ABSTRACT
The Elements of Architecture could be seen as owing much to the paranoid critical method (PCM) that Koolhaas deployed in Delirious New York. The PCM is performative in so far as it does more than merely describe a current condition, it produces the reality it sets out to investigate. This chapter argues that where objects such as smoke alarms, thermostats, cars and washing machines are bestowed with digital intelligence and networked together via the internet, algorithms and banks of data, the configurations will not resemble anything remotely like a grammar. They produce a new performance, and politics. As Judith Butler emphasises in her writing on speech-acts, performatives draw their force from conventions and conditions already in existence, and thus, are highly normative. As technologies and their working practices approach architecture, people must train themselves, not so much to be fluent in the language, processes and protocols in use, but adept at tracking the actions that are transferred through their performance.
