ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book looks into the intangible aspects of space and into the attempts made by architects to comprehend them, represent them and involve them in the design process. It also looks into a series of attempted mappings of the sonic field of different places, and mainly of parts of Edinburgh. The book presents a group of limits concerning form, process and event. It investigates the limits that lies between the architects' tendency towards linearity, certainty and formality, and the resistances of the actual architecture; the resistance of all the things that architecture depends upon and responds to. The book discusses the aspects of contingency that are related to the notion of the performative; whether the 'performative' refers to what form accommodates, to what form is derived by, or to what lies in an immediate relation to space beyond the 'formal' concern.
