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Sebastian Gatz (Konstfack /University of Gothenburg
(HDK-Valand), Sweden)
Meso-Chaosmos:Situating Architectural Control
Abstract
This paperdescribes architecture as aform of cosmotechnics (Hui) which currently
manifests aWestern-Christian worldview globally. This worldview is entangled with the
assumption of aGod-given right to control and subordinatenonhuman nature (anthro-
pocentrism).The text looks at the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi –which itself is acos-
motechnicalarchitectural-aesthetic concept embedded in aZen Buddhist cosmology –and
elaboratesonits understandingofhuman-nonhuman control as an alternativeexample.
Afterwards it zooms in on the notion of controland speculateswhere it is locatedonthe
spectrum between microcosmand macrocosm and to what degree it can be activeor
passive. The conceptual spectrumofmicrocosm-macrocosm is used to locate control. The
qualitativespectrum of chaos-cosmos is used to define its magnitude and directionality.
The paper argues for an architectural cosmotechnological understanding of control which
is located partially in the physical and partially in the metaphysical world and whichis
partially activeand partially passive –between chaos and cosmos.This conceptual inter-
section of both spectrums is defined as apoint of continuous activenegotiation between
the human and the nonhuman world. Awareness of this intersectional control point affords
athinking of post-Christian, postcolonial and posthuman architectural cosmotechnics.
Keywords: Architecture, Control, Cosmotechnics, Posthuman, Technology
Architecture as Cosmotechnics
Philosopher Yuk Hui’sneologism cosmotechnics,like Donna Haraway’sna-
turecultures,isacompound word which points at the inseparabilityofasociety’s
cosmology (worldview) and their technological endeavours.1The removal of
aspace or hyphen between twowords, in both cases, visualizes the need to think
twoconcepts at once: we cannot, or better we should not, talk about nature and
1Yuk Hui, Art and Cosmotechnics (Minneapolis:University of Minnesota Press, 2021),41.
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culture or cosmology and technology. Nature and culture are twoinseparable
ideas2and so are cosmology and technology.
According to Hui, the world is becomingi
ncreasingly monotechnological. The
world’scurrent understanding of technology is embedded in aWestern colonial
and capitalist mindset and forbids to thinktechnology beyond the Global North’s
cosmological frame. His overarching call is for a technodiversity.3Hui’salter-
nativelook at technology is done through apeculiar mix of modernist art, ancient
Chinese and Greek cosmology –sprinkled with German philosophy of Hegel,
Heidegger and Kant. His technologies range from ancient Chinese painting to
contemporary cybernetics.4
For artist-architect FrederickKiesler architecture is part of what he calls the
technological environment which allows humans to surviveinthe natural envi-
ronment.5Architectureisahuman-made technology which allows one to be
sheltered from the fluctuating “attacks”of one’slocal natural environment. The
development of this form of technology is, as Hui argues for his general view on
technologies, monotechnological: the same “solutions”–or what Haraway calls
silly technofixes6–to environmental human-nature “problems,”which concern
the intactness of the human body, are deployed globally,without regard for local
natural conditions, architectural traditions or cosmological worldviews. The air
conditioner in Germany is the same as the one in India even though both
countrieshavevastly different histories of understanding the cosmos and the
human position in it. This all sounds like arelatively common demandfor
preservingvernaculararchitecture butHui’scall for technodiversity seems much
deeper, richer, and more inclusiveinterms of technologies and cosmologies.
The predominant understanding of architecture as atechnologyistokeep
nature out and to be in control of the inside as much as possible.This can maybe
be seen anecdotally in the increasing demands for insulation, ventilation and
especially longevity of architectural components. Performance, stability, per-
manence and optimization are just afew keywords of acontemporary archi-
tectural mindset, in short: control. Control is an unquestioned but deeply em-
bedded concept in Western technological endeavours: technologies are seen as
failures if they don’twork according to plan. Western technologies aremostly
control-technologies. An air conditioner seems to be an obvious example, but
2Donna J. Haraway, The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness
(Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2003).
3Yuk Hui, “COSMOTECHNICS,”Angelaki,25, no. 4(2020):1–2.
4Yuk Hui, Art and Cosmotechnics,Introduction.
5Frederick Kiesler, “On Correalism and Biotechnique: ADefinition and Test of aNew Approach
to Building Design,”Architectural Record 86 (1939): 60–63.
6Donna J. Haraway, Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene (Durham: Duke
University Press, 2016), 3.
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other technologies havethe same underlying premise. On my table there is
asketch book and apen (controlling thoughts),a3D-printer (controlling form),
acamera (controlling memories), athermometer and afan (controlling tem-
perature), astapler and some nails (controlling structure), and other things
which follow into the same category of control. Objects which do not seem to fit
the bill, at first glance, seem to be related to art and spirituality –both already part
of the territory of cosmology –but even that is potentially contestable when
looked at in depth. When one looks around oneself one will notice that one is the
king of one’sown little control kingdom: plants which make one happy, objects
which help in daily (control) tasks and even artistic-spiritual objects which
promise knowledge of or acertain position in the after- or next life. One might
say that art and technology,which in good architectural cases easily blend into
one, arenot the same thing but this can be contested when we look at Hui’s
reading of Heidegger’sunderstanding of the Greek term techne¯ which means
both, artand technology.7
This unquestioned obsession with technological control must be embedded in
the wayone understands reality and nature. The contemporary techno-scientific
understanding of the world, Hui’smonotechnology, is Western, no matter where;
or, as the American historian Lynn Whitestates it:
One thing is so certain that it seemsstupid to verbalize it: both moderntechnology and
modern science are distinctively Occidental. Our technology has absorbed elements
from all over the world, notably from China; yet everywhere today,whether in Japan or
in Nigeria, successful technology is Western. […]Today, around the globe, all sig-
nificant scienceisWestern in style and method, whatever the pigmentation or language
of the scientists.8
The waythe contemporary Global North understands nature, and the right to use
this nature,isrooted in the history of Western thinking, which is now forced onto
the rest of the world. For White, this history is rooted in the Middle Ages of the
Latin West and predominantly Christian.Itisthis Christian root of our con-
temporarybeing which makes humans perceivethemselves as gods over nature:
Christianity,inabsolute contrasttoancient paganism and Asia’sreligions (except,
perhaps, Zoroastrianism), not only establishedadualism of man and naturebut also
insisted that it is God’swill that man exploit nature for his proper ends. At the level of
the common people this worked out in an interesting way. In Antiquity every tree, every
spring, every stream, every hill had its own genius loci,its guardian spirit.These spirits
were accessible to men, but were very unlike men; centaurs, fauns, and mermaids show
their ambivalence. Before one cut atree, mined amountain, or dammed abrook, it was
important to placate the spirit in charge of that particular situation, and to keep it
7Hui, Art and Cosmotechnics,78.
8LynnWhite, “The HistoricalRoots of OurEcologicCrisis,”Science 155,no. 3767 (1967), 1204.
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placated. By destroying pagan animism,Christianity madeitpossible to exploit nature
in amood of indifference to the feelings of natural objects.9
In short and in aslightly satirical way: air conditionersare Christian and not, for
example, pagan or Buddhist. But what doesthis mean?Itmeans that Western
architecture, and in arapidly increasing manner the entireworld’sarchitecture, is
a(mono)technology which is rooted in aMedieval Christian European under-
standing of the cosmos. Consequently, the human position in this cosmos is one
of absolutesuperiority or, as White states, it: “Especially in its Western form,
Christianity is the most anthropocentric religion the world has seen.”10
Anthropocentrism is acontemporary widely criticizednotion in academic
pursuits such as ontological feminist posthumanism. With this critique, there
seems to appear an opening-up toward other ontological understandings of
reality and being. More-than-human and nonhuman related academic thinking
approaches the pagan animism,11 which Christianity eradicated through its
colonial march around the world. New materialism and more-than-human onto-
epistemologies are concerned with the condemning of human superiority and
the advocating for nonhuman agency and justice.12 If this new (old) animist
understanding of the cosmos wants to giveagencies back to the nonhuman and
dethronethe human from its ontological position of superiority, how would
arelated architectural cosmotechnics look or behavelike?Are we still talking
about form or do other aspects of architecture become more important?As
mentioned earlier, for me it becomes aquestion of control: the “Christian air
conditioner”is acosmo-technological device to control nature’senergy flows
around the human body.And our architectures do the same: they extend the
human body and the human will in order to dominate nature. Could there ever be
such athing as a “Buddhist air conditioner”?Would aBuddhist cosmology,
which advocates acceptance rather than domination, allow such atechnological
creation to emerge?
Thus, what should we do?Switch, enforce,non-Christian religions as our outer
vessels for technological acting?Idoubt that this is the right approach.White tries
to find his answer in alternative Christian branches of understandingreality,
namely in the thinkingofFrancis of Assisi, which, according to White, ap-
proaches the world of creation with humility instead of superiority.13 Iequally
doubt that this interpretation of Christianity –which is closer to amystical
9Ibid.,1205.
10 Ibid.
11 Anselm Franke, “Animism,”in Posthuman Glossary, eds. Rosi Braidotti and Maria Hlavajova
(London: Bloomsbury, 2018), 39–41.
12 Andrés Jaque et al., “To wards More-than-Human Justice,”in More-than-Human,eds. Andrés
Jaque et al. (Rotterdam:Het NieuweInstituut,2020), 166–69.
13 White, “The Historical Roots,”1206–7.
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understanding of the self in relation to the All –is the right cosmological
framework for our architectural cosmotechnics.
Ithink, ironically fittingtoour current capitalist obsession with individuality,
it is to be found in apostcolonial multiplicity of cosmologies and, accordingly,
cosmotechnics. Aconglomerateofthis multifaceted (deep) ecological thinking is
what ChristopherPartridge, professor of religious studies, calls Eco-Enchant-
ment,and in it one finds acontemporary re-enchantment of nature:
[W]hereas the rise of monotheisticreligion, particularly Christianity, wasunderstood to
havebeen central to the repression of nature religion and to the relateddisenchantment
of nature, there has been, in recent years, areturn of the repressed. This return has been
informedbythe re-enchanting forces of Easternizationand, more particularly, Pa-
ganization. Whereas the natural world of Christendom wasthe creation of agood and
loving God, but wasnot itself sacralized, the natural world of post-Christendom is
experiencing gradualre-sacralization.14
It matters little whatterm one gives to this kind of thinking, but it does matter
that one looks for anew cosmological framework, within which to think tech-
nology anew –in individual perception, or contemplation of reality and nature,
rather than in acollectivereligious setting. This is true not just for acosmos-
human relationship which is related to amore religious /spiritual aspect but also
for ahuman-nature or human-nonhuman relationship, which is discussed in
literature of posthumanism. Each individual human must look for the perception
of an ethical positioning of the self withinthe self and not externally to the self.
All of this, and this is my thesis, must happen especially in relationship to the
concept of control.
In the remaining part of the article, Iwould like to focus on defining what the
elusiveconcept of control can be in the context of architectural cosmotechnics.
Twomain questions and theiroverlap are explored: Where is control located or
situated –in the internal or external world –and how much human control over
the nonhuman world is the right amount?
Micro –Meso –Macro
Iwould like to start this section of the article by looking at the concept of control.
What do we mean when we say control?One thing is controllinganother. In our
daily language it seems that being in control of something is good and being
controlled by someone is bad. There seems to be adirectional hierarchy –activity
vs passivity. (A) has arelationship with (B), between (A) and (B) is an arrow
14 Christopher Partridge, The Re-Enchantment of the West: AlternativeSpiritualities, Sacral-
ization, Popular Culture and Occulture,vol. 2(London: T&TClark International, 2005), 81.
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which indicates which of the twoentities is the controller and who is the con-
trolled. The arrow itself is control or action. While (A) and (B), either humans or
any other kind of object or entity, seem to exist in the physical world, the arrow
seems to be invisible and in the metaphysical world (Fig. 1). We cannot see
control, only its results.
If we thinkabout the world in aLatourian actor-network way, everythingseems to
be acontroller of something and is controlledbysomething else. One can also
look at control from amore cybernetic perspective. No matter if it is amachine,
computational code, or even the human body: we haveacertain entity(A) who
checks or senses what some entity(B) does, reports it to some other entity (C)
which, in return, informs some other entity (D) what to do next with (B) –and so
forth, ad infinitum (feedback loops) (Fig. 2).
Looking at the world of control in this wayitseems likely that many technologies,
for example cars, are (subconsciously) modelled after the human body: pistons
and cylinders form the heart,sensors and cables the nerves, the engine control
unit the brain, fuel is food and even the four wheels seem to be modelled after the
human’s, or its animal cousin’s, extremities. With some fantasy the same analogy
can be found in other technologies as well. Houseshaveskeletons, skins, windows
as eyes and excretion systems (which are obviously linked directly to the human’s
excretion system). Either Iamguilty of anthropomorphism, or our cosmological
understanding of the world is so anthropocentric that everything we create is
modelled after ourselves. Human technology seems to be modelled in such
Fig. 1.
Fig. 2.
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a(human) waythat it seamlesslyextends human control over the nonhuman
world.
If control truly is aproperty of twointeracting entities maybe it helps to use
Newton’sThird Law of Motion as an analogy: “If twobodies exert forces on each
other, these forces havethe same magnitude but opposite directions.”15 If we use
this logic as an analogythen twoentities which are in acontrol relationship with
each other haveanacting and areacting arrow of control. (A) controls (B) and (B)
is controlled by (A) (Fig. 3).
This rather simple idea of an active-passiverelationship between twoentities,
physically or metaphysically, is agood example of many epistemological prob-
lems. Iwould like to name afew of those and argue that even though theyseem to
be problemsform different realms theydoinfact point to the same fundamental
root. Such problems are mainly bridgingproblems: mind-matter, microcosmos-
macrocosmos, invisible-visible, inside-outside and so forth. This dichotomous
form of problem thinking seems to be moreprevalent in WesternChristian
thinking than elsewhere. Iamaware that the academic “flavour of the day”is
anti-dichotomous but that seems to me an insult towards lived experience (for
aWestern mind): there seems to be afelt difference between mind and matter, the
self and the All, insides and outsides and so forth. In Buddhism this is called
ma¯ ya¯ ,illusion, stating that there is in fact no difference between those things:
mind and matter are just twodifferent sides of the same coin so to speak.16 At
least here, in this text, Iwould like to insist on dichotomies but (!)with an endless
degree of differentiation: there is (A) and (B) and everything in between.
When it comes to control, Iwould like to suggest that it is located neither fully
in (A) nor in (B). But what is (A) and (B) in this case?Control seems to be situated
in apeculiar ambivalent space between the objectivefactual outside world, the
physical, and the subjectiveperceived internalworld of the self or the mind, the
metaphysical world. Something, factually, prevents someone from doing acer-
tain thing (objectivity) but it also creates amental picture of the world in the
mind of that someone which makes certain things possible or impossible (sub-
jectivity). Alot of (spiritual) self-helpbooks tackle this problem by revealing or
reminding oneself that limitation –or control barriers between the self and the
15 Stephen T. Thornton and Jerry B. Marion, ClassicalDynamics of Particles and Systems,5th ed.
(Boston: Cengage Learning, 2008), 49.
16 W. Y. Evans-Wentz, ed., Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines, 2nd ed. (London:Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1970), 161–64.
Fig. 3.
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world of whatever freedom –exists mainly in the mind and not in the factual
objectiveworld.
In the Japanese aesthetic concept of wabi-sabi, there is another such com-
pound word connectedbyanarrow, now reduced to ahyphen: the terms of wabi
and sabi are connectedbyabridge. What does this bridge connect?According to
Leonard Koren the terms wabi and sabi,eventhough initially different in
meaning, are used almost interchangeably in today’sJapan.Yet, he does suggest
adifferentiation which is as follows: wabi refers to the spiritual, philosophical,
inward, and subjectiveand sabi to the material objective, the outward and the
aesthetic.17 Asimplified and more Western version of this differentiation could
be our previously mentioned inside-outside, subjective-objective,metaphysical-
physical or mind-matter. Wabi-sabi,similar to Hui’sorHaraway’scompound
words, suggest the inseparability of those just mentioned concepts (but still
connected with abridge and therefore differentiated): the outward existence of
things and the inward experience of them is the same, or at least they exist
simultaneously, and areconnected by some form of bridge, abridge so far
represented by an arrow or reduced to asimple hyphen.
However, this hyphen, the bridge between the one side of the shore and the
other, wasapproached by different people and different schools of thought
throughout the ages. All of these approaches are, in one wayoranother, dia-
grams, which try to zoom in, to get out of the problem of dichotomy. There is an
almost infinite number of diagrammatic understandingsofthe self in relation to
the cosmos, the All or God, which can be found in Western and Eastern mystical
writings.
In the Hermetic tradition, there is the axiom of “as above, so below,”which
indicatesthe correspondence between microcosmos and macrocosmos,18 in
amoreJewish/Western-esoteric tradition, there is the famous qabalistic Tree of
Life which breaks the hyphendown into ten sephiroth (nodes) and twenty-two
paths (edges).19 The five to seven chakras of different yogic traditions can be seen
as aform of differentiating the gap between the outside of existence and the
inside and the infamous kundalini yoga as one example for acrossing of that gap,
or climbing the ladder so to speak (Jacob’sladder being another such metaphor
or diagram).20
One of FrederikKiesler’ssketches, made for his “VisionMachine,”shows
ametamorphosis, or atransmorphing, of external objects into internal percep-
17 Leonard Koren, Wabi-Sabifor Artists,Designers, Poets and Philosopher (Point Reyes, CA:
Imperfect Publishing, 2008), 22–3.
18 Three Initiates, Kybalion (Chicago, IL: The Yogi Publication Society, 1908), 113–35.
19 Robert Wang, The QabalisticTarot: ATextbook of Mystical Philosophy (York Beach, ME:
Weiser, 1987), 29.
20 Evans-Wentz, Tibetan Yoga,32.
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tion. The notes even suggest the activeand passiveattributes of bridging: the
words “Do we see in atwo-way system?”areaccompanied by abold arrow
pointing from the objecttothe perceiver and by one pointing from the perceiver
to the object. He even zooms in on what seems to be the anode and cathode of
asingle neuron in his “Eye-Brain.”21
His sketch makes clear that an object’sexistence is multifaceted and simul-
taneous. The object is 1) physically there, 2) in motionand transformation, 3) in
the eye, 4) in the brain and 5) in the sparks of that brain’sneurons firing –all at
once. And even this rich understanding of an object’sexistenceinthe objective
and the subjectiveworld seems ratherscientifically rational and could be further
contestedbyless linear and moreincremental pathways from (A) to (B).
Control, Iwould suggest,has asimilarly elusiveposition as Kiesler’sobject: we
can exert it and we can be impressed by it; we can see its marksonthe physical
fabric of reality, but it is also just an illusion of our inner world. When we talk
about architectural control over anonhuman world it must be clear that it is
positioned in ashared objectivebut also in an individual subjectivespace and
both of those spaces are coloured by the cosmological glasseswewear –be they
Christian or Buddhist or any other form of understanding the world, the cosmos
and the self. In order to speak or think of adecentring of the human subject in
posthumanism we havetotalk about control and how our understanding of this
concept is embedded in our cosmologies.
Philosopher John Locke, after Galileo and Descartes, distinguishes qualities of
objects into primary and secondary (the latter twofold: as “immediately per-
ceivable”and, through action of the perceiver, “mediately perceivable”). Primary
qualities are of such nature that they are objectively true and the same for every
experiencer, such as shape, size, quantity and so forth. Secondary qualities are
subjectiveand individual, such as colour, taste and smell.Primary qualities are
measurable and secondary qualities are not.22 Alot of contemporary scientism
focuses on the first and forgets the second part of human existence. In archi-
tecture these twoqualities are more naturally blended:there are objectivetruths
such as structure, loads, forcesand subjectiveexperiences such as space, light,
sound, and –maybe even in athird category –individual and collectivememory.
Again, there is amovement from primary (hence presumably the name) to
secondary and potentially tertiary qualities, and it is hard to pinpoint where those
qualities exist.
The poet W. B. Yeats, amember of the Theosophical Society and,later, the
Golden Dawn, tried his hand at abridging-diagram like those already mentioned.
21 Frederick Kiesler, Studien zur Wahrnehmung /Studies of Perception, 1938/42,inFriedrich
Kiesler 1890–1965: Inside the Endless House (Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 1997), plate no. 64.
22 John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (New York: Seaman, 1824), 139–41.
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In his book AVision,which can be seen as his attempt at an esoteric system for
structuring the world, he uses adouble-cone or double-vortex as the basis for his
symbolic metaphor. The twocones intersect and point in opposingdirections.
The apex of one cone touching the centre of the base of the other and vice versa.23
Furthermore he states the importance of the twocones regarding the bridging
between objectivity and subjectivity: “My instructors used this single cone or
vortex once or twice but soon changed it for adouble cone or vortex, preferring to
consider subjectivity and objectivity as intersectingstates struggling one against
the other.”24 Of course, most things exist exactly on aspectrum simultaneously
and not at the beginning or the middle or the end, but for the spatial positioning
of control Iwould like to suggest the middle or Yeats’area of intersection: not the
micro, not the macro but the meso.Not because Itruly believecontrol is situated
in the middle of such ahypothetical bridge between dichotomies but in order to
suggest that it exists simultaneously in the macro and the micro (Fig. 4). The
human condition affords and demands control, and the position of that control
is partially external and partially internal. In Buddhism this is called the middle
way, which teaches to avoid both extremes of abridge’sside: extreme asceticism
or extreme indulgence for example.
So far, Idescribed abridging between dichotomies in termsofthe self and the All,
the internal and the external world. In case of Kieslerfor example we havean
external object and its relationship to an internal object: apath, or bridging, from
macrocosmos to microcosmos. All those readings are quite self-centred; they
pertain to how an individual perceives externality. Another waytolook at this
bridging spectrum is not in alinear way, as done so far, but through another
relatively common diagrammatic suggestion: the circle and the dot.
The perfect circle, with adot in its centre or without,isanancient cosmo-
logical symbol all over the world (Fig. 5). It represents differentfundamental
aspects of existence, such as perfection,time, cyclicality, the cosmos /the All and
so forth. However, the positioning of the dot in its centre, creates differentiation:
the boundless has acentre. If we assume the centre to be subjectiveindividual
consciousness and the circumferenceofthe circle objectivereality, then we can
imagine that we do not just haveasingular relationship between the self and the
world which can be represented by aline but an infinitude of relationships: the
space between the central point and the external circle is full of lines.
23 W. B. Yeats, AVision (London: Macmillan, 1937),68.
24 Ibid.,71.
Fig. 4.
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It is worthwhile to keep this symbolinmind when thinking about ameso-po-
sitioning of the self. Architectural control is not just an individual’saffair with
their surrounding world but asocietal collectiveendeavour, and this we might
call the beginningofthe post-Anthropocene. Adecentring of the human subject
–ontologicalposthumanism’smainobjective –in terms of control is an in-
dividual practice which becomes acollectiveone. Society, and humanity as
awhole, is made up of individuals: an individual’spositioning of control is that
society’spositioning of control and vice versa.
Chaos –Chaosmos –Cosmos
It the preceding part of the article, Ispeculated about aspatial locating of ar-
chitectural control, aquantitativeexperiment: control is neither here nor there
but somewhere in both worlds or between them (meso) and those worlds are
either the self and the All or the self and all other selves. However, in this part, I
would like to speculate about the qualitativeaspectsofcontrol. In order to look at
those aspectsIwant to make alittle detour by using the concepts of cosmos and
chaos. Cosmos is traditionally seen as perfection, beauty and order (control) and
chaos as its counterpart: no order, no beauty, no control. Depending on one’s
own cosmological flavour the world itself, or better the cosmos, is created either
out of nothing or chaos. Ironically, the Westernunderstanding of entropy is
linear and goes from order to chaos and never in reverse: abroken cup never
becomes an unbroken cup again. Luckily, this means that we happen to be in this
magical short window, between chaos and chaos, which we call cosmos.
Chaos is either externaltoour cosmos (to our world and livelihood), in terms
of time and space, or located in the depth of our subconscious: something to
Fig. 5.
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discipline, to control.25 Chaos, and its remedy control, is, as we saw in the pre-
vious section of the article, located externally and internally. Depending on one’s
understanding of reality, these aspects are totally different –the chaos in one’s
mind has nothing to do with the chaos before or externaltocosmos –or they are
the same. This is harder to explain and easier to intuit.
Iimagine reality to be structured like atriangle: afirm base pointingtowards the
top (Fig. 6). This top is of course everywhere, but the Westerncollectivememory
of symbolism assumes the All, whatever that is, to be at the top, presumably
because of the Christian anthropomorphic God who has his (!)seat in the
heavens. The triangle’sbase, similar to the previouslymentioned circumference
of the circle, can be imagined as an infinite accumulation of differentiated dots
–individual entities or monads. Moving towards the top of thistriangle, the
apex –and that happens either after death /before birth, through mystical
experiences, drugs or before and after the cosmos’sexistence –individuality
ceases to matter or even to exist. If one wants to believethe theory of the Big Bang,
the start of the universe would be at the topand the directionoftime is down-
wards.
To giveamore concrete and rational, but morbid, example one could think
about the following: the human body, seen by manyasaconfined entity, is
differentiated from other bodies and one of our points on the triangle’sbase.
After death, the body does not disappear; it dissolves and becomes part of the All.
This All can be seen either as the cosmos,nature, the environment or God –the
“body”moving upwards on the triangle. Vice versa, when ahuman is created they
start off as pure information, or consciousness, with almost no matter sur-
rounding the most central aspect of the human (the triangle’sapex) –which can
be called the mind, the soul or the monad –but theyslowly accumulate matter
25 “Chaos,”in Jean Chevalier and Alain Gheerbrant, Dictionary of Symbols,transl. John Bu-
chanan-Brown (London: Penguin, 1996),182–83.
Fig. 6.
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from their surrounding world: when still in the body of the mother, pre-natal,
that happens through the nutritiongiven by her and later,post-natal, through the
animal or plant matter consumed. An individual is aproduct of the world and
becomes the world after their death. The base of the triangle is the apex of it at
some point or another in time –and this time may turnout to be non-linear in the
last analysis (like folding the apex down to the base).
Chaos and cosmos, based on the triangle analogy, are the samething if seen
from far away, but we as humans we mostly know the base experience, few know
the apex experience and even then, their memory does not seem to last long.
Similar to the quantitativelocating of control on the spatial spectrumofexternal
to internal, as described in the last part of the text, Iwould like to suggest the
following goal for this qualitativeanalysis of control, here looked at through the
lens of chaos and cosmos: when one elaborates on how much control one should
exert over the nonhuman world, one should try to see oneself as neither in astate
of chaos nor of cosmos (neither at the base nor the apex). This is true for an
induvialasfor asociety. Qualitativenihilism, or doomsday apocalypse roman-
ticism, is as unhelpful as over-rationaltechno-scientism. More specifically as
a(worldwide) society, which is made up by individuals, we should neither give-up
nor naively assume fixability through technology. Ithink it is here where Hui’s
call for technodiversity fits in, and Ipropose that ahealthy exertion of human will
or power over the nonhuman world is balanced –either between base and apex of
our triangle or at both placesatonce. Going back to my air conditioner metaphor,
Ithink it is neither good to assume that we should control our environments just
because we can nor not to develop air conditioning technology at all. My qual-
itativesuggestion for control would be in the middle, between chaos and cosmos,
or what James Joyce once called chaosmos.26
Umberto Eco’sanalysis of Joyce’saesthetic of his literary chaosmos –ac-
cording to Umberto Eco scholar Douglass Merrell –can be understood as the
“relation between the ordered cosmos of conventional culture,and the dis-
ordered chaos that lies at its boundaries.”27 The term can be understood as the
relationship between something which is assumed to be known, ordered or in
control and somethingwhich is at its periphery: the horizon of knowledge and
knowing.This relationship shifts over time: what once used to be considered
fixed knowledge is nowopen for grabs some centuries later. For Eco Joyce’swork
is embedded in amedieval world of cosmos (a simple world of clear boundaries
and rules: God created everything) while his own time is destabilised and chaotic
due to human-centric understandings of reality. Merrell states: “Human culture
26 James Joyce, Finnegans Wake (London:Faber and Faber, 1960), 118.
27 Douglass Merrell, Umberto Eco, the Da Vinci Code, and the Intellectual in the Age of Popular
Culture (Cham: Springer, 2017), 110–11.
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is constantly involved in exploring possible states of being whose evolving
character is determined by reaching beyond the historically ordered cosmos into
the chaos of infinite possibilities.”28
What that means in relation to control is the following:the “sweet spot”is
neither in total cosmos nor in total chaos. It is where chaos and cosmos meet
where we leavethe naïveand do not yet walk into the dreadful.For architectural
control that means different things, depending on scale: on the macro scale
(planetary) it is the acceptance of extractivism and (!)the acknowledging of its
negativeeffects; on the meso scale (building) it is the acceptance of degrowth-
related imperfections of materialsand workflows and (!)the desire to bring
materials into order; on the micro scale (perception) it is the acceptance of
nonhuman agencies and one’sown mortal limits and (!)the will to self-preser-
vation.
Author Colin Wilson talks about this relationship between cosmos and chaos,
order and non-order, or control and non-control but he uses the terms order and
complexity:
The more wide-awake Ifeel, the more I ‘take in’these chimneys, gables, oak beams,
leaded windows,bright flower beds. They givegive[sic!] pleasure because they give
asense of the mind’spower to controlits environment. Imay see an equally complex
scene from the window of atrain –slag heaps, factory chimneys, slum houses –and
althoughitisequally complex, it does not produce pleasure because it seems evidence of
the human failure to control the environment, of people who havelet ‘life get them
down’.Onthe other hand, Imay look at apiece of natural scenery that is equally chaotic
–with jaggedrocks, bare hills, astormy sky –but because Ifeel no need to control it, it
strikes me as beautiful, for Ican savour its complexity. The sense of beauty, then, is
asense of complexity, and of power over it. Neither is sufficient without the other.29
The words still soundvery human-centric and apologetic: if we were better in
controllingnature then that would be better.Yet, the passage points at the
qualitativecontrol bridge between the human and nonhuman world: we should
not control all of the world (Anthropocene), nor can we not control (naïve
ontological posthumanism) but the sweet spot is somewhere in both worlds
simultaneously –aqualitativemeso-positioning (Fig. 7).
28 Ibid.
29 Colin Wilson, The Occult: The Ultimate Book for Those Who Would Walk with the Gods
(London: Granada, 1983),164–65.
Fig. 7.
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Accepting this ambivalent position of control situates humans as theoretically
equal players in an endless network of human and nonhuman actors –and this
worldview is obviously not the Christian worldview (which propagates human
superiority over the natural world) but moreinline with aBuddhist under-
standing or the world. And to come back to Hui: from thisconfusedposition of
apost-Christianbut also anti-appropriativeworldview, as in naively transferring
other peoples’cosmologies from one locality to the other, we havetothink
technologies as cosmo-technologies. And these new non-monotechnological
cosmotechnics, here architectural in scope, havetoconsider especially the
problem of our deeply engrained superiority feeling towards the natural world,
which shows itself specifically in questions of control.
Iwould like to giveone example, in order to show the complexity of under-
standing the relationship between chaos and cosmos, form anon-Christian
perspective. The Hindu goddess Kali,next to other things the goddess of chaos, is
not just an external goddessbut also an internal concept. Additionally, she is not
just horrible,asoften depicted,but also the suprememother and fair, depending
on one’sown position and understanding. Iwould like to givetwo examples of
adescription. One by philosopher George Bataille and one, quoting the Maha¯ -
nirva¯ na-Tantra,bythe orientalist Sir John Woodroffe:
Kali is the goddess of terror, of destruction, of nightand of chaos. She is the patroness of
cholera, of cemeteries,ofthieves and prostitutes. She is represented adorned with
anecklace of severed human heads, her belt consists of afringe of human forearms. She
dances on the corpse of her husbandShivaand her tongue, from which the blood of the
giantshe has just decapitated drips, hangs completely out of her mouth because she is
horrified at having lacked respect for the dead giant. Legend tells how her joy at having
vanquished the giants raised her to such adegree of exaltation that her dance set the
earthshaking and trembling. Attracted by the din, Shivacame running, but since his
wife had drunkthe blood of the giants, her intoxication prevented her from seeinghim:
she knocked him off his feet, trod him underfoot, and dancedonhis corpse.30
Let us illustrate these general remarks by ashort studyofone portion of the Ka¯ li
symbolism which affects so many, who are not Hindus, with disgust or horror. Ka¯ li is the
Deity in that aspect in whichItwithdraws all thingswhich it had createdinto Itself. Ka¯ li
is so called because She devours Ka¯ la (Time)and then resumes Her own dark form-
lessness. The Maha¯ nirva¯ na-Tantra says (IV. 30–34) of the Supreme Mother: ‘Thouthe
supreme Yoginı¯ moved by His mere will doth create, maintain and withdraw the world
with all that moves and is motionless therein. Maha¯ -ka¯ la (Great Time) the Dissolver of
the universe is Thy form. At the dissolution of things it is Ka¯ la (Time)who will devour all
30 Georges Bataille, “Kali,”in Encycloaedia Acephalica: Comprising the Critical Dictionary and
Related Texts,ed. Robert Lebel and Isabelle Waldberg, transl. Iain White (London:Atlas
Press, 1995), 54–55.
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and by reason of this He is called Maha¯ -ka¯ la and since Thou devourest Maha¯ -ka¯ la
Himself it is Thou who art called the supreme Primordial Ka¯ lika¯ .’ 31
In other words, Kali is outside of the biggest conception of time in Hindu cos-
mology, the one which is not affected by time, and therefore the true god (for
some). This means that Kali takes with her everything; she devours everything,
even time. The former description by Bataille could be described as the exoteric
definition of Kali and the latter by Woodroffe as the esoteric.Exoterically horror,
esoterically philosophy. She is the goddess of chaos and the supreme mother.
Iwant to mention this in order to activate the mind of the reader to think on
different planes at once: completely contradictory things can be true simulta-
neously. Thisform of thinking is not too familiar in Western academia but more
accepted and known in Eastern philosophy specifically and in art in general. This
so-called ambiguity tolerance is amuch-needed skill in times of transdisciplinary
scholarship and apost-anthropocentric restructuring of society.
Qualitativeand Quantitative Control in Architectural Practice
Qualitative Control in Practice
The qualitativeaspectsofcontrol are on aspectrum from full control (cosmos) to
no control (chaos) –both extremes which are potentially hard to find in practice.
In what follows Iwould like to walk along the line between total control to no
control in order to link the partially metaphysical arguments given abovetothe
physical and substantial reality of constructed architecture. Igiveapersonal
selection of examples, but the list could look very different with very different
names and projects on it.
1) The first point on the spectrum, total control, can be understood as the
Western idealized goal of many architectural endeavours: the desire to ex-
ecute drawings and plans as preciselyaspossible (cosmos).Inpractice, that
rarely happens: wrong parts are delivered and construction has to adjust,
tolerances are not met and construction has to adjust, aroof detail wasnot
executed correctly and the work has to be redone.
2) Moving forward on the spectrum we reach weathering.32 Weathering is
aslightly romanticized, nostalgicacceptance or even encouraging of non-
human agency, of aslow decay, also found in the before mentioned notionof
31 Sir John Woodroffe, The Garland of Letters: Studies in the Mantra-Sa¯ stra,6th ed. (Madras:
Ganesh, 1974), 235–36.
32 For more on we athering see: Mohsen Mostafavi, On Weathering: The Life of Buildings in Time
(Cambridge,MA: MIT Press, 1993).
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wabi-sabi. The importanceofweatheringisthat it does not “take over,”that
it stays in the control boundaries of the human and that only selected
materials are “allowed”:concrete, brick, wood are allowedtoage and to show
weathering marks of nonhuman agencies; cracked plastic, uninsulated
wires, broken glass are “not allowed.”
3) Comparing old and new architectural magazinesand practice one can see
aslight shiftinacceptance of weathering: loftaesthetic, post-industrial
design, shabby chic opposes the modernist logics of purity and perfection.
Maybe the tendency comes from an increasing desire for truth or whatart
and design researcher Hilde Bouchez calls wild things: “There are wild things
and there aretame things. […]Wild things are given the time to grow and
come into being and so wild things return the favour: the time to daydream,
to reflect, to open our hearts in aprofound silence.”33
4) At this point on the spectrum, Iwould like to givesome contemporary
examples of constructed buildings and structures which are themselves on
aqualitativespectrum of moreorless control over the construction process
–but far removed from “the ideal”in 1) –and the aesthetic and functional
construction outcome.
a. In his Antivilla (2010–2015) Arno Brandlhuber gives control over the
design to the client and to the microlevelproperties of bricks: for new
window openings, he allows the client to smash the walls with asledge-
hammer wherever he pleases. The result is partially controlled, partially
leftopen to chance and the material properties. But this is an aesthetic
exercise. The rough openings are sealed with standard windows from the
inside. Control over weathering is fully intact.34
b. In another project, Brandlhuber saves the collapsingstructure of an old
farm building in Ninikowo (2013–2020) with asculptural intervention. In
this project he also seals the inside from the outside in away that rain-
water cannot enter the building’sinside, but he leaves the already dam-
aged part of the buildingexposed to further decay on the outside –he
aestheticizes and presumably prolongsthe process of “destruction”
through his intervention.
c. In Alexander Brodsky’sRotunda,there is a “building”which starts to
lose its control grip over the weathering agents of nature –intentionally
and to ahigher degree than the surface weathering discussed in point 2).
The structure has clearly recognizable building elements: walls, doors,
windows, roof, fireplace. There are twenty salvaged doors, which them-
33 Hilde Bouchez, AWild Thing ([Gent:] Art Paper Editions, 2017), 36–37.
34 Antje Stahl, “ACollaborativePractice,”in 2G,vol. 81: Brandlhuber+,ed. Moisés Puente (Köln:
König, 2021), 6–7.
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selves haverandom sizes due to their origin, and windows in the rela-
tively small structure, which indicates acertain openness towards the
outside. Furthermore, the windowshavenoglass in them, the doors can
be unlocked without keys, and the walls are not entirely closed due to
their simple construction of wooden boards placed next to each other.
Here, we haveabuilding which visually indicates an inside-outside di-
chotomy and human control over the nonhuman world, but it is also
literally open (the window openings without glass) to the outside. Here,
weathering becomes weather. The fireplace in the middle of the structure
further plays with this confusion: we can heat the house, but it is also
open to the outside. Additionally, some visitors described amoving of
the structurewhen they climbed up the stairs: “The construction of the
Rotunda is indeed shed-like, intentionally crudeand provisional.
Agimcrack classicism seemingly knocked up out of scrap by someone
who has never seen the real thing. In astrong wind the structuresways
and the many doors swing unpredictably. There are graffiti and signs of
illicit parties. It is amagical place.”35
d. In the Caritas (2016) project by architecten de vylder vinck taillieu
(advvt) we haveanold hospital building which wasscheduled for de-
molition and then halted due to changesinmanagement.The architects
proposed atemporal use as apublic space, after ensuring the danger-free
use, which can be described best as acontrolled ruin: “Since the roof had
already been removed and parts of the wooden floors were gone, the wind
and rain would further corrode the construction, causing the wooden
planks to rot and the brick walls to crumble bit by bit. The architects
limited themselves to anumber of interventions to stabilize the building,
while also further facilitating the processofdecay over time.”36 This is an
example of acontrolled form of non-control (chaosmos).
5) Unhealthyand uninhabitable buildings (the beginningofchaos). In this
category, there are buildings which are so little in the control gripofhumans
that they become aspace for nonhuman life: moss, mold, vermin. Even
though they are seen as uninhabitable, they could potentially be brought
“back to life”with considerable human desire, will and energy to be in
control (again).
35 Robert Mull, “Retrospective: Alexander Brodsky,”The Architectural Review,April 22, 2019,
https://www.architectural-review.com/essays/retrospective-alexander-brodsky.
36 Bart Decroos, “How Gothic is Contemporary Architecture?The Appreciation of Craftman-
ship as aRuskinian Aesthetic of Imperfection,”in Thinking-Making: When Architects Engage
in Construction/Penser-Faire:Quand des Architectes se Mêlent de Construction,ed. Pauline
Lefebvre et al. (Bruxelles: Éditions de l’Université de Bruxelles, 2021), 125.
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6) Another example is the “classic ruin.”What is important for aruin to be
recognised as such is that substantial parts of the former building havetobe
missing. However, something –rather than nothing –must be remaining.
Numerically, Iwould intuitively suggest that at least 10–30% should be
missing and the same amountstill there.
7) After the 10–30%. Now we potentially enter the realm of archaeologyand
forensics.When nothing of the former building or structureisvisible, the
human is no longer actively engaged with controlling nature through the
architectural structure in any way. But we still havethe potential for epis-
temological “control”:analysing the traces of soil differences and soil
movement –knowledge for future control.
8) This point could also be point (0) and situatedatthe beginning of the list, but
it fits here because of the increasing ephemerality of the points on the list:
the desire, or projection, of architectural control which starts to become
physical through measuring. Measuring, from the laser-scanning of vast
landscapestothe probing of soil, is the first act to indicate what is mine, what
is yours, whatisinside, what is outside, what works and what does not. It is
here, where the human decides which of the nonhuman (or human) others
are excludedand which are included in the plannedendeavour.
9) The desire for comfort. This point is even more elusiveand psychological.
We start to get into the reasons behind the desire to control.
10) The will to survive, self-preservation (Selbsterhaltungstrieb). The origin of
architecture: shelter. Here we arriveatthe deepest level of architectural
control: the cosmological positioning of theself in relation to the world.
What rights are given or taken to make the world mine?Here we arriveat
Hui’scosmotechnics: architectural-technologicalaction embedded in acos-
mologicalworldview,which is embedded in the self and in the many.
Quantitative Control in Practice
While the abovespectrum of the qualitativeaspects of control, from cosmos to
chaos, is relatively easy to map onto an architectural practice, the mapping of the
quantitativeaspects, the spatial positioning of control in the micro-meso-macro,
is abit more elusive. The reasonfor this, Iwould suggest, is that we usually think
the world in boxes rather than networks or fields: the world (box 1) has humans in
them (box 2) and those humans haveconcepts in their mind (box 3). Control in
that sense is aconcept located in ahuman mind, located in ahuman body,
located in the world. When we want to talk and think about control, we tend to
think about it in terms of twoboxes interacting with each other: the body and the
mind, one body and another body, and so forth ((A) and (B) in the above
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examples).Weusually do not think of control as aconcept which is alittle bit in
you, alittle bit in me and, most importantly, there without you and me. Iwould
like to giveone architectural example in order to givelife to the aboveexplained
quantitativemicro-meso-macro spectrumofcontrol.
In another project of architecten de vylder vincktaillieu (advvt),wecan closely
examine where control is located. The project is called Podium Pile Pavilion,
made for an art festival and constructed as areplacement for aformer pavilion.
Visually, the project could be described like this: twobig brick pillars (filled with
concrete) stand on arough concretefoundation (cast into older parts of the
former pavilion)and hold aconcrete roof. The structure has no walls. It was
planned by the architectstoallow as much “randomness”in the process as
possible, and they asked the contractor to make it intentionally rough: they
stacked the bricks as they came on the pallets, they encouragedleaking of con-
crete through the bricks, they allowed bending of the concrete roof, they
roughened the concretesurface of the foundation by using wood from the former
pavilion and so forth.37 Qualitatively, this would be number 4) on the list above:
controlled non-control(chaosmos). Yet, in terms of locating control quantita-
tively, the pavilion must be described differently.
There are afew actors here (in reality, this list should be endless) which help to
confuse and defuse the location of control, from the micro to the macro (the
terms in parenthesis are suggestions and not final):
1) The former pavilion (macro).
2) The former pavilion’sarchitect(s) and contractor(s) (meso).
3) The architects of the project (advvt) (micro).
4) The client (art festival) (meso).
5) The contractor (micro-meso).
a. His worker(s) (meso).
6) The new pavilion:
a. The concrete(macro-meso).
i. The sand (meso).
ii. The water (meso).
iii. The gravel (meso).
iv. The cement (meso).
b. The bricks (meso).
i. The people who stacked the bricks on the pallet (micro-meso).
c. The former pavilion’stimber for the cast of the foundation(macro-meso).
7) The visitor(s) (meso).
a. Their memories, perception, and reference points (micro).
8) Time (macro).
37 Decroos, “How Gothic is Contemporary Architecture?,”119–122.
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Labelling those actors as micro, meso or macro, implies ahierarchy or aclear
position on the qualitativecontrol spectrum but Iwant to emphasize that this is
not the case. The labels are vague suggestions: micro happens in amind, macro in
the world, meso in the material, somewhere between mind and world, and meso
suggests having partial agency, such as the workers which havealimited amount
of freedom in the aboveexample. Noneofthe three labels is better or superior
and has nothing to do with physical size. They suggest the actors’different places
and their agency in the endless conglomerate of control relationships. The lin-
earity of the spectrum is chosen for its simplicity, but the realityofthe idea is
more complex and diagrammatically and metaphoricallysimilar to afield of
magnetic attractions and repulsions.
If we want to think about where architectural control is located –in order to
probe how much nonhuman agency can be “given”or accepted, in order to
oppose anthropocentrism –we havetoacknowledge that it is acollectivephe-
nomenon. It is close to the concepts of wisdom of the many,mass panic or hive
mind. Control is not located in one mind, one material objectorone temporal
instance. It is anetwork of, whatfeminist and physicist Karen Barad calls, intra-
actions:
The world is an open process of mattering throughwhich mattering itself acquires
meaning and form through the realization of different agential possibilities. Tempo-
rality and spatiality emerge in this processual historicity.Relations of exteriority,
connectivity, and exclusion are reconfigured.The changing topologies of the world
entail an ongoingreworking of the notion of dynamics itself. Dynamics are amatter not
merely of properties changing in time but of what matters in the ongoing materializing
of different spacetime topologies. The world is intra-activity in its differential mattering.
In summary, the primaryontological units are not “things”but phenomena –dynamic
topological reconfigurings/entanglements/relationalities/(re)articulations of the world.
And the primary semantic units are not “words”but material-discursivepractices
through which (ontic and semantic)boundaries are constituted. This dynamism is
agency. Agency is not an attribute but the ongoing reconfiguringsofthe world. The
universe is agentialintra-activityinits becoming.38
Control is aqualitativeand quantitativeproperty of architectural construction
which contributes to the exclusion and inclusion of nonhuman actors and to the
creation or negation of (collective) worldviews.
38 Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of
Matter and Meaning (Durham:Duke University Press, 2007), 141.
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Intersection
Ihavelooked at architectural control from aquantitativeand from aqualitative
point of view. Quantitively, or spatially, control can be found in minds (the
microcosmic self) and the world (the macrocosmic). Iadvocated thinking about
the location as simultaneously in both worlds (the meso) in order to overcome
dichotomous thinking which is so prevalent in our current Western worldview.
Qualitatively, Ihavesituated control on aspectrum between chaos and cosmos,
or non-control and absolutecontrol, and haveadvocated for achaosmos(t)ic
positioning of the self: neither ascetic loss of control (Kontrollverlust)nor con-
tinuing with the current unquestioned human-centric use of (technological)
control over the nonhuman world which is rooted in aWestern-Christian cos-
mology.
In order to overcome anthropocentric thinking –one of the main goals of
ontological posthumanism –in aproductivemanner for architectural pro-
duction, the problem of the human desire to control needs to be looked at more
specifically. When talking about non-monotechnological cosmotechnics for
ahuman-nonhuman spectrum –note the hyphen as acontinuous bridge –we
havetodevelop tools to zoom in on that control relationship. Whereisthis
control relationship located and what is the degree of its interactions?Here, I
gaveapreliminary example of such azooming-in regarding human control over
the nonhuman world. If we want to thinkabout architecture in posthuman terms,
outside of using the other as amere decoration or provocation for aproject, we
must develop more subtle forms of thinking, not designing, architectures.
The intersection of the quantitativeand the qualitativespectrum of control, I
would suggest the term meso-chaosmos, is apersonal point (positioned in the
diagrams of Fig. 8). Apoint which is in constant flux based on one’sown cos-
mological positioning towards the nonhuman world. Any “successful”posthu-
man endeavours, in terms of improved fairnesstowards the nonhuman or more-
than-human, must be elaborated within the self. The meso-chaosmos(t)ic control
point shifts in each individual and in each society over time. Agood example is
the increased acceptance and even promotion of vegetarianism. Here, Iwould
like to say one last word of warning: a) as already mentioned this control point is
an individual point and should not be enforced by others and b) the shifting and
the fluctuation of this point is prone to manipulation (specifically through
modern media).Agiving away of human control over the nonhuman world is not
far away from giving away human control over the human world.
Transpositiones 3, 1(2024)76
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Conclusion
Architecture is atechnology which helps humans to control nature.The style of
this control is rootedinaculture’scosmology, which Hui calls cosmotechnics.
The current cosmology of the Western world, which is propagated globally
through current technologies, is aChristian worldview of the Middle Ages. This
worldview places the human over the natural nonhuman world (anthro-
pocentrism).Amain problem with that worldview is an unquestioned celebra-
tion of human control over the nonhuman world. In order to overcome an-
thropocentrism, we havetoexplore, what Hui calls, technodiversity with aspecial
focus on those technologies’relationship with the self and the world in termsof
control.
In thispaper Ishowed first speculativeapproaches, and clear architectural
examples, to locate control spatiallyand quantitatively on the spectrum between
the microcosmos and the macrocosmos and advocated for ameso-positioning of
the self. Additionally, Iproposed to think control qualitatively on aspectrum
between total control to no control, here illustrated through the concepts of
cosmos and chaos, and advocated for apositioning of the self on that spectrum at
the intersection of both worlds: chaosmos.The intersection of the quantitative
and the qualitativecontrol spectrum Itermed meso-chaosmos: apoint of con-
stant individual negotiation within the self and the world.
Fig. 8. Quantitativelocationand qualitativedegree of control and their intersection: meso-
chaosmos
Sebastian Gatz, Meso-Chaosmos:Situating Architectural Control 77
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