblage can produce specific expressions and innovative performativity by the

221- Iman Ansari, “Interview: Peter Eisenman,” 2013, https://www.architectural- review.com/view/interviews/interview-peter-eisenman/8646893.article, accessed on 21 February 2018. 222- Jeffrey A. Bell, “Assemblage + Architecture,” The Deleuze Dictionary, Revised Edition, ed. Adrian Parr (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), 19.

149 multiple spatiotemporal constellations and unforeseen connections that are preferably novel and inherently social.

5.7 Urban Assemblage

For the purpose of illustrating how an assemblage works in specific context, specifically in the urban landscape, Kim Dovey provides an example from everyday life, a street. As stated in his book Becoming places: urbanism/architecture/identity/power, the street is not a stabilized entity in an extensive city system with a hierarchical standard, nor is it simply a combination of measured and separate objects in the urban atmosphere with no relations. It is a part of a whole,

“buildings, trees, cars, sidewalks, goods, people, signs,”223 and functions as a multiplicity of morphogenetic capacities, situating the two levels of content and expression in virtual relations to one another as a street. By describing the singularities of everyday life, “buildings–sidewalk– roadway; the flows of traffic, people and goods;”224 as urban assemblages, we perceive how the hidden relations with their familiar formations collaborate and connect to compose a ‘street’ at the scale of the content and the expression through the activation of the spatial senses that differentiates the street from other urban assemblages, “parks, plazas, freeways, shopping malls and marketplaces.”225 Furthermore, the urban assemblage is a configuration of actions and entities that is motivated by the contingency and complexity of intersecting urbanized forces as revealed in visual sense and connectivity within the real urban life (Figure 5.7). “Although assemblages are composed of relations, they are not reducible to them, assemblages have their own speeds and slownesses; their own vitality.”226

223- Kim Dovey, Becoming places: urbanism/architecture/identity/power (London: Routledge, 2010), 16. 224- Ibid., 16. 225- Ibid., 16. 226- Ian Buchanan, Deleuzism: a metacommentary (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000).

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In their research, Deleuze and Guattari envision assemblage as associated with two different arrangements when two planes, the plane of organization and the plane of consistency, cross each other and unify through a machinic process to form an assemblage.227 The plane of organization delineates the dominant mode of territorializing and stratifying in actual forms, enforcing hierarchical powers and incarnating codes, in which their order and organization confines components or elements to be organized, modulated, regulated, and stabilized on lines of slowness.228 Deleuze and Guattari perceive the plane of consistency “as flows of human life that is not subject to an organizing principle, to a sign, to a force that orders it.”229 Deleuze and Guattari practice the transitory alliance ‘and’ instead of the stationary dualisms ‘is’/‘is not’, either/or; since each ‘part’ is a multiplicity of others that deal with and occupy the plane of consistency where these parts collectively can sustain themselves outside the relational dualisms.230

227- Jean Hillier and Gareth Abrahams, Deleuze and Guattari: Jean Hillier in Conversation with Gareth Abrahams, Association of European Schools of Planning (Poland: Wroclaw, 2013), 16. 228- Manuel De Landa, A new philosophy of society assemblage theory and social complexity (London: Continuum, 2006). 229- Dorothea Olkowski, Gilles Deleuze and the ruin of representation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 101. 230- Jean Hillier, “Assemblages of Justice: The ‘Ghost Ships’ of Graythorp,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 33 (2009): 640-661, accessed on March 22, 2017. Doi: 10.1111/j.1468-2427.2009.00861.x.

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Figure 5.7: Eisenman Architects, Berlin Memorial Model, 1998-2005. Source: http://www.eisenmanarchitects.com/berlin-memorial.html#images.

Furthermore, these planes are known as the interface between materiality and expression, it simply connects the materialist actions of spatial bodies with various expressions of meaning through linear representation, including hypotheses, language, and visual models. An affective assemblage is a mixture of both relational forms: material and expression. By articulating some points of similarity between these two forms, specifically, both can be stabilized and destabilized, both are not utopian, and certainly, they are not finalized.231 This approach can be explained by the previously mentioned illustration of “street” as an urban pattern assemblage. In fact, that urban sample allows us to perceive the street as an assemblage of material components equated to

231- Kim Dovey, Becoming places: urbanism/architecture/identity/power (London: Routledge, 2010), 17.

152 movements and spatial networks, co-functioning with expressive components and narratives that include urban design key codes and obscure intensities.232 Through the complexity and temporality of reciprocal formation of assemblages, forms of material and expression are an innovative arrangement in urban life. The fact that assemblage involves the dynamics of a process implies that there is no final order or organization of an assemblage, and the law governing it comes from its unique and unlimited connections with other organizations of territorial elements to produce unexpected and new intensities.233 Despite the fact that assemblages are shaped by complex links or cooperative connections between material and expressive components, they are not the end outcome of the assets of their different parts. In other words, assemblages cannot be reduced to their component parts, according to Deleuze, assemblages proceed from identified codes and vital movement, mutual in an irreducible way.

For Eisenman, architectural object verification and purification play a key role in the design process. Eisenman gives in his works the impression of resistance to all-encompassing predetermines of architectural form that subordinate design process to final outcome. He is interested utterly in finding a way to affirm the shift towards the autonomy and self-reflexivity in architecture.234 “Eisenman stresses the autonomy of architecture, which for him means that an architect ought to concern himself with addressing purely architectural problems and solutions, and they should avoid drawing non-architectural elements into their work. Eisenman’s Houses I-

XI (Figure 5.8), for example, are thus for Eisenman purely architectural assemblages that do not refer to anything other than architectural elements.”235 Since assemblage is both material and

232- Ibid., 17. 233- Claire Colebrook, Understanding Deleuze (Crows Nest, N.S.W.: Allen & Unwin, 2002), xx. 234- K. Michael Hays, Architecture's desire: Reading the late avant-garde (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010), 54. 235- Jeffrey A. Bell, “Assemblage + Architecture,” The Deleuze Dictionary, Revised Edition, ed. Adrian Parr (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), 20.

153 expressive, it goes against any lowering to basic nature, to textuality or to materiality.236 Overall, it is understood that an “assemblage is a whole, whose properties spring from the relationships between parts.”237 Elements, taken individually, delineate the assemblage by their added role, and they can be stabilized, meaning territorialized or reterritorialized, or even destabilized or deterritorialized. Although it is the correlations between elements that compose the assemblage, nonetheless these (co)relations cannot be narrowed down to simple, specific characteristics.238

Consequently, an assemblage cannot be assimilated to any preordained relations, or considered as a haphazard gathering of discrete particulars, “since there is a sense that an assemblage is a whole of some sort that expresses some identity and claims a territory.”239 In other words, assemblages are comprised of mixed elements and actualized by heterogeneous items “that may be human and non-human, organic and inorganic, technical and natural,”240 which, due to the complexity of the relationships between these elements, cease to be relevant alone.

236- Kim Dovey, “Assembling Architecture,” in Deleuze and Architecture, ed. Hélène Frichot and Stephen Loo (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013), 131. 237- Manuel De Landa, A new philosophy of society assemblage theory and social complexity (London: Continuum, 2006). 238- Colin McFarlane, “The city as assemblage: Dwelling and urban space,” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 29 (2011): 649-671. Accessed February 14, 2017. Doi: 10.1068/d4710. 239- J. Macgregor Wise, “Assemblage,” in Deleuze and Guattari on architecture: critical assessments in architecture, ed. Graham Livesey (Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2015), 162. 240- Ben Anderson and Colin McFarlane, “Assemblage and geography,” Area 43(2011): 124-127, accessed on March 12, 2017. Doi:10.1111/j.1475-4762.2011.01004. x.

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Figure 5.8: Eisenman Architects, House III, 1969-1971. Source: https://eisenmanarchitects.com/House-III-1971.

In order to be meaningful, they must belong to a cluster with no predetermined role.241

“Assemblages, therefore, risk, yet avoid collapsing into actualized stratification or actualized deterritorialization (chaos).”242 Moreover, the involvements of assemblages in urban life demand heterogeneous groups of territories. Territories in urban assemblages are both areas of regions, districts, and provinces under the absolute authority of the state, and areas of data, activities, and capabilities, where urban entities can express their spatial identities in the sense of here and now.243

Actually, the way in which Deleuze and Guattari use and refer to the term ‘territory,’ is metaphoric.

Turning away from representational thinking, Deleuze and Guattari obviously express that a

241- Jean Hillier and Gareth Abrahams, Deleuze and Guattari: Jean Hillier in Conversation with Gareth Abrahams, Association of European Schools of Planning (Poland: Wroclaw, 2013), 15. 242- Jeffrey A. Bell, “Assemblage + Architecture,” The Deleuze Dictionary, Revised Edition, ed. Adrian Parr (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), 19. 243- J. Macgregor Wise, “Assemblage,” in Deleuze and Guattari on architecture: critical assessments in architecture, ed. Graham Livesey (Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2015), 163.

155 territory can engage in any various kinds of events that erected as a morphological, common, theoretical, disturbing, social, and affective system.244

Deleuze and Guattari consider the occurrence of territories to be a combination of both

Aristotle’s classification of being (there are many kinds of areas and lands that are categorized or classified under the term (territories), and their own articulation of the concept as a deterritorialization and reterritorialization processes. In short, the processes of reterritorialization and deterritorialization, in which things or concepts are assembled, coalescing and fitting together, both deterritorializing movements that are operated by the forces of deterritorialization, as well as a socio-spatial materialization, is a machinic arrangement of the assemblage’s functionality, and can be interpreted and planned as a diagram.245

The constant occurrence of doing and undoing manner is a process very similar to the assemblages. Assemblages are accidental and continually altering, as well as constantly regrouping and parting.246 “The territory itself is a malleable site of passage.”247 The inquiries of ‘territory as an assemblage,’ that is to say, the dynamisms that persist over time and the variations that follow, are addressed by Deleuze and Guattari as empirical, impulsive, and unpremeditated changes by which these territories repeatedly transform into something else.248 In A Thousand Plateaus,

Deleuze and Guattari refer to the process of deterritorialization as movements where the boundaries of any territory are worn away and prone to be obliterated.249 Likewise, for Eisenman,

244- Paul Patton, Political Normativity and Poststructuralism: The Case of Gilles Deleuze. Lecture, Institutscolloquium des Philosophischen Instituts der Freien from Instituts der Freien, Berlin, 2007. 245- J. Macgregor Wise, “Assemblage,” in Deleuze and Guattari on architecture: critical assessments in architecture, ed. Graham Livesey (Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2015), 162. 246- Ibid., 163. 247- Kylie Message, “Territory,” The Deleuze Dictionary, Revised Edition, ed. Adrian Parr (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), 280. 248- Ibid., 280. 249- Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A thousand plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), 508.

156 territories are not spaces that are considered as constant zones of measurable elements that last forever, but rather there are ‘lines of flight’ within interstitial spaces in which changes can occur.250

Territories, according to Eisenman, are not permanent or stable all the time; they are continuously in the making, and therefore go through the processes of reterritorialization and deterritorialization.251 They do not consist of merely fixed and fastened boundaries; their actions involve more than shaking up the foundation or eroding the boundaries.

To further explain, the interior and exterior relations that are produced in Eisenman’s projects, respectively, emphasize the ideas of deterritorialization and reterritorialization, and this action is dependent upon the access and ability to occupy a specific territory, yet “release a feeling of groundlessness and vertigo.”252 Therefore, particular actions can discover, describe, outline, and combine territories through imperceptible or perceptible movements with different flows and speed, sustaining the pulses of life and generating uniformities from the disorder.253

Eisenman, in all his thoughtful projects that are derived from Deleuzian concepts, considers the way in which the deterritorialized traditional architectural elements are captured by experiential affect forces, subjected to new immanent and productive assemblages, changing their relations to reshape different collections in interstitial spaces, this is a process of reterritorialization. Deleuze and Guattari portray the process of territorialization and deterritorialization in three stages, which are designed to establish a centered order, to mark out a border around it, and then to violate that boundary by daring to escape it. The territory is a stabilized zone of the assemblage, setting up a hierarchical range of representation that keeps chaos

250- William Bogard, “Smoothing machines and the constitution of society,” Cultural Studies 14(2000):269–94. 251- J. Macgregor Wise, “Assemblage,” in Deleuze and Guattari on architecture: critical assessments in architecture, ed. Graham Livesey (Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2015), 163. 252- Adrian Parr, Deleuze and Memorial Culture: Desire, Singular Memory and the Politics of Trauma (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008), 158. 253- Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A thousand plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), 315- 27.

157 and difference in interstitial spaces in the area of connection.254 Through the process of reterritorialization, deterritorialized elements are reconstituted into a new assemblage that appears as a set of dynamisms merged together. According to Deleuze and Guattari, the

(deterritorialization: undo) and (reterritorialization: do) are the territorial characteristics of an assemblage that portray the forces that deconstruct and construct territories.255

Deleuze and Guattari also state that assemblages exposed to two orientations: first, the strata or the lines of segmentarity that have been conventionally structured by rigid categories.

This is reterritorialization or the making. The other orientation occurs when assemblages tend towards lines of flight, the unpredictable and fluid frame of destratification movements in which these assemblages come to be shattered, and their fundamentals socialize and intensively disseminated. This is deterritorialization, or the unmaking.256 The relations of deterritorialization and reterritorialization themselves can create new territories. A Thousand

Plateaus concludes by describing deterritorialization as the manner or movement when one or more elements evade or leave a certain territory. Conversely, within the reterritorialization process, deterritorialized fundamentals reconstitute and establish new affective relations in the formation of a new assemblage or within the change of the old.257

5.8 Conclusion

In conclusion, the flows of innovative mutations, affective interstitial spaces, and singularities in built environments can transpire by questioning the conventional architecture and

254- Kim Dovey, Becoming places: urbanism/architecture/identity/power (London: Routledge, 2010), 18. 255- Graham Livesey, “Assemblage,” The Deleuze Dictionary, Revised Edition, ed. Adrian Parr (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), 18. 256- J. Macgregor Wise, “Assemblage,” in Deleuze and Guattari on architecture: critical assessments in architecture, ed. Graham Livesey (Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2015), 164. 257- Paul Patton, Political Normativity and Poststructuralism: The Case of Gilles Deleuze. Lecture, Institutscolloquium des Philosophischen Instituts der Freien from Instituts der Freien, Berlin, 2007.

158 urban design approaches and methods. Deleuze’s and Guattari’s definitions of an assemblage and affect stem from their ‘experimental philosophy,’ expressing that the transitory functionality of affective assemblage is a formation of territorial elements and flows of differential force that struggles to construct the fabric of the social.258 If the disciplines of architecture and urban design intensively engage with the notions of assemblage and affect, architects, urban designers, and planners can convert their representational thinking and consequently transform the configuration of dominant formalism. The ethical practices are vital in conveying various formats to produce affective attachments – precisely affective assemblage. And for Eisenman, who celebrates machinic connections in his architectural forms with impulses of virtuality through pragmatic and experimental manners, achieves success by surpassing the essentialism, reductionism, and the functionalism of traditional architecture. Finally, regarding the unexpected movements of design, it is important to link Deleuze’s intensive views of assemblage and affect with pioneering trans- disciplinary attitudes in architecture and urban landscape, highlighting the character of the multiplicity that is portrayed when philosophical notions that dodge dualisms are merged. Deleuze rejects the allegation that there is a propensity in his solo work or his collaboration with Guattari for using “dualisms – such as virtual/actual, deterritorialization/reterritorialization, intensive/extensive,”259 and the reasons that what he and Guattari have intended to do is to “find between the terms. . .whether they are two or more, a tight gorge like a border or a frontier which will change the set into a multiplicity, with no consideration of the number of parts.”260

258- William Bogard, “Smoothing machines and the constitution of society,” Cultural Studies 14(2000):269–94. 259- Ibid. 260- Gilles Deleuze and Claire Parnet, Dialogues, trans. H. Tomlinson and B. Habberjam (London: Athlone Press, 1987), 132.

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CHAPTER SIX Conclusion

6.1 Historical Materiality in the Realm of Contemporary Architecture: The Argument of Differentiation in Design Thinking Process This chapter illustrates the implications of the dissertation findings, including implications for architectural and urban design thinking, practices, and future research. It also outlines the potentials of this dissertation. This concluding chapter proposes and recommends a new architectural image to grasp the creation of an ethical series of events and incorporeal transformations in which architectural and urban design practices engage in new connections with heterogeneous qualities. It does so by placing an argument in favor of design practices and thinking infusing a principle of differentiation into how the past is invoked in contemporary architecture and urban design (Figure 6.1).

Figure 6.1: Freespace, the 16th International Architecture Exhibition, Corderie dell'Arsenale, Venice, 2018. Photo: Irene Fanizza. Source: https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/positions/202487/this-is-not-an-exhibition/.

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Traditionally, architecture and urban design appear to be informed largely by its formal, hegemonic and dualistic model. The separation between subject and object in such dualism perseveres habitually in architectural thought. This is a particularly problematic method in

Deleuze’s mathematical notion of differentiation that asserts hybrid connections and variations over forms of identity, resemblance, and separation.

In his text, The Futility of Objects: Decomposition and the Processes of Differentiation,

Eisenman argues that the “futile object and the process of decomposition are no longer arbitrary objects and anomalous processes, nor a mutation of classicism.”1 In that text, Eisenman explains the impracticality of a return to the history by describing a process of decomposition and the processes of differentiation that evade starting with a “ground zero.” As Eisenman mentions: “In decomposition, there is no type form, there is no ground zero.”2 Eisenman’s using of history involves a starting from the middle, “a break from the tradition of an architecture of categories, of types which in their essence rely on the separation of things as opposites.”3 Eisenman attempts to achieve the internal displacement by bringing history up-to-date through a scheme of virtual representation. He states that the process of decomposition “has no direct relationship to an ideal past but only a memory of that past, and a future that is only in the present. In a futureless present— an ‘immanent’ immanence—there is a removal of the extrinsic, conventional identity and the significance of the object.”4

1- Peter Eisenman, “The Futility of Objects: Decomposition and the Processes of Differentiation,” Eisenman Inside Out: Selected Writings 1963-1988 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), 187. 2- Peter Eisenman, “The Futility of Objects: Decomposition and the Processes of Differentiation,” Eisenman Inside Out: Selected Writings 1963-1988 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), 185. 3- Peter Eisenman, “En Terror Firma: In Trails of Grotextes,” Peter Eisenman Recent Projects, ed. Arie Graafland (Nijmegen: SUN; Amsterdam, the Netherlands: Idea Books, 1989), 22. 4- Peter Eisenman, “The Futility of Objects: Decomposition and the Processes of Differentiation,” Eisenman Inside Out: Selected Writings 1963-1988 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), 185.

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6.2 Actualization of the Virtual in Eisenman’s Critical Practice

By actualization of the virtual, Eisenman reinvents the space in terms of becoming and duration away from identity and resemblance. “Actualization of the virtual can never be a matter of resemblance since there is no longer any conception of time as unfolding recollection that represents the mythical Platonic Idea with the greatest possible degree of resemblance. Thus, the actualization of the virtual is a matter of difference, divergence, or creation.”5 In his article, En

Terror Firma: In Trails of Grotextes, Eisenman criticizes the previous way of conceptualizing architecture that relies on the contrast between things. Eisenman suggests a decentralized idea of

‘containing within,’ as an alternative to the logic of contradiction, challenging the rigidity of oppositional categories in representational thinking and starting to re-conceptualize architecture by displacing its formalism as a unique post-structuralist shift (Figure 6.2). “Continually dividing and combining, differentiation can be likened to a zone of divergence and as such it is fundamentally a creative movement, or flow, that conditions a whole in all its provisional consistency.”6

The effectiveness of Eisenman’s suggested idea lies in proceeding directly to overturn or deconstruct ideological stances dominant in the construction of identity and architectural history.

Eisenman outlines the possibility of displacing architecture to produce a state of uncertainty, using the notion of grotesque as “the manifestation of the uncertain in the physical.”7 Eisenman claims that the grotesque will “provoke an uncertainty in the object, by removing both the architect and

5- Dorothea Olkowski, Gilles Deleuze and the ruin of representation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 232. 6- Adrian Parr, “Differentiation/Differenciation,” The Deleuze Dictionary, Revised Edition, ed. Adrian Parr (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), 78. 7- Peter Eisenman, “En Terror Firma: In Trails of Grotextes,” Peter Eisenman Recent Projects, ed. Arie Graafland (Nijmegen: SUN; Amsterdam, the Netherlands: Idea Books, 1989), 21.

162 the user from any necessary control of the object ... it is now the distance between object and subject-- the impossibility of possession --which provokes this anxiety.”8

Architecture is reduced to the logic of contradiction. Eisenman deconstructs how architecture and urban design practices have engaged binaries, containing ‘figure/ground subject/object, part/whole, and solid/void,’ since the establishment of their tradition.9 It is shown that the phases of architectural design depend on a rigid contradiction between two options or dualisms, such as ‘solid/void, figure/ground’ (which is a reductive method), instead of a flexible

‘in-between’ condition and the fluid idea of space.10 The hierarchical system prevents any connection or relationships between decoded ‘things’ situated at the separate branches of the classified tree. The tree includes an arborescent thought, that is, a logic of division; the static relation between impressions and formulas, content and structure to form and maintain a catalog of the representational image that results in various but set types.

In Eisenman’s critical practice, creating an architectural image is a creative process that identifies a frame of reference for spatial invention and complexity.

“Eisenman sees Campo Marzio as an example of a new type of urban form that is defined through the relationship between figures. This type of urbanism may be regarded as the first modern plan because of its complex internal logic. It was the first town plan to emphasize an anti- hierarchical ideology. A conception that breaks the linear continuity with tradition from an extensive point of view, the space-time continuum where every step is directly linked to the one before.”11

8- Peter Eisenman, “En Terror Firma: In Trails of Grotextes,” Peter Eisenman Recent Projects, ed. Arie Graafland (Nijmegen: SUN; Amsterdam, the Netherlands: Idea Books, 1989), 24. 9- Jeffrey A. Bell, “Assemblage + Architecture,” The Deleuze Dictionary, Revised Edition, ed. Adrian Parr (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), 19. 10- Peter Eisenman, “Processes of the Interstitial: Notes on Zaera-Polo's Idea of the Machinic,” in El Croquis 83, Madrid (1997): 21-35. 11- Luca Galofaro, Digital Eisenman: An Office of the Electronic Era (Basel: Birkhauser, 1999), 19.

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Figure 6.2: Eisenman Architects, City of Culture of Galicia, Santiago de Compostela, Spain, 1999- 2011. Source: https://eisenmanarchitects.com/City-of-Culture-of-Galicia-2011

Deleuze explains that human beings habitually classify and stabilize their ideas as a set of dogmas, rules, and principles, which have their backgrounds in identical notions. His tree metaphor is an illustration of the classificatory method, or a hierarchical erection, based on exact definitions and judgments that serve as a tendency to exclude difference and foundation, or ground, for reasonably verifiable knowledge. “For Deleuze, these kinds of transcendent totalities are fundamentally illusory, they are the product of certain habitual ways of thinking common to western culture and the metaphysical tradition Deleuze calls ‘dogmatic image of thought.’”12 In

Empiricism and Subjectivity, Deleuze refuses the conception of total unities, working to investigate how existing sets of things which are, basically, unified, such as human beings, cultures, and thoughts. Deleuze’s critique of this ‘dogmatic image of thought’ comes from its association with

12- Jonattan Roffe, “Whole,” The Deleuze Dictionary, Revised Edition, ed. Adrian Parr (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), 305.

164 representational thinking (Figure 6.3).13 And, learning cannot occur as representation or resemblance. This is a problematic situation that leads to reproduction of the same and proposes a reductive knowledge with ultimate ground and a specific outcome. In representational design thinking, the architectural and urban design form is shaped and accepted as a completed artifact with an idealized meaning and utility. For instance, the art historian, Herbert Read, comprehends the architectural and urban design forms as configurations demonstrated by an actual which reflects the content; and they have a shared relation with materiality and performance.14

Dewan project for Al-Kadhimiya in Iraq The Municipality of al-Madina al-Munawwara 2009. (Amana) in Saudi Arabia, 2002. Source: Dewan Architects and Engineers, Photo: Beeha The Al Kadhimiya Development (TAKD). Ali, Shuaibi. The Search for Appropriate < http://www.dewan-architects.com> Architecture. In Petruccioli, Attilio, and Khalil K. Pirani. Understanding Islamic Architecture (Routledge Curzon: London, 2002), 101.

Figure 6.3: Representational Image of the Thought.

13- Daniela Voss, Conditions of thought Deleuze and transcendental ideas (Edinburgh University Press, 2013), 22. 14- Herbert Read, Art now: an introduction to the theory of modern painting and sculpture (New York: Pitman, 1968), 90.

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Further, the Italian ancient philosophy historian Franco Trabattoni employed the Platonic theory in describing the form as a material representation of an idea.15 The term ‘meaning’ is defined traditionally in dictionaries as purpose, intention, purport, or indication; and according to

Juan Bonta, an American architect, the meaning is the set of values that are subjected to the form, specifically subjected to the transformation that is imposed on the form.16 Ferdinand De Saussure, a Swiss linguist and semiotician, mentions the linguistic nature of the ‘meaning,’ which is the value that exists wherever terminologies are found; and the idea of value is purposely included in the idea of the terminology. He states that value is equivalent to the ‘meaning’ that is born from the connection between the ‘signifier’ and the ‘signified’; and he explains that this value has two approaches to determining the ‘meaning’: the first is automatous, and it comes from the structure of the word, apart from the linguistic system; whereas the second is universal and depends on its connection to other close terminologies in the linguistic system, so that the specific meaning could be exclusively determined.17 A person experiences the actual world with external realization, creating a division between the inside and the outside, and linking established effects into a rational system in space. Geoffrey Broadbent, a British architecture educator, classified the design process model into four categories:18

 Pragmatic Design

 Iconic Design

 Analogical Design

 Canonic Design

15- Franco Trabattoni, Essays on Plato's epistemology (Leuven (Belgium): Leuven University Press, 2016), 234. 16- Juan Bonta, “Notes for a Theory of Meaning in Design,” in Signs, symbols and architecture, eds. Geoffrey Broadbent, Richard Bunt, Charles Jencks (Chichester ; New York: J. Wiley & Sons, 1981), 276. 17- Terence Hawkes, Structuralism and semiotics (London: Routledge, 2005), 8. 18- Geoffrey Broadbent, “Building Design as an Iconic Sign System,” in Signs, symbols and architecture, eds. Geoffrey Broadbent, Richard Bunt, Charles Jencks (Chichester; New York: J. Wiley & Sons, 1981), 311-313.

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These categories may interfere in some respects; and they are different from the triadic model introduced by Charles S. Peirce, an American philosopher and semiotician, who identified the following categories:19

 Icon: It is a “sign” that points to an object. Here, the attributes of the “sign” and the object

are identical, regardless of the actual existence or non-existence of an object.

 Symbol: The symbol is also defined as a “sign” that points to an object. However, the

indication here is dictated by following a rule that usually connects a general mental

thought to the object; leading to the interpretation of the symbol through pointing to that

object.

 The Sign: It is a “sign” or an illustration that indicates an object, and it has a dynamic

connection to that unique object as well as to the senses or memories of the observers.

The Italian semiotician Umberto Eco also used that famous “semiotic triangle” to classify the

“sign” into thought or reference (De Saussure’s “signified”), the symbol (De Saussure’s

“signifier”), and the referent.20 Eco explains that any building may manifest these three types simultaneously. However, he argues that the element or the object representing the symbol could possibly indicate its own self the function it fulfills. Based on the above classification, we can summarize several conventional patterns that identify the relationship between the ‘form’ and the

‘meaning’:

 The Thought: Represented by reference design.

 The Symbol: Corresponds to expressional design.

 The Sign: Corresponds to analogical design.

19- Ibid., 314-315. 20- Umberto Eco, “Function and Sign: The Semiotics of Architecture,” in Signs, symbols and architecture, eds. Geoffrey Broadbent, Richard Bunt, Charles Jencks (Chichester; New York: J. Wiley & Sons, 1981), 16.

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 The Icon: Corresponds to canonic design.

 The Prevalent Pattern: Corresponds to iconic design.

These patterns represent the various major levels of relations between the form and the architectural values.

The architectural value is a set of notions, ideas, emotions, or purposes- whether it is an automatous or universal – that becomes tangible whenever it is associated with the architectural form that expresses this value. As a result, architectural form is designed conventionally to reflect the representational image of the thought and social platform that refers to a traditional object and already always defines cultural values.

In Deleuze’s transcendental empiricism, thoughts must be created as a self-motivated process that deviates from any given structure, binary signification, and prior resemblance, embedding in dynamic relations with percepts and affects. Architecturally, this means that the subject no longer places himself/herself into a sign-scheme with the purpose of producing a specific meaning (phenomenology), yet this subject, in Deleuze’s transcendental empiricism, is a specific selection which emerges from within the domain of architectural effects; it is subject- arrangement.

This dissertation concentrates on the non-representational thinking and poststructuralist explanations for the term ‘form’ that are proposed by Deleuze and Guattari, who indicate that the form is the virtual ability of the body to engage spatially in the process of becoming.21 Then, that engaging body can chart ideas and thoughts, producing change with indefinite potentials for interpreting and constructing.22 The same idea follows for the term ‘urban,’ in non-representational

21- Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, What is Philosophy? Trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 167. 22- Nigel Thrift, Non-representational theory: space, politics, affect (London and New York: Routledge, 2008), 237.

168 thinking the term ‘urban’ means a connection between the spatial and the social, and distinguishes a particular place with a particular bodily movement.23 Consequently, this dissertation considers the bodily movements, configurations, and structures that compose the urban space, together called the urban form. Therefore, the urban form is a body-material actual object and immaterial/virtual ethical object.

6.3 Deleuze’s Critique of Fixed Identity

Deleuze’s critique of fixed identity has been tested within the context of the architectural and urban design practices (Figure 6.4). Kim Dovey argues that when it comes to how people perceive a given space with a structure, the ‘identity,’ ‘character’ or ‘sense of place’ are the most evolving concepts that come to mind.24 Thus, this interpretation of Dovey’s standpoint is compatible with Deleuze’s notion of identity. Most architectural and urban design practices have the tendency to equate the participants in a social environment to specific inanimate items and how life is lived around and with those items which makes it difficult to part the social from the physical. As Dovey said, “While planning codes and consultants’ studies generally try to reduce character to a set of formal elements, the ways it is experienced in everyday life tend to resist attempts to separate the social from the physical.”25

The fact that modern architects substitute place identity with planning tools to proof that they move from the daily experience of pre-consciousness to the production of place and character.26 Deleuze, in all of this criticism, turns his attention to real life events. He questions modern architects and planners whose attitudes tend to erase diversity and limit people’s creativity

23- Ibid., 238. 24- Kim Dovey, Becoming places: urbanism/architecture/identity/power (London: Routledge, 2010). 25- Kim Dovey, Woodcock I. and Wood S. “A test of character: Regulating place-identity in inner-city Melbourne,” Urban Studies 46(12)2009: 2595–2615. 26- P. Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993).

169 in terms of their potential. This perception within the context of urban design merges, generally, with the notion and the ontology of place into one whole without interruption, a simplification which does not take into account the social approach to place identity. Doreen Massey opposes this view because she thinks that any notion of place coming from it poses a problem and thus is backward-thinking:27

Figure 6.4: Dewan Architects and Engineers Firm, The Al Kadhimiya Redevelopment, 2009. Fixed Identity in the winning entry project for the Al Kadhimiya historical site, Baghdad, Iraq. Source: Dewan Architects and Engineers Firm (DAEF). < http://www.dewan-architects.com/work-planning-kadhimiya.html>

27- Kim Dovey, Becoming places: urbanism/architecture/identity/power (London: Routledge, 2010).

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“Such view of place have been evident in a whole range of setting – in the emergence of certain kinds of nationalism, in the marketing of places …. In the new urban enclosures and … by those defending their communities against yuppification … All of these have been attempts to fix the meaning of place, to enclose and defend them: they construct singular, fixed and static identities for places, and they interpret places as bounded enclosed spaces defined through counter position against the Other who is outside.”28

As an alternative to such views, Massey advocates a loose conception of “place,” whereby place identity is temporary and not finalized with any parameters. This is more of a progressive approach to “place” which opens up to diverse identities and past experiences, with its “character” determined by what is at play now, the current and immediate circumstances instead of what has been already established, defined and stamp-proofed with no possibility of escaping human scrutiny.29

6.4 Deleuze’s Process of Differentiation

Deleuze primarily clarifies the concept of ‘differentiation’ in his book Difference and

Repetition. Deleuze argues that the process of differentiation is a dynamic movement that is prior to any recognizable image (Figure 6.5). In result, Deleuze specifies that “what are differentiated are intensities and heterogeneous qualities and this is what makes the virtual real but not actual, in short, differentiation in the way Deleuze intends it happens only in the virtual realm.”30

28- Doreen Massey, “A place called home,” New Formations 17 (1992): 3–15. 29- Doreen Massey, “A place called home,” New Formations 17 (1992): 3–15. 30- Adrian Parr, “Differentiation/Differenciation,” The Deleuze Dictionary, Revised Edition, ed. Adrian Parr (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), 78.

171

Figure 6.5: Assemblage Architects, Holy City Masterplan, 2009. The Process of Differentiation. Source: Assemblage Architects, Holy City Masterplan. < http://www.assemblage.co/holy-city-masterplan>

172

According to Deleuze, a human has a certain characteristic to consider difference as the difference between things, diminishing and reducing all intensive differences to representational image. For Deleuze, the human process of labeling something, or categorizing it, happens based on a pre-known form of homogeneous understanding.31 In the representational thinking, differentiation is shaped by human’s system of signification. Human classification fails to attain identity in its whole, ‘difference in itself.’ This ‘pure difference’ is lost in the way we want to label items. Deleuze wants us to unfetter ourselves from these prior categories. He wants us to shed pre- conceived notions. A return to our perceptual access, which lies beneath this categorization, would give pure, real notions of reality. Our labels and names are, in this sense, like ghosts of an original, or bad carbon copies. Somers-Hall notes that the limits of representation have been tested and proven to be reliable in systems based on judgment occurring at the same time as the difference leading to identity.32 Deleuze’s stand on the mode of representation is somewhat straightforward.

He thinks that the mode of representation has nothing to do with ‘difference in itself,’ or anything in connection with the ground of life since it sorts out thoughts in conjunction with some fixed elements as well as some parameters that depend on some form of identity.

Drawing substantially on Brott’s Architecture for a Free Subjectivity, the conception of genius loci enters the architectural dualism and stays outside Deleuze’s principle of differentiation, forming a representational reference to act as a symbolic shadow of imaginary elements that cover the purely immanent plane of architectural intermediary, mirroring the language of transcendental ego in a dialectical manner and becoming a form of ‘arborescent’ thought pitched toward a homogeneous schema as a vexed tool for constructing false identity. Talking specifically about the

31- Henry Somers-Hall, 2012. Hegel, Deleuze, and the critique of representation dialectics of negation and difference (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2010), 41. 32- Henry Somers-Hall, 2012. Hegel, Deleuze, and the critique of representation dialectics of negation and difference (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2010), 239.

173 architectural and urban design practices in Arab countries, Elsheshtawy made a poignant and overarching remark in which the critique sees modern Arab architects and urban designers clinging to their heritage and tradition when it comes to examining their cities designated as historical sites.33 This argument merits a more profound conception of how architecture and urban design might itself ethically function in relation to the process of differentiation. “The problem this poses, given that Deleuze is not a representational thinker, is how difference differenciates without itself turning into a system of representation?”34 To place the question in Deleuze’s Spinozism frame of ethical-aesthetic terms, how do we create an architectural image within impersonal effects that is irreducible to conventional formalism or traditional dualism as an either/or relationship, opening a process of differentiation and creative transformation? In Deleuze’s concept of creative transformation, experiential and spontaneous affect that occurs as a ephemeral force prior to the fixed meaning and away from the interpretative framework of reasoning exposes the ‘limits of semiotics’ that have a central tendency to actualize complex reactions out of their indeterminate virtuality and materialize them to physical and visual contexts. Hence, Deleuze’s critique of the system of representation turns into the concept of the ‘rhizome,’ (Figure 6.6).

33- Yasser Elsheshtawy, Planning Middle Eastern Cities: an urban kaleidoscope in a globalizing world (London: Routledge, 2004). 34-Adrian Parr, “Differentiation/Differenciation,” The Deleuze Dictionary, Revised Edition, ed. Adrian Parr (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), 78.

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Figure 6.6: Marc Ngui, Diagrams for Deleuze & Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus, 2008. “Introduction: Rhizome.” Source: http://www.bumblenut.com/drawing/art/plateaus/index.shtml

“Deleuze and Guattari characterize a rhizome as indeterminate and experimental, steering the emphasis away from representational interpretative frameworks, they clearly state that a rhizome is a map, not a trace, explaining this distinction they write that what”35 ‘distinguishes the map from the tracing is that it is entirely oriented toward an experimentation in contact with the real.’36 Deleuze utilizes the idea of an ‘arborescent’ model as a counterpoint to his rhizomatic philosophy. In his collaboration with Guattari, when they write the first chapter of their book A

Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze targets the vertical proceeding of the ‘arborescent’ schema as a model of conventional epistemology and characterizing the ‘rhizome’ as a horizontal structure which

‘proceeds from the middle’ to replace it (Figure 6.7).

35- Adrian Parr, “Creative Transformation,” The Deleuze Dictionary, Revised Edition, ed. Adrian Parr (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), 60. 36- Gilles Deleuze, and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis, Minnesota University Press, 1987), 12.

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Figure 6.7: Marc Ngui, Diagrams for Deleuze & Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus, 2008. Source: http://www.inflexions.org/n1_t_nguihtml.html

6.5 Representational Thinking vs. Differentiation

The purpose of this concluding chapter is to reveal the impersonal effects of combinations of architectural practice and Deleuze’s productive process of differentiation. Deleuze considers the process of differentiation as a vehicle for conveying the doubled selection of singularities that embed in ‘sensible aggregates’ of an experiential event. It continually requires ethical principles to allow collective voices to reverberate and new forms of subjectivity to proliferate in heterogeneous milieus, rather than intelligible and recognizable experiences and memories that represent conventional ways of thinking of self and other. Deleuze and Guattari use ‘rhizome’ as a decentralized model for empirical subjectivity, with ensconced and constituted subjects that challenge and exceed the hierarchical ways in representational thinking, re-conceptualizing tendencies of reorienting ‘thought’ as a unique production of the mind in the creative practice.

“The rhizome is conceived of as an open multiplicity (Figure 6.8), and all life is a rhizomatic mode

176 of change without firm and fixed boundaries that proceeds”37 ‘from the middle, through the middle, coming and going rather than starting and finishing.’38 Nonetheless, Deleuze and

Guattari’s positive using of the term ‘open,’ which they never mean the opposite of ‘closed’; indicates “the machinic character of a rhizome that arises out of the virtual as well as the dynamic boundaries that constitute it.”39

Figure 6.8: Marc Ngui, Diagrams for Deleuze & Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus, 2008. Multiplicity Source: http://www.inflexions.org/n1_t_nguihtml.html

Representation in itself deforms difference by subjugating it to identity, a practice that

Deleuze finds retrograde in terms of the creative minds of humans. Instead of thinking about what differs, the minds are attached to what is represented, thus lacking the ingenuity to innovate by negating the true inherent difference. As Dovey said, “While representations and spatial practice are integrated in the field of everyday life, they are seriously divided in architectural/urban practice

37- Adrian Parr, “Creative Transformation,” The Deleuze Dictionary, Revised Edition, ed. Adrian Parr (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), 60. 38- Gilles Deleuze, and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis, Minnesota University Press, 1987), 25. 39- Adrian Parr, “Creative Transformation,” The Deleuze Dictionary, Revised Edition, ed. Adrian Parr (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), 60.

177 and criticism where avant-garde, form-makers and spatial analysts generally operate in quite separate fields.”40

In contrast, differentiation exists in the investigational and heterogeneous construction of meanings, it divaricates into other texts as newly generated thoughts. That being said, the more effective purpose of architectural practice would be the creation of concepts through multidirectional lines of becoming, which produce aggregate networks. Deleuze and Guattari pondered this issue using the metaphor of rhizome, a botanical term defined in the online Oxford dictionary as “A continuously growing horizontal underground stem that puts out lateral shoots and adventitious roots at intervals.”41 The main argument at the core of Deleuze’s study is that concepts were complicated, simply because they generate ‘new lines of becoming’ and pave the way for new ideas.42 “A rhizomatic plateau of thought, Deleuze and Guattari suggest, may be reached through the consideration of the potential of multiple and relational ideas and bodies.”43

Deleuze, together with Guattari, built their argument, using the botanical term

“rhizomatic”44 as a metaphor to describe the styles of thinking whereby there is no stationary center nor order due to the entangled ramifications of the various links.45 In order to establish a rational,

Deleuze and Guattari contrast Rhizome/Rhizomatics with another botanical term: ‘arborescent.’46

The rhizomatic concept is similar to the actual botanical definition of the term “rhizome” characterized by the notion of lateral expansion of the multitude of links in contrast to the centeredness represented by the stem’s verticality. In light of that consideration, one can assume a

40- Kim Dovey, Becoming places: urbanism/architecture/identity/power (London: Routledge, 2010). 41 - https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/rhizome, accessed on January 18, 2018. 42- Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 139. 43- Felicity J. Colman, “Rhizome,” in The Deleuze Dictionary, Revised Edition, ed. Adrian Parr (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), 233. 44- Gilles Deleuze, and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis, Minnesota University Press, 1987), 3–26. 45- Claire Colebrook, Understanding Deleuze (Crows Nest, N.S.W.: Allen & Unwin, 2002), xix. 46- Claire Colebrook, Understanding Deleuze (Crows Nest, N.S.W.: Allen & Unwin, 2002), xxvii.

178 connection with the notion of lateral thinking. Arthur Koestler, a Hungarian-British author, is one of the few thinkers to dedicate their research on the new connections created during the lateral expansion of ideas, and he viewed those connections as a sign of creativity whereby ideas that initially seem random come together to stand for something meaningful for the mere fact that they are part of a system.47 Koestler is seconded by Edward de Bono,48 a Maltese physician and psychologist who reasons that the creative logic of lateral thinking is an antithesis of the hierarchical logic of practical thinking. Deleuze, for his part, states that tree-thinking suppresses creativity and keeps the main concepts in a transcendental field.49

The traditional way of thinking, also known as arborescent, has a defined origin from which it shoots out a multitude idea like the stem of a tree spreading its branches, in an orderly manner.

Conversely, rhizomatics have no center, are haphazard and proliferate loosely. In order to make a powerful point, Deleuze and Guattari titled the first chapter of A Thousand Plateaus ‘Introduction:

Rhizome’ and proceeded to demonstrate what they meant by “rhizome,” as discussed above. Their concept was welcomed as a God-given gift or mantra within the artistic sphere, especially that of the visual arts, and set the tone for the common use of plant imagery in the visual arts discourse, including but not limited to the terms of “hybridization, hybrid, and rhizome-related phenomena such as crisscrossing and in-between or interstitial fields.”50 Likewise, Deleuze and Guattari’s concept has seen its application in modern architecture and urbanism with the emphasis on the rhizome as an everlasting, restructuring, interrelated system. In fact, what seems to appeal more to the architects and urbanists is the description of the principles of the concept by Deleuze and

Guattari, which, by the way, expands the possibilities of creativity but remains a true challenge to

47- Arthur Koestler, The Act of Creation (London: Hutchinson, 1964). 48- Edward de Bono, The Mechanism of Mind (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969). 49- Kim Dovey, Becoming places: urbanism/architecture/identity/power (London: Routledge, 2010), 20. 50- Annette W. Balkema, Exploding aesthetics (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000), 52.

179 apply in the field, precisely because describing rhizomatic structures entails linkage, diversity, and plurality of mapmaking, heterogeneity, and transfer printing. However, when successfully applied by architects and urbanists, Deleuze and Guattari’s rhizomatic concept offers the possibility of appreciating the internal organization of a building and how that specific building relates and connects to others in the city to form a unity.51 Complex networks keep appearing in design research. A consideration of networks brings us into contact with Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the rhizome.

“Rhizome, studied in this perspective, can, therefore, be described as the connections that occur between the most disparate and the most similar of objects, places, and people, all of these people and entities are linked by a secret chain of reactions interwoven and hardly perceivable, for they appeal to our sense of intuition and the concept of assemblage.”52 (Figure 6.9).

Figure 6.9: Marc Ngui, Diagrams for Deleuze & Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus, 2008. Assemblage Source: http://www.inflexions.org/n1_t_nguihtml.html

51- Felicity J. Colman, “Rhizome,” The Deleuze Dictionary, Revised Edition, ed. Adrian Parr (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), 235. 52- Ibid., 232.

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A striking example of a rhizome city, representative of the descriptions above, is

Amsterdam in the Netherlands, a city often compared to the canalled city of Venice, Italy. The particularity of Amsterdam derives from the different physical and geographical elements that have come together to give this city the image it has been carrying over the years. In fact, the city is composed of a system “of canals, water ways, locks, alleys, and embankments, held together by the stem-canals formed by the ring of canals, the Kloveniersburgwal, Oude Schans, and Amstel.”53

Deleuze and Guattari portrayed Amsterdam as a ‘rhizome- city’ considering the way the city presents itself.54 The curiosity of an onlooker or visitor to its Historic Museum is a testimony because one feels like not leaving that place at all. In their effort to explain/define rhizome, Deleuze and Guattari compare it to an open space with multiple entries and exits which allow for the connections between the different parts, with different vital functions for its dwellers on social, economic, political and artistic levels. In a sense, the authors define rhizome as a figure of speech applicable to architectural structures regardless of time and place.55 “Deleuze describes the city as a labyrinth in terms that strongly invoke the rhizome.”56 Furthermore, Deleuze and Guattari push their comparison of the rhizome to a labyrinth, thus establishing an undeniable metaphorical approach to their concept, all the while affirming the ability of a rhizome to connect any particular point to any other point.57 This characteristic of the rhizome implies that dissimilar elements may also be connected together in this way. The rhizome cannot be simplified to individual elements, for it does not involve units but aspects, or, more aptly stated, aspects in movement.

53- Arie Graafland, “Of rhizomes, trees and the IJ-Oevers, Amsterdam,” Assemblage, no. 38 (1998): 28-41. 54- Gilles Deleuze, and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis, Minnesota University Press, 1987), 15. 55- Arie Graafland, “Of rhizomes, trees and the IJ-Oevers, Amsterdam,” Assemblage, no. 38 (1998): 28-41. 56- Gilles Deleuze, 1993. The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque, trans. Tom Conley (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), 24. 57- Arie Graafland, “Of rhizomes, trees and the IJ-Oevers, Amsterdam,” Assemblage, no. 38 (1998): 28-41.

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Rhizomes thrive in certain special conditions of a given environment at that specific moment, and, as such, they rely on short-lived features and provisional thoughts that are constantly evolving. What the end results in such situations is “deterritorialization,” according to Deleuze and

Guattari, which, undoubtedly, causes more changes.58 Due to its nature and its ramifications within spatial and social arrangements, ‘rhizome’ may be likened to American sociologist Richard

Sennett’s notion of ‘narrative space,’ which he defines as a place where something not thought about can happen, and where there is an invocation of the necessity for change and transition.59

This line of thought in the ‘narrative space’ marks its indefiniteness, a fortunate original occurrence at that time.

The thought that an architectural structure, be it a building, space, a location, or something else, is linked to an infinite quantity of other points or sites is a dynamic concept. Any architect who wishes to apply Sennett’s concept of narrative space in their work or in their pedagogical agenda will certainly have to reckon the indefiniteness of its use. This means taking some specific measures whereby ‘conjunctions and composites’ are favored in lieu of “segmentation, complexity, and obscurity, which are emphasized instead of simplicity and lucidity.”60 The focus on the potential lines inherent in the rhizome stresses connectedness and movement. This appeals to communication systems and at the same time to the movement of people, goods, and services.

Architecture and cities are therefore largely involved in these functions. As a spatial configuration, the rhizome cannot at all be seen differently from the strata of society that prospers while living in it.61 These outcomes in configurations and relationships are ‘acentered, nonhierarchical,

58- Gilles Deleuze, and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis, Minnesota University Press, 1987), 21. 59- Richard Sennett, The conscience of the eye: the design and social life of cities (New York: Knopf, 1990). 60- Arie Graafland, “Of rhizomes, trees and the IJ-Oevers, Amsterdam,” Assemblage, no. 38 (1998): 28-41. 61- Ibid.

182 nonsignifying.’62 The impersonal effects as a dynamic model of subjectivity involve a new primary subjectivity in which personal perception becomes progressive and freshly liberated from the submission to the system of signification. When defining the rhizome, Deleuze and Guattari place particular stress on cartography so as to espouse architectural and urban practices. Nevertheless, the mapping they depict as a strong formulation63 “affects to a map that must be produced, constructed, a map that is always detachable, connectable, reversible, modifiable, and has multiple entryways and exits and its own lines of flight.”64 The rhizomatic flows counter the inertia of segments. However, an interacted spatial construction is vital to the enabling of such smooth flows

– the traffic flow and the chat in the bazaars cannot take place without opulently interlinked but arranged and striated architectural designs. The complex network is obviously more related to smooth space and rhizomatic preparations than the organized characters and linear orders. This unexpected encounter is what gives a specific place its genius loci in which it plays an important role in character creation, for pleasant cities exemplify places of becoming.

6.6 Places of Becoming in Diagrammatic Models

The process of diagramming is the key theme for non-representational urban design thinking that can critically engage in order to understand how the spatial configuration of the city works empirically. “For Deleuze and Guattari, the concept of mapping is defined in opposition to the simple ‘tracing’ of territory; rather it is a creative practice that analyses the hidden forces within a territory to produce an abstract and diagrammatic understanding of how an assemblage

62- Gilles Deleuze, and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis, Minnesota University Press, 1987), 21. 63- Graham Livesey, “Rhizome + Architecture,” The Deleuze Dictionary, Revised Edition, ed. Adrian Parr (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), 235. 64- Gilles Deleuze, and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis, Minnesota University Press, 1987), 21.

183 works.”65 The main goal here is basically to utilize this diagramming and mapping process with

Lynch’s work on the image of the city as an assessment tool, generating one or multi-diagrams that indicate what possibilities can and cannot occur as becoming (Figure 6.10).

“In a classic work, The Image of the City (1960), Kevin Lynch taught us that disalienation in the traditional city involves the practical reconquest of a sense of place and the construction or reconstruction of an articulated ensemble which can be retained in memory and which the individual subject can map and remap along the moments of mobile, alternative trajectories.”66

Figure 6.10: Marc Ngui, Diagrams for Deleuze & Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus, 2008. Multidirectional Lines of Becoming Source: http://www.inflexions.org/n1_t_nguihtml.html

The existence of various relations between space and block of sensation may result in multi-diagrams, emphasizing the importance of blocks of sensation and space elements.67

65- Kim Dovey and Elek Pafka, “What is functional mix? An assemblage approach,” Planning Theory & Practice 18 (2017): 249-267. 66- Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham: Duke University Press, 1991), 51. 67- David R Olson and Ellen Bialystok, Spatial Cognition: the Structure and Development of Mental Representations of Spatial Relations (Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum, 1983), 246.

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Therefore, an alternative definition of urban form structure was presented through the study of the urban image, based on the argument that states “each image has a unique pattern of spatial relation for the observers.”68 Furthermore, Kevin Lynch cited five urban elements as integral parts of a city image that is comprehended (cognized) as a whole unit; these urban elements are paths, edges, districts, nodes, and landmarks;69 a set that has developed and used for inspiring urban design thinking process. The motivation by which the expression ‘cognitive map’ was created and is utilized by Lynch in his book is to examine the function of the mental image that affects the ability of the viewer’s body to respond to complex identities and aesthetic influences in urban scenes.

These sensitive feelings or perceptions result from memories that come into contact with the body and can occur in a particular urban scene making the city unforgettable and conceivable. 70

6.7 Urban Image Beyond Deleuze and Guattari

This section is designed to analyze the urban image diagrammatically; the diagrammatic analysis can enable us to know and read the status of the city and its urban image. It is clear that all cities will continue to keep its urban elements, and we can cite the most important traits in accordance with the urban elements of the city identified by Lynch in his influential model. But these urban elements no longer need to be used as transcendent figures to express a fixed image.

Rather, these urban elements could deal with the block of sensations, movements, and affects:

 Paths: “are the channels of movement through the city whether by foot, car or public

transport.”71 The city is distinctively known for its paths. By analyzing these paths and

local streets through the concepts of mappings, networks, and connections, Deleuze and

68- Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1960), 160. 69- Ibid., 108-109. 70- Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1960).

71- Kim Dovey, Urban Design Thinking: a conceptual toolkit (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016), 80.

185

Guattari stress the appearance of powerful spatial affects, characterizing their relative

capacity assessed on the basis of human scale (designated solely for pedestrians) or on the

basis of highways. Deleuzo- Guattarian’s spatial affect is a route of dynamism in the

movement which comprises of all potential paths, orientations, and affects. Free-flowing

movements of bodies become sensory visualities linked to the urban form and activate

architectural values, producing subjectivity or sensual experience in urban space. Paths are

always scattered and interspersed among or between nodes.

 Nodes: “are those sites where there is an intensity of intersecting pathway; places of intense

encounter,”72 “strategic spots,” 73 and “moments of the shift from one structure to

another.”74 The nodes used in public and private districts of all cities could be classified

into two types, based on their pattern of activity and the attained social interactions:

a- Single or central space of power: This is found in the courtyards and plazas,

because it rotates and is centered on the building, so the building becomes the

central power or point of attraction. The courtyard of the Here, the experience

is shaped by the ways spatial affects occur in which urban form and

architectural values are connected to each other and affect each other. In this

urban context, spatial bodies and material/immaterial environments are not

controlled or structured in a stable system, but rather they are open to urban

narratives and everyday affective flows.

b- The market space: or urban bazaars can be founded in some cities; they are

distinctive, not as urban landmarks, but for their roofed alleys corridors that are

72- Kim Dovey, Urban Design Thinking: a conceptual toolkit (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016), 80. 73- Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1960), 110. 74- Ibid., 110.

186

surrounded by khans and sarais.75 In this pattern, the focus is on prevailing

activities as affective energies inherent in bodily contours. “This very basic

relation of pedestrian flows as a tangent to items of desire is a major driver of

urban morphology.”76

Nodes are open spaces in which all conceivable arrangements and shapes can transpire.

They are urban spaces of the possible body that “can actualize something that has not

previously been.”77 Rethinking urban spaces through Deleuze and Guattari puts forward a

possible shift to envisage urban space as practices of becoming instead of a previously

determined entities.

 Landmarks: “are those elements that stand out as figures against the ground of the urban

context, a phenomenon that is linked to Gestalt psychology which suggests we perceive

our world by organizing it into figures that stand out from a surrounding ground – identities

that emerge from differences: it is this difference that catches the eye and registers as an

image in the mind.”78 Furthermore, most of the landmarks have strong connections with

their surrounding structures and are considered part and parcel of their cohesive fabric that

are linked by a complex network of paths comprised of public, private and semi-private

spaces. Driven by the logic of sensation, “landmarks mark the land through their relative

differences from their contexts- what we see is not a thing but a relationship of

difference.”79

75- Mohammad Gharipour, The Bazaar in the Islamic City: Design, Culture, and History (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2012), 27. 76- Kim Dovey, Urban Design Thinking: a conceptual toolkit (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016), 61. 77- Andrew Ballantyne, Deleuze and Guattari for Architects (London and New York: Routledge, 2007), 8. 78- Kim Dovey, Urban Design Thinking: a conceptual toolkit (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016), 80. 79- Kim Dovey, Urban Design Thinking: a conceptual toolkit (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016), 80.

187

 Districts: “are patches of the city that are perceived as different from their surroundings,

identified by consistencies of texture or character within the urban fabric.”80 They are

marked according to the type of buildings they contained and divided into public and

private districts. For example, in the public district, we find government, religious,

administrative, and commercial buildings; whereas in the private district we find the

residential buildings. Every district, whether public or private, is a compound of urban

form, persistent function in a mode of sensory engagement, and the dynamism of everyday

life, with unactualized possibilities to “stress [and highlight] certain elements of an

image,”81 that is both deliberate and unanticipated. Moreover, two patterns of building

complexes are identified in these districts: First, branching-tree complex; this is the

prevailing pattern in Arabian cities. Second, the grid system; rarely found in the center of

old Arabian cities.

 Edges: “the clear boundaries between part of the city are what Lynch calls edges- barriers

to movement that include”82 two types:

a- Natural edges exploited by the inhabitants to protect the city, such as hills and rivers

and that may be the reason for choosing the location of the city.

b- Man-made edges, such as walls surrounding the city to identify its boundaries and

to protect the city from enemy attacks, tunnels, and the streets that represent the

major channels for the traffic movement and determines the limits for the districts.

80- Ibid., 80. 81- Gillian Rose, Visual Methodologies (London and Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 2007), 48. 82- Kim Dovey, Urban Design Thinking: a conceptual toolkit (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016), 80.

188

The effectiveness and the expediency of Lynch’s study, typology, and interpretation of urban types, inspired by gestalt concepts of perception, generate ways in which we can indicate and analyze the difference between these elements of the city as a combination of assemblages. This mix of elements in different assemblages enables a construct of the image of the city as a perceptual whole that works together to form multiple identities out of difference, beyond the stillness and the lifelessness of formularized image. These objects, or components, manifest themselves with exceptional ability as the arrangement of ‘information,’ as the English social scientist and semiotician Gregory Bateson proposes that “information is a difference that makes a difference.”83

Consequently, “the landmark is a difference between figure and ground, and it makes a difference because we use it to navigate the city, what we recognize as nodes, paths, districts, and boundaries are differences that we see as identities because they help us form a cognitive map of the city, it is the relationships that matter: to see these elements as ‘things-in-themselves’ is to misrecognize them.”84

6.8 Conclusion

This chapter offers a heterogeneous series of impersonal architectural effects that function at the productive moment of becoming: not at the frozen time of being in which architectural image transforms through movement of affirmations and operates in multiple bodies, constituting the doubled selection. This doubled selection transforms thought into a selection of becoming; something new is present here and is now brought into being – which seems to be the impersonal effects of the reassessment of forces, which constitute any coherent arrangement of an architectural image that may connect with but is irreducible to personhood. Deleuze and Guattari’s constructive

83- Gregory Bateson, Steps to an ecology of mind (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 459. 84- Kim Dovey, Urban Design Thinking: a conceptual toolkit (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016), 82.

189 vision of rhizome enlivens this trajectory toward both empirical and impersonal effects. Empirical subjectivity is an accurate effect of practices of individuation as a real material development; it is

“what makes the individuality of an event.”85 The Deleuzian subject (the subject yet to come) is the subject that has first to be released from arborescent structure and control of signs. In this view, the architect and urban designer personality is not eliminated, but “envelop[s] a finite number of the singularities of the system.”86 A pure thought (the impersonal field) comes from outside, in time, colliding or coming into contact with subjects in its ethical and lived dimensions to make a difference, to make a change.

The ‘Disneyfication’ concept captivates the architectural and urban design thinking since it represents a model of an element that links protection to the economic survival of local communities. It has been adopted in many countries around the world. Many cities, districts, and neighborhoods are being reshaped in the image of Disney’s popular fantasy theme parks. “Theme parks are capital intensive, highly developed, self-contained recreational spaces, which are usually organized around themes or unifying ideas such as a specific period in history or a particular geographic region.”87

American art history educator Karal Ann Marling, the author of Architecture of reassurance: designing Disney's theme parks, coins the term “architecture of reassurance,”88 the meaning is connected to Disney’s specific brand of nostalgic in architecture and urbanism. The cultural differences are reduced to a form of homogeneity and standardization with miniaturized scale, historical features, and nostalgic design as a controlled, global, and abstract model.

85- Gilles Deleuze, “A Philosophical Concept ….,” in Who Comes after the Subject? Eds. Eduardo Cadava, Peter Connor, and Jean-Luc Nancy (New York: 1991), 95. 86- Gilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sense (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 109. 87- Jafar Jafari, Encyclopedia of tourism (London and New York: Routledge, 2000). 88- Karal A. Marling, Architecture of reassurance: designing Disney's theme parks (Abberville Press, 1997).

190

“Certain aspects of Disneyland and its offshoots are positive – such as the urban planning strategies at Celebration, the urban renewal ideals behind South Street Seaport, the imaginative and also educational programs at Disneyland amusement parks, the attempt to introduce cultural diversity at places like EPCOT. But there are also limits to this vision and danger in suppressing conflict and difference in order to create sanitized, controlled, consumer-based experiences. Celebration operates like a gated community – its population self-selects by income. This fosters intolerance or indifference to the ongoing challenges of living in real-world, democratic communities.”89

Nowadays, several modern and post-modern associated issues that touch the local character are perceived as a result of the globalization phenomenon. Locality is more an incorporeal structure than a physical space existing in the electronic era and age of globalization. The media and the impact of capitalism and innovative techniques of communication have added to the continuing apprehension about globalizing culture. With historical environments become gradually more marketable, and branded products, traditional cities, districts, and neighborhoods seem to be enjoyable, stress-free, and manageable. This phenomenon, united with global tourism, has encouraged some countries around the world to renovate and reconstruct their neglected and lost heritage, presenting a product for global consumption.

The cultural heritage centers have the mission to support the cultural heritage by creating more awareness of global possibilities such as superficiality and neutrality and threats such as homogenization and uniformity.

This dissertation is intensively pursuing a possible project from a diagrammatic or post- representational position that seeks an alternative mode of repetition. A view that considers repetition as a metamorphic becoming other, producing radical difference rather than safeguarding

89- Sonya James, “What Disney can teach us about urban planning,” https://www.zdnet.com/article/qa-what-disney- can-teach-us-about-urban-planning/.

191 resemblance. The flow of new connections between incorporeal events and corporeal bodies operates as a kind of difference machine, as a swerve, rather than as a false identity machine, as the stationary reproduction of a representational model. This alternative mode of repetition would operate through a condensation where a continuous whole-part would eternally provoke new assemblages.

6.8.1 Contribution

While the works of Gilles Deleuze are broad, as this dissertation has shown, his theory of

Difference and Repetition has potentiality to generate a perpetual connection between history and becoming in architectural and urban design thinking and practices that go beyond the historicism and representational image of thought, strengthening architecture and urban designs’ relevance to the Deleuze’s philosophy. This dissertation is developed as one such small contribution to this increasing call, arguing that Deleuze’s theory of Difference and Repetition provides critical engagement, and proof for, the continuing relevance of this theorist to the disciplines of architecture and urban design. Such argument has been improved by offering intellectual commentaries and comparative, conceptual, and diagrammatic analyses in which architectural and urban design thinking may connect within Deleuze’s philosophy through the design process.

6.8.2 Expected Outcomes

This dissertation explores the concepts of difference and repetition within two different design strategies by relating Deleuzian theoretical discourse to architectural and urban design practices, focusing primarily on the particularities of affective assemblages and folding techniques in Eisenman critical practice. The way that the dissertation conceptualizes the architectural and urban design practices through Deleuze’s theory of Difference and Repetition highlights the active relations between history and becoming in the design of the cultural environments and historical

192 sites. In the case of the Al Kadhimiya historical site, the winning bid by the Dewan Architects &

Engineers Firm, and its proposal to imitate the past may reflect an inability to accept change. As a result, one can realize the tendency to pit the past against the present on an uneven terrain which is not actually the functional use of the past as stipulated. The state of affairs of Islamic architectural legacy is not an invention of today’s thinkers. Any urban civilization which has no vision and is not able to adapt to the current situation and environmental conditions by breathing life into what exists today is doomed to destruction.90 A good example is a historical revivalism happening in Iraq. At this point, it becomes crucial to acknowledge the need to abdicate choosing between place as a decreed notion or as a complete societal construct. Thus, “character” is viewed as the doxa of an organized society which runs counter urban design and planning for modern-day inhabitants.91 Because of the incessant flux of changes, predetermined and established identities naturally give way to the current reality proclaimed by the human creative mind. The main impediment to “character” may be our tendency to reduce it and transform it into a series of features rendering the “character” a mere puppet.92 Deleuze’s approach to difference may be summed up as the resistance to the temptation to believe that difference depends on representation, a derivative of the identity which has the primacy. Deleuze advocates breaking the chains of interdependency to allow difference to manifest itself as it should and actually does if we only have the courage to perceive it.

90- Stefano Bianca, Urban form in the Arab world: past and present (London: Thames & Hudson, 2000), 50. 91- Kim Dovey, Woodcock I. and Wood S. “A test of character: Regulating place-identity in inner-city Melbourne,” Urban Studies 46(12)2009: 2595–2615. 92- Ibid.

193

6.9 Further Research

There is a numerous amount of interesting discussion yet to come regarding the process of differentiation in design, particularly in relation to the architectural and urban practices and theories. An engagement between the processes of differentiation in design and the posthumanist movement has been taken up lately by Constantin V. Boundas and Vana Tentokali. Their book

Architectural and Urban Reflections after Deleuze and Guattari addresses the thought of Deleuze and Guattari to understand their intellectual role in the course of actualization of the virtual in posthumanist movement that has given rise to new architectural and urban practices and theories.

Dorothea Olkowski reviews this book and poses this question: “what kind of architecture can realize the virtual plane of Ideas of Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophy?”93 According to Olkowski,

“this because in spite of many years of theorizing about Deleuze and Guattari’s possible view of the role of architecture in their philosophy, there still has been no satisfactory answer to this question.”94 Olkowski said that “the difficulty of this question and the complexity and diversity of the answers in this volume are due to the possibility or impossibility in the contemporary era of a nomadic architecture constituted as an immanent plane of trajectories, a swarm of intensities, the unlivable site of the body without organs, the differentiating principle of the fold, the unleashing of sensation, the perceptible realization of imperceptible forces, a map that deterritorializes, or an instrument of the propagation of light.”95 Olkowski continues saying that “this accomplished assemblage of architects, urban planners, and philosophers urge us to consider how the ideas of

Deleuze and Guattari both organize and derange their architectural visions as they ceaselessly

93- Dorothea Olkowski, Review of the book Architectural and Urban Reflections after Deleuze and Guattari by Constantin V. Boundas and Vana Tentokali (London; New York: Rowman & Littlefield International, 2018). 94- Ibid. 95- Ibid.

194 experiment with the very idea of the worlds architecture might be capable of creating.” 96 A comprehensive text of philosophies of architecture and urbanism, vital materiality, digital production, and feminist practices have been explored in this book. Indeed, it may carry more appealing futures, attached both ethically and creatively, to architectural and urban practices and theories. Possibly, this will become further research.

The hope is that the final document clarifies the significance of what Kim Dovey explores,

“the quest to rethink conceptions of ‘place’ and to move on from the views of place as essentially closed and stabilizing, another is the focus on the nexus of place to power; the ways that the sense of place is inextricably wrapped up with questions of authority and authenticity, there is an attempt to rethink the idea of place and place identity without the suffocating ideal of place as closed or finished.”97 Furthermore, the hope that through a detailed comparison of the two proposals for redevelopment of the Al Kadhimiya historical site, there will be practical evidence supported by the theoretical framework of this dissertation (Deleuze’s theory of Difference and Repetition) that will demonstrate new ways of thinking and approaching architectural and urban design practices in the Middle East and other similar regions in the world. This can offer an alternative approach

(a Deleuzian approach) for the advancing study of how history can be used in different diagrams, actions, and relations, as an affective mediation that occurs in current architectural and urban design practices, an approach which has potential for future examinations and investigations.

96- Ibid. 97- Kim Dovey, Becoming places: urbanism/architecture/identity/power (London: Routledge, 2010).

195

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Appendix

List of Acronyms and Abbreviations

EA Eisenman Architects RP Rebstockpark Project D&G Deleuze & Guattari MIT Massachusetts Institute of Technology AKVA Aga Khan Visual Archive TAKS The Al Kadhimain Shrine DA Doxiadis Association A.P.P Architecture & Planning Partnership FAL Fine Arts Library HCL Harvard College Library DAEF Dewan Architects and Engineers Firm TAKD The Al Kadhimiya Development AAF Assemblage Architects Firm HCM Holy City Masterplan TAKHS The Al Kadhimiya Historical Site YTA Yasser Tabbaa Archive AKDC Aga Khan Documentation Center BMMJE Berlin Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe D&G ATP Deleuze & Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus

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