ABSTRACT
Toggling through San Carlino is concerned with the interpretations of San Carlino in history. The paper argues that San Carlino, can be interpreted as both ‘normative’ and ‘free’ with regards to rule following in geometry. But not simultaneously: San Carlino is or can potentially be either about method, structure and norms on the one hand, or fashion, styles and pastiche on the other. It can be either ‘serious’ or ‘fun’, tragic or comic, timeless or fashionable. There is no necessary relation or higher synthesis between these two readings or modalities. Appropriating the notions of ‘subject’ and ‘superject’ from Alfred North Whitehead’s philosophy, the paper suggests that one (and Borromini himself in designing San Carlino) could ‘toggle’ between these two modes of thinking; that is, between subject and superject, and between normative and free. Though separate, these two modes can communicate with one another during the very act of toggling. Such communication opens up the either/or non-relation to the new, to change, to history.
