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Embodying networks: bubble diagrams and the image of modern organicism

2006; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 11; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/13602360601037867

1466-4410

Paul Emmons,

Geographies of human-animal interactions

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Acknowledgements Insightful suggestions for this article by Diana Periton, Vittoria Di Palma and Mari Hvattum are gratefully acknowledged. An earlier version of this work benefited from criticism by William Braham, Marco Frascari, David Leatherbarrow and Joseph Rykwert. Notes 1. Joseph Rykwert, The Dancing Column, On Order in Architecture (Cambridge, MA., MIT Press, 1996). For example, Francesco di Giorgio compared organs of the body to the functions of the city. Lawrence Lowic, 'The Meaning and Significance of the Human Analogy in Francesco di Giorgio's Trattato', Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 42 (December, 1983), pp. 360–370. 2. A small sample of the literature includes: William Mitchell, Me + +The Cyborg Self and the Networked City (Cambridge, MA., MIT Press, 2003); Manuel Castells, ed., The Network Society: a cross-cultural perspective (Edward Elgar, 2004); Mark Wigley, 'Network Fever', Grey Room, 4 (Summer, 2001), pp. 82–122; Albert-László Barabási, Linked: how everything is connected to everything else and what it means for Business, Science, and Everyday Life (London, Plume, 2003). 3. Arthur Silverstein, A History of Immunology (San Diego, Academic Press, 1988); Alfred Tauber, The Immune Self: Theory or Metaphor? (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994); Pauline Mazumdar, Species and Specificity, An Interpretation of the History of Immunology (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995). 4. Beatriz Colomina, 'The Medical Body in Modern Architecture', Daidalos (June, 1997), pp. 60–72; also in Anybody (New York, Anyone, 1997), pp. 228–239. 5. Lloyd Stevenson, 'Science Down the Drain: On the Hostility of certain Sanitarians to Animal Experimentation, Bacteriology, and Immunology', Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 29 (1995), p. 17. 6. Emily Martin, Flexible Bodies: Tracking Immunity in American Culture – From the Days of Polio to the Age of AIDS (Boston, 1994); William Braham and Paul Emmons, 'Upright or Flexible? Exercising Posture in Modern Architecture', in Body and Building, Essays on the Changing Relation of Body and Architecture, eds, George Dodds and Robert Tavernor (Cambridge, MA., MIT Press, 2002), pp. 290–303. 7. Lewis Mumford, Technics and Civilization (New York, Harcourt Brace & World, 1934), p. 370. 8. Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being: A study of the history of an idea (New York, Harper, 1960). 9. The image is reproduced and discussed in Frances Yates, The Art of Memory (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1966), pp. 179f. 10. E. S. Russell, Form and Function: A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology (London, John Murray, 1916), p. 23. 11. Lorin Anderson, 'Charles Bonnet's Taxonomy and Chain of Being', Journal of the History of Ideas, 37 (1976), pp. 45 – 58. 12. Philosophia Botanica cosmographically set forth 365 aphorisms in twelve chapters. Linnaeus, Philosophia Botanica (Stockholm, 1751), 2. 77, p. 27. Frans Stafleu, Linnaeus and the Linnaeans: The Spreading of their Ideas in Systematic Botany, 1735 – 1789 (Utrecht, 1971), pp. 45f. 13. Giulio Barsanti, 'Buffon et l'image de la nature: de l'échelle des êtres à la carte géographique et à l'arbre généalogique', Buffon, 88 (Paris, Vrin, 1992), pp. 255–296. 14. Tabula genealogico-geographica affinitatum plantarum secundum ordines naturals Linnaei [quam] delineavit Paulus Dietericus Giseke 1789; Alec Panchen, Classification, Evolution, and the Nature of Biology (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 16. 15. A tree is a network in which there is only one possible path between any two nodes. Jacques Bertin, Semiology of Graphics, Diagrams, Networks, Maps, trs., William Berg (Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1983 [1967]), p. 276. 16. Robin Middleton, 'Enfilade — the Spatial Sequence in French Hotels of the 17th and 18th Centuries', Daidalos, 42 (December, 1991), pp. 84–95. Middleton reiterates this work in his introduction for Nicolas Le Camus de Mézières, The genius of architecture, or, The analogy of that art with our sensations, trs., David Britt (Santa Monica, Getty Center for the History of Art and Humanities, 1992 [1780]), pp. 32f. 17. Nicolas Le Camus de Mézières, ibid., p. 108; Isaac Ware, The Complete Body of Architecture (London, 1756–57), p. 328. 18. Robert Kerr, The Gentleman's House: or, How to Plan English Residences, from the Parsonage to the Palace (London, 1871); Robin Evans, 'Figures, Doors, Passages', in Translations from Drawing to Building and Other Essays (Cambridge, MA., MIT Press, 1997), pp. 55–92. 19. Richard Etlin, 'Les Dedans: Jacques-Francois Blondel and the System of the Home c. 1740', Gazette des Beaux-Arts, series 6, 91 (April, 1978), pp. 137–147; Michael Dennis, Court & Garden, From the French Hotel to the City of Modern Architecture (Cambridge, MA., MIT Press, 1986), p. 61; C. Briseux, L'Art de bastir des Maisons de Campagne, ou l'on traits de leur distribution, de leur construction, & de leur decoration (London, Gregg, 1966 [1743]); Jacques-Francois Blondel, Cours d'Architecture, ou traité de la décoration, distribution, & construction, six volumes (Paris, 1771); Blondel, Cours, IV, p.193 in Robin Middleton, 'Jacques Francois Blondel, and the Cours d'Architecture', Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 18 (1959), pp. 140–148, 145. 20. Vitaliano Donati, Della storia Naturale marina dell'Adriatico Saggio (Venice, Storti, 1750), pp. xix–xxi in Giulio Barsanti, 'Le immagini della natura: Scale, Mappe, Alberi 1700–1800', Nuncios, 3.1 (1988), pp. 55–125, 83f; Vitaliano Donati, Essai sur l'histoire naturelle de la mer Adriatique, avec une lettre du docteur Leonard Sesler, sur une nouvelle espèce de plante terrestre (Haye, Chez Pierre de Hondt, 1758). 21. F. A. Bather, 'Biological Classification: Past and Future', Quarterly Journal of the Genealogical Society of London, 83 (1927), pp. lxii – civ, lxxvi; Frans Stafleu, Linnaeus and the Linnaeans, op. cit., p. 133. 22. Johnson defined 'net-work' as 'any thing reticulated or decussated, at equal distances, with interstices between the intersections.': Samuel Johnson, Dictionary of the English Language (London, 1755), emphasis added. 23. Milne-Edwards' overlapping circles diagram preceded John Venn's better-known logic diagrams by almost forty years. Venn first published his logic diagrams in 1880. Henri Milne-Edwards, 'Considérations sur quelques principes relatifs a la classification naturelle des animaux', Annales des Sciences Naturelles, Third Series, 1 (1844), pp. 65–99; Alec Panchen, Classification, Evolution, and the Nature of Biology (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 22. 24. Don Roberts, The Existential Graphs of Charles S. Peirce (The Hague, Mouton, 1973), p. 17. Peirce identified his source as being in chemical diagrams: C. S. Peirce, Collected Papers, Vol. 3, pp. 468–470. 25. Charles S. Peirce, Writings of C. S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition, edited by Max Fisch, Vol. 5 (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1993 [1885]), pp. 244, 300, 456. 26. Ibid., pp. 245–7. C. S. Peirce, Peirce on Signs, ed., James Hoopes (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1991): 'A Guess at the Riddle', pp. 197–202. 27. Charles S. Peirce, Collected Papers, eds, Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss, Vol. 3 (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1931–1960), p. 423. Deleuze and Guattari's much cited 'rhizome' is a network diagram. They claim the rhizome is an anti-schema, but that is to critique older hierarchical structures and like those who preceded them, they ultimately find the rhizome permeating the micro- and macro-cosmos. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, 'Rhizome', in A Thousand Plateaus, Capitalism & Schizophrenia, trs., Brian Massumi (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1980), pp. 3–25. 28. Since computerisation of the architectural registration examination in the United States, the functional diagram is integral to the official verification of design ability. Richard Wesley, The Search for Rational Form, reprinted from The Architecture Monograph (Cambridge, Harvard Graduate School of Design, 1977), pp. 1–2. 29. Writings in environment-behaviour and design methods discount the history of diagrams prior to their own organisation. Geoffrey Broadbent identified the first functional diagrams as appearing in 1962: 'the origin of analytical techniques is thought to be in C. Alexander, C. Jones, and others in the First Conference on Design Methods in 1962.'; Geoffrey Broadbent, 'A plain man's guide to systematic design methods', Royal Institute of British Architects Journal, 75 (May, 1968), p. 223. See also his Design in Architecture (1973), pp. 252f. Christopher Alexander, in a later foreword to his Notes on the Synthesis of Form, states at the outset: 'one idea stands out clearly for me as the most important discovery of the book: the idea of the diagrams.' Christopher Alexander, Notes on the Synthesis of Form (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1971 [1964]). This book enjoyed its fourteenth printing in 1997. John von Neumann was the first systematically to use graphic representations in computer programming in his work at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. The first unpublished use of computer flowcharts is reportedly from 1946. Flowcharting standards were first adopted by IBM in 1956, which also issued the first plastic flowchart template in 1969. Ned Chapin, Flowcharts (Princeton, Auerbach, 1971), pp. 25, 76; Tom DeMarco, Structured Analysis and System Specification (New York, Yorktown, 1978); H.H. Goldstine and John von Neumann, Planning and Coding Problems for an Electronic Computing Instrument, three volumes (Princeton, Van Nostrand, 1947). On the late appearance of planning diagrams in scientific management, see Paul Emmons, 'Intimate Circulations: Representing Flow in House and City', AA Files, 51 (Winter, 2005), pp. 48–57. 30. Percy Nobbs (1875 – 1964) had a Russian father and a Scottish mother. He studied in St. Petersburg and in Edinburgh at the School of Art and Applied Art until 1896. Before traveling to Canada, he worked for architects in Edinburgh and London dedicated to the Arts and Crafts movement, under the influence of Richard Norman Shaw and with probable awareness of Robert Kerr. Nobbs dedicated his book Design to his teacher Sir Robert Lorimer (1864–1929), a professor at Edinburgh University and a leader in arts and crafts who worked in London with Webb and Morris. For the biography of Nobbs, see Susan Wagg, Percy Erskine Nobbs, Architect, Artist, Craftsman (Montreal, McCord Museum, McGill-Queen's University Press, 1982) and Irene Murray, Percy Erskine Nobbs and his Associates, A Guide to the Archive (Montreal, CCA, 1986). 31. While it seems possible that there were multiple 'inventors' of the bubble diagram in architecture, if one were to look for a singular location for its origin, it might well be in Edinburgh. One of Robert Kerr's 'thoroughfare plans' (a proto-network diagram) in his Gentleman's House is the 'Modern Scotch Model' taken from Scottish architect William Burn (1789–1870) who was respected for his successful house planning. Burn is not better known today because he was against any publication of his work or ideas for risk of plagiarism. Burn was extremely unhappy when Kerr published his design without permission. Kerr seems to have studied Burn's work carefully and may have derived some of his planning principles therefrom. Kerr's book was described as illustrating Burn's system in: Professor Donaldson, 'Memoir of the Late William Burn', Transactions of the Royal Institute of British Architects (1869–1870), pp. 121–129, 122; Jill Franklin, The Gentleman's Country House and its plan, 1835–1914 (London, Routledge, 1981); David Walker, 'William Burn's Fashionable Functionalism', Royal Institute of British Architects Journal, 97.10 (October, 1990), pp. 44–47, 50–51; and Jocelyn Cunliffe, 'Some Observations on an Early Nineteenth Century Architectural Practice in Edinburgh', EAR, 4 (1971), pp. 12–22. Finally, at roughly at the same time, the source of C.S. Peirce's network diagrams, Alexander Crum Brown, was also in Edinburgh developing the 'first chemico-graphs' of points and lines: Alexander Crum Brown, 'On an Application of Mathematics to Chemistry', Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 24 (1867), pp. 691–693. 32. Nobbs's description of the bubble diagram has many similarities with Le Corbusier's, but Nobbs makes clear he has no taste for modernism, and his book neither illustrates nor cites any modern architecture or architects. Nobbs's diagram is of a particular building that strongly suggests he used the process himself. I have not identified the building, but based on the floor plan, it is probably a house of his own design, perhaps the house he built for his family in Montreal. For reviews of Design, see: J.G.N., Apollo, The Magazine of the Arts for Connoisseurs and Collectors, 27 (May, 1938), p. 273; Teodore Fyfe, 'Underlying Principles', Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects, 44 (17th July, 1937), p. 892; and Joan Evans, Burlington Magazine, 71 (November, 1937), p. 244. Percy Nobbs, Design: A Treatise on the Discovery of Form (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1937), p. 256. 33. Percy Nobbs, Design: A Treatise on the Discovery of Form, op. cit., pp. 253–4. 34. Ibid., p. 260. 35. Ibid., p. 256. 36. Le Corbusier, Precisions on the Present State of Architecture and City Planning, trs., Edith Aujame (Cambridge, MA., MIT Press, 1991 [1960, 1930]), p. 224. It was republished separately at least twice as: 'If I had to teach you architecture', in Focus (London) 1 (Summer, 1938), pp. 3–12 and Architectural Design, 29 (February, 1959), pp. 86–87. 37. Giulio Barsanti, La Scala, La Mappa, L'Albero: Immagini e classificazioni della natura fra Sei e Ottocento (Firenze, Sansoni, 1992), p. 94; Paul J. Morris, 'Louis Agassiz's additions to the French translation of his Essay on Classification', Journal of the History of Biology, 30(1997), pp. 121–134. Agassiz, who followed Cuvier's organisation of nature into 'branches', wrote: 'I have devoted my whole life to the study of Nature, and yet a single sentence may express all that I have done. I have shown that there is a correspondence between the succession of Fishes in geological times and the different stages of their growth in the egg, — that is all. It chanced to be a result that was found to apply to other groups and has led to other conclusions of a like nature.' Louis Agassiz, An Essay on Classification (London, Longman, 1869). 38. Le Corbusier, Poem of the Right Angle (Paris, Fondation Le Corbusier, 1989), E 4, Characters, n.p. 39. Le Corbusier, L'Esprit Nouveau, No. 25 (1925). 40. Le Corbusier, Precisions, op. cit., p. 230. 41. Ibid., pp. 42, 91, 126. 42. Le Corbusier, 'CIAM – 2, 1929', The Radiant City, trs, Pamela Knight, Eleanor Levieux, and Derek Coltman (New York, Orion, 1967), p. 30; from Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, 'The Minimum House', CIAM 2 (Frankfurt-am-Main, 1929): emphasis added. 43. Dr. R. Allendy, 'La Médicine Synthétique', L'Esprit Nouveau, No. 13, pp. 1457, 1459. 44. Paul Recht, 'Règnes', L'Esprit Nouveau, No. 5, p. 576. 45. Le Corbusier, The Radiant City, op. cit., pp. 41, 119, 125, 203. 46. Dr. Allendy wrote an article on neuroses of the nervous system and in another article described the structural system of the atom. Dr. R. Allendy, L'Esprit Nouveau, No. 18; 'Les Névroses', L'Esprit Nouveau, No. 24. 47. 'Le Réseau Aérien', L'Esprit Nouveau, No. 14, p. 1683; Le Corbusier, Precisions, op. cit., p. 3. 48. Paul Recht, 'Réseau cubique', in 'Règnes', L'Esprit Nouveau, No. 5, p. 573. 49. Le Corbusier, 'Besoins Types, Meubles Types', L'Esprit Nouveau, No.23, (1925). 50. Le Corbusier, Precisions, op. cit., p. x. 51. Computer flow diagrams are also called 'Bubble Charts' like the names for pictures of atom-smashing. Tom DeMarco, Structured Analysis and System Specification, op. cit., p. 48. In architectural programming, many writers use the term 'bubble diagram': Geoffrey Broadbent, Design in Architecture and the Human Sciences (London, John Wiley, 1973), p. 260; Mikey Palmer, The Architect's Guide to Facility Programming (Washington DC, AIA Press, 1981), p. 129; Paul Laseau, Graphic Problem Solving for Architects and Designers (New York, Van Nostrand, 1975), p. 25; Richard Wesley, The Search for Rational Form (Cambridge, Harvard Graduate School of Design, Architecture Monograph, 1977), p. 2. It has also been proposed that roundness is given to anything without a definite shape, as the image of the 'informe', or the not yet formed: Rudolf Arnheim, Visual Thinking (Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1969), p. 280. 52. On the iconology of soap bubbles, in addition to the sources below, see the work of Michele Emmer: Bolle di sapone: un viaggio tra arte, scienza e fantasia (Scandicci, Florence, La nuova Italia, 1991); 'Soap Bubbles in Art and Science: From the Past to the Future of Math Art', in Leonardo,20.4 (1987), pp. 327–334 and in The Visual Mind: Art and Mathematics, ed., Michele Emmer (Cambridge, MA., MIT Press, 1993), pp. 135–142. Marcus Varro, On Agriculture, [Rerum rusticarum], trs., William Hooper (Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press, 1960), 1.1. Panofsky identifies the first Renaissance use of the theme in the Hypnerotomachia Polyphili. Erwin Panofsky, 'Et in Arcadia Ego', in Philosophy and History: Essays presented to Ernst Cassirer, eds, Raymond Klibansky and J. H. Paton (New York, Harper, 1963 [1936]), pp. 223–254, 241, n. 1; Rudolf Wittkower, 'Death and Resurrection in a picture by Marten de Vos', in Allegory and the Migration of Symbols (Boulder, Colorado, Westview, 1977), pp. 160–166; Simon Schaffer, 'A Science whose business is bursting: Soap Bubbles as commodities in Classical Physics', in Things that Talk, Object Lessons from Art and Science, ed., Lorraine Daston (New York, Zone, 2004), pp. 147–192. 53. Jacqueline Wilkie, 'Submerged Sensuality: Technology and Perception of Bathing', Journal of Social History, 19 (Summer, 1986), pp. 647–664, 652; Georges Vigarello, Concepts of Cleanliness, Changing attitudes in France since the Middle Ages, trs., Jean Birrell (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 169; Vincent Vinikas, Soft Soap, Hard Sell. American Hygiene in an age of Advertising (Ames, Iowa, Iowa State University, 1992), pp. 80f; Mike Dempsey, ed., Bubbles: Early Advertising Art from A. & F. Pears Ltd. (London, Fontana, 1978). 54. Le Corbusier, Towards a new Architecture, trs., Frederick Etchells (New York, Dover, 1986 [1931]), p. 81: 'UN PLAN PROCEDE DU DEDANS AU DEHORS. Un edifice est comme une bulle de savon. Cette bulle est parfaite et harmonieuse si le souffle est bien réparti, bien réglé de l'intérieur. L'extérieur est le résultat d'un intérieur.'; Le Corbusier, Vers une Architecture (Paris, Arthaud, 1977), p. 146. 55. Le Corbusier, Precisions, op. cit., p. 132. 56. For example, three circles with interconnecting lines were inscribed on a scarab found in Gaza from the early second millennium BC, E.J. H. Mackay and Margaret Murray, Ancient Gaza V (London, 1952), p. 32. Butterworth interprets this diagram to represent three levels of heaven as cakras in the practice of yoga. Like the channels in the Tree of the Sephiroth, the cakras are linked by a tube or susumna, through which Kundalini moves upwards. E. A. S. Butterworth, The Tree at the Navel of the Earth (Berlin, De Gruyter, 1970), p. 166. 57. Gershom Scholem, On the Kabbalah and its Symbolism, trs., Ralph Manheim (New York, Schocken, 1965), p. 51. 58. Louis Sullivan, 'The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered' (1896) in Kindergarten Chats and Other Writings (New York, Dover, 1979), pp. 48, 208. Walter Gropius, 'Recommendations for the Founding of an Educational Institution as an Artistic Counselling Service for Industry, the Trades, and the Crafts', (1916), in Hans M. Wingler, The Bauhaus: Weimar, Dessau, Berlin, Chicago, trs, Wolfgang Jabs and Basil Gilbert (Cambridge, MA., MIT Press, 1969), p. 23. See also Diana Periton, 'The Bauhaus as Cultural Paradigm', The Journal of Architecture, Vol. 1, No. 3 (Autumn, 1996), pp. 189–205. 59. Flora Samuel, 'Le Corbusier, Rabelais and the Oracle of the Holy Bottle', Word & Image, Vol. 17, No. 4 (October–December, 2001), pp. 325–338, 327; Paul Turner, The Education of Le Corbusier: A Study of the Development of Le Corbusier's Thought, 1900–1920 (Harvard University, PhD Dissertation, 1971); Edouard Schuré, The Great Initiates: A Study of the Secret History of Religions, trs., Gloria Raspberry (Harper and Row, 1961 [1889]), pp. 26, 162; Jean Epstein, 'nous, KABBALISTES', L'Esprit Nouveau, No. 15, pp. 1709–1713. Jean Epstein (1897–1953) was an experimental film director and theoretician who was interested in realism and made a 1922 documentary, Pasteur. The article describes Kabbalah's historical line of advocates as a 'network'. 60. Le Corbusier, When the Cathedrals were White (New York, McGraw Hill, 1947), p. 6. 61. Le Corbusier, Precisions, op. cit., p. 222, emphasis added. Others have noted how Le Corbusier's photograph of the kitchen in the Villa Savoye (also from 1929) with a decanter and bread on the counter suggests an altar. 62. For example, Frank Gehry described struggling to see a building in his sketches that appear very doodle-like. Creativity: The Sketch in the Arts and Sciences Symposium (Washington DC, Center for the Advanced Study in Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, 23rd May, 2001). 63. Graham Flegg, From Geometry to Topology (New York, Crane, Russak, 1974). 64. Paul Laseau, Graphic Problem Solving for Architects and Builders (Boston, Cahners, 1975), pp. 28–29. This book was republished in 1980 and 1987. More recently: Paul Laseau, Architectural Representation Handbook, Traditional and Digital Techniques for Graphic Communication (New York, McGraw-Hill, 2000). 65. For Neufert's biography: Fritz Gotthelf, Ernst Neufert, Ein Architekt Unserer Zeit (Berlin, 1960). On the history of the handbook: Wolfgang Voigt, 'Triumph der Gleichform und des Zusammenpassens: Ernst Neufert und die Normung in der Architektur', in Bauhaus: Moderne im national-Sozialismus zwischen Anbiederung und Verfolgung, ed., Winfried Nerdinger (München, Prestel, 1993), pp. 179–193. 66. Ernst Neufert, 'Design Method', Architect's Data, trs, Rudolf Herz, et al. (London, Crosby Lockwood, 1970), p. 30; and 'Bau-Entwurf Arbeitsvorgang', Bauentwurfslehre (Berlin, Bauwelt Verlag, October, 1936 [third edition]), p. 34. 67. Le Corbusier, 'Truth From Diagrams', The Radiant City, trs, Pamela Knight, Eleanor Levieux, and Derek Coltman (New York, Orion, 1967), pp. 190–195; first published as La Ville Radieuse (Paris, Vincent, 1933); article originally published as 'Les Graphiques expriment', Préludes, themes préparatoirs à l'action (1933). See also Robin Kinross, 'The Rhetoric of Neutrality', Design Discourse: History, Theory, Criticism, ed., Victor Margolin (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1989), pp. 131–143. 68. Section showing the 'vital functions' of the administration for the Project for the Headquarters of Rentenanstalt, a life insurance company in Zurich, 1933: Le Corbusier, Complete Works, Volume 2 (1929–1934), p. 183.