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Abstract
What do we mean when we say that a building is an assemblage? To answer this question, we must first decide what we mean by ‘the assemblage’ and which areas of Deleuze and Guattari’s corpus we will use. In this paper I focus on one of two kinds of assemblage from A Thousand Plateaus: the machinic assemblage. Drawing on the third chapter of this core text, I show how and why this concept should be understood as complementary yet distinct from the often-neglected concept of the strata. I then illustrate these concepts through the architectural design process by discussing the creation of a physical and functional building, acts of (architectural) expression and as a contribution to one or more architectural languages. Using this insight, I argue that architecture provides us with a way to usefully illustrate and explore some of the complex and abstract concepts within Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophy.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Illustrated, respectively, in Kim Dovey and Kenn Fisher, “Designing for Adaptation: The School as Socio-Spatial Assemblage,” Journal of Architecture 19, no. 1 (2014): 43–63; Andrew Daly and Chris L. Smith, “Architecture, Cigarettes and the Dispositif,” Architectural Theory Review 16, no. 1 (2011): 22–37; Colin McFarlane, “The City as Assemblage: Dwelling and Urban Space,” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 29, no. 4 (2011): 649–71; Kim Dovey, Becoming Places Urbanism, Architecture, Identity, Power (London: Routledge, 2009).
2 J. Van Wazemael, “The Contribution of Assemblage Theory and Minor Politics for Democratic Network Governance,” Planning Theory 7, no. 2 (2008): 165–85; Kim Dovey and Elek Pafka, “What Is Functional Mix? An Assemblage Approach,” Planning Theory & Practice 18, no. 2 (2017): 249–67.
3 As in, respectively, Kevin Grove and Jonathan Pugh, “Assemblage Thinking and Participatory Development: Potentiality, Ethics, Biopolitics,” Geography Compass 9, no. 1 (2015): 1–13; Eugene McCann, “Veritable Inventions: Cities, Policies and Assemblage,” Area 43, no. 2 (2011): 143–47; Arun Saldanha, “Assemblage, Materiality, Race, Capital,” Dialogues in Human Geography 2, no. 2 (2012): 194–97; Jason Dittmer, “Geopolitical Assemblages and Complexity,” Progress in Human Geography 38, no. 3 (2014): 385–401; Stephen J. Collier, “Neoliberalism as Big Leviathan, or …? A Response to Wacquant and Hilgers,” Social Anthropology 20, no. 2 (2012): 186–95; Stephen J. Collier and Aihwa Ong, “Global Assemblages Anthropological Problems,” in Global Assemblages, ed. Stephen J. Collier and Aihwa Ong (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008), 3–21; Aihwa Ong, “Neoliberalism as a Mobile Technology,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 32, no. 1 (2007): 3–8; Aihwa Ong, “Ecologies of Expertise: Assembling Flows, Managing Citizenship,” in Global Assemblages, ed. Collier and Ong 337–53.
4 Ben Anderson and Colin McFarlane, “Assemblage and Geography,” Area 43, no. 2 (June 1, 2011), 124.
5 Anderson and McFarlane, “Assemblage and Geography,” 125.
6 Ian Buchanan, “Assemblage Theory, or, the Future of an Illusion,” Deleuze Studies 11, no. 3 (2017): 457–74.
7 Buchanan, “Assemblage Theory,” 457–74.
8 Robert Alexander Gorny, “Reclaiming What Architecture Does: Toward an Ethology and Transformative Ethics of Material Arrangements,” Architectural Theory Review 22, no. 2 (2018): 188–209.
9 Catarina P. Nabais, Gilles Deleuze: philosophie et littérature (Paris: Editions L’Harmattan, 2013); Ronald Bogue, “The Terrified Face and the Face Machine” (paper presented at the 12th Annual Deleuze & Guattari Studies Conference, Royal Holloway, London, July 8–10, 2019); Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis, USA: University of Minnesota Press), 3.
10 Manuel DeLanda, Assemblage Theory (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016). This same strategy is employed across many other concepts in Manuel DeLanda’s previous work, such as Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy (London: Continuum, 2002).
11 See Graham Jones and Jon Roffe, eds., Deleuze’s Philosophical Lineage I (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009); Graham Jones and Jon Roffe, eds., Deleuze’s Philosophical Lineage II (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019).
12 Louis Hjelmslev, Prolegomena to a Theory of Language, trans. Francis J. Whitfield (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1961).
13 Hjelmslev, Prolegomena to a Theory of Language; André Martinet, Elements of General Linguistics, trans. E Palmer (London: Faber & Faber, 1969).
14 Hjelmslev, Prolegomena to a Theory of Language; Miriam Taverniers, 53; “Hjelmslev’s Semiotic Model of Language: An Exegesis,” Semiotica 171 (2008): 367–94.
15 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 43.
16 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 41.
17 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 52
18 Deleuze and Guattari argue that there are two assemblages used within A Thousand Plateaus: the machinic assemblage and the collective assemblage of enunciation. See Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 22.
19 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 73.
20 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 50.
21 Note that for the purpose of legibility, shows only one instance of de/reterritorialisation. A more “complete” diagram would include multiple acts positioned across both planes. This observation is equally applicable to all subsequent figures in the paper.
22 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 59.
23 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 60; 313.
24 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 315.
25 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 344.
26 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 60.
27 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 62.
28 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 62.
29 Given the limitations of this single paper publication I have not explored the third role of the machinic assemblage as the effectuation of the abstract machine. This is owing to the complexity of the concepts surrounding the Plane of Consistency and the abstract machines operating within this plane.
30 Hélène Frichot, Creative Ecologies: Theorizing the Practice of Architecture (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018); Chris L. Smith, Bare Architecture: A Schizoanalysis (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017).
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Gareth Abrahams
Gareth Abrahams first developed an interest in Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophy in 2001 when studying at the Ecole d’architecture, urbanisme and paysage in Lille. Three years later he qualified as an architect and went on to design and deliver many complex architectural schemes in a range of different sectors. In 2014 he completed a Phd exploring opportunities to translate some of Deleuze and Guattari’s ontological concepts into new tools that could improve planning practice. He later published a monograph entitled, Making Deleuze of use to planning: proposals for a speculative and immanent assessment method. His academic interest is now directed at developing this further by finding new ways to explore Deleuze and Guattari’s core texts and to consider how such insight might influence the decisions made by architects and planners sat at their desks and drawing boards.