ABSTRACT
The idea of (trans)portable architecture undoubtedly has its origins in the nomadic tendencies of the human nature. Even the most sedentary practices of individual and collective dwelling are parallel to, and secretly overshadowed by, the desire for uprootedness and flight from the tyranny of place, if only for a weekend-the archaic dream of infinite space and the liberative reordering of existential parameters of life. What that dream, and the whole nomadic perspective presupposes is the existence of the open, unconquered and uncultivated space (the ‘smooth space’ in Deleuzean terms).3 However, the possibility of the real existence of such a space in our contemporary circumstances, where the information and communication processes eclipse every physical and geographic dimension, is a very dubious proposition. This does not necessarily imply the closing of the nomadic perspective but its conceptual reframing and eventual reversal. It denotes
a changed spatial realm (regime) in which all points are made equal and interchangeable based on the flow of information/communication that intersect in and emanate from them-the present-day phenomenon of the ultimate uprootedness and obliteration of place where any prospect of fixed destination is neutralised and exchanged for the circulatory constancy of information flow trajectories. With this comes the question of the possibility of meaning of any migratory form of existence since, to paraphrase Paul Virilio,4 one arrives without having to depart, or, more explicitly, one is already there in advance of having to travel, so that any trajectile duration-the nomadic experience of the ‘inbetweenness’ of moving-is deprived of its vectorial dimension. Consequently, it could be argued that this necessitates the conceptual reframing of the nomadic perspective whereby the literal idea of movement (of living on the move) is supplanted by the surrogate notion of temporariness of inhabitation (and construction) unrelated to the potentiality of the departure but the realisation of the uniformity of all places and the perpetuity of uprootedness regardless of the locale. A mode of tenuous and transparent occupation of place that is uncommitted in terms of topological presence and contextual bonds wherein transience is constituted not as a function of time but the function of the expression of the manner, or mentality, of occupying (the place)— a paradox of ‘permanent transience’.
