ABSTRACT

Architect and theorist Stan Allen notes in his article Artificial Ecologies that the practice of architecture has always been in the paradoxical position of being invested in the production of real, concrete matter yet working with tools of abstract representation (drawings, models, computer simulations and so forth). The paradox charges the question: does thinking (and its associated abstractions) or making (and its concrete matter) give architecture its agency? (Allen, 2003).