Limit-Space: Architectural Speculations under the Xenological Condition through a Formal Reading of the Floor

Description

Limit-Space is an architectural speculation. It constitutes a spatial logic resonating with the ontological subjectlessness embraced by the 21st century and its myriad of multi-specie agencies, human and non-human, organic and non-organic, natural and artificial. Conceived, built and inhabited by a myriad of xenos emancipated from the absolute subject of modernity and the relational subject of postmodernity, Limit-Space is driven by a primary vocation: that of defying both the Promethean flatness of the Platonic chora and the baroque fluctuations of the Aristotelian topos by fiercely opposing their 20th century common architectural condition: that of being measurable, that of being sistematizable, that of being homogeneous, that of being modern. Liminal in its mismatched interplay of pressures, limited in its massive figurative determination, and limitrophe in its foliated consistency, Limit-Space capitalises on the Roman territorial notion of limes. Its spatial nature as differential sameness and auto-referential difference particularly impacts on the conception of the floor as an architectural element: it reformulates its continuous and discrete attributes by formal and performative differentiation, recovering some of the morphological traces characteristic of pre-modern architecture while marking a definitive departure from the architectural gestures associated with the 20th century. The book proposes a spatial logic both opposing the spatial configurations characteristic of the 20th century and establishing a dialogue with the current death of the notion of subject. It narrows down the discussion through three triangular associations in between Space, Subject and Floor, historically contextualizing the first two and speculatively developing the third one, considered to be surreptitiously blossoming in the current state of art of experimental architecture.

Jordi Vivaldi is a writer, philosopher and architectural theorist based in Vienna. PhD Architect (IOUD, Austria) and PhD Philosopher (EGS (cand.), Switzerland), Jordi's areas of research include 20th and 21st century's theory of experimental architecture, art and technology, as well as various forms of Speculative Realism and New Materialism. In particular, his current field of investigation orbits around the notion of "Limes" together with associated terms such as "finitude", "determination" and "reduction", both in its philosophical and architectural registers. More specifically, Jordi's work applies Eugenio Trias' ontological theory of limits to Graham Harman's Object Oriented Philosophy in order to construct a liminal approach that is both com-pressive and ex-pressive. From an architectural perspective, Jordi's research focus in articulating the concept of "Limes" as a contemporaneous form of space associated with our current subjectless condition, particularly in relation to the design of the floor as an architectural element. Jordi is currently working as theory faculty and researcher in several international universities such as IaaC in Barcelona, Bartlett in London, PROPUR in Buenos Aires and IOUD in Innsbruck. Besides his curatorial tasks as editor in chief of the architectural magazine "IaaC Bits" and his book on The Threefold Logic of Advanced Architecture (co-authored with Manuel Gausa), his work has crystallized in several articles, essays and lectures.