Body Matters by Greg Lynn - Body without Organs

The author criticized that the whole concept of architecture relies on the model of a unified body since the age of Vitruvius. In another word, architecture is traditionally perceived from top-down as a “closed system”. The focus is on the overall form and figure, instead of the components. According to his words, “this whole architectural concept ignores the intricate local behaviors of matter and their contribution to the composition of bodies”. As a result, a reformulated concept of architecture is to compose from the bottom up through a process of continuous differentiation and multiplication, which at the end achieves dynamic and yet incorporative stabilities in the composition. This leads to Manuel DeLanda's identification of the differences between extensive and intensive properties of matter and energy. Extensive refers to intrinsically divisible properties (e.g.weight, length, mass, duration), which when split result in two properties each half the value of the original, while intensive is only divisible through changes in state (e.g.temperature, speed). Intensive space is a space defined by continuous intensive properties, which via a process of progressive differentiation eventually gives rise to extensive structures.

In the second part, the author cited Body without Organs (BwO), which was taken from the end of schizophrenic poet. It is a concept developed by Gilles Deleuze & Guattari, which describes the intensive nature of a body as it is both experienced and expressed in a specific yet unhierarchized form. This abstract idea initiates various interpretations in the context of philosophy, psychology and also architecture. In a way, it is questioning where the boundary of a body is. Is there necessary an absolute boundary which define inside and outside? Base on that, the author pointed out “2-fold deterritorialization”, which refers to a fluid semi-permeable exchange movement among intensive forces. Parasitic Exchanges is one of the example.

Finally, the author went back to the whole and used curvilinear gesture to describe the continuous process of differentiation that maintains openness through an attention to the particular characteristics of the disparate elements which constitutes it and gives the continuous shape its particular curvilinear form.



[CONCLUSION]
Hopefully, without over-simplifying the complex and yet abstract concept embedded in the article, three major ideas can be summarized. First of all, it is the whole and part relationship. Heterogeneous parts/ base matters are the fundamental of any composition of a body. Base matters carry intensive properties which are the sources and materials for discoveries, inventions and new dynamic stabilities. Secondly, body and base matters, or in another word, body and organs form a “2-fold deterritorialization” double gesture of dynamic flow in-between, which the interior of the body flows out and external contingencies flow in simultaneously. Last but not least, discontinues bodies can form a continuous curvilinear gesture/network, in the forth dimension of space “time”. This discontinuous involution expresses an open organization or unity, which both fuses matter into bodies and diffuses bodies into free matter.