Rising out of the affective sea: Emergence and architectural composition

This paper argues for a strong historical and philosophical relationship between theories of architectural composition and theories of emergence. Historically, both theoretical fields play the role of negotiating and bridging discursive conflicts between mechanical or scientific rationalisation and vitalist or aesthetic knowing. Philosophically, I suggest that both composition and emergence fundamentally operate through the bridging ground of affect, where contested terrains of thinking and feeling loop together into a compositional fold. I argue that an exploration of the plastic nature of the compositional fold is at the core of experimental or `avant-garde¿ architectural design research of the last decade. It can also be argued that a new compositional paradigm is emerging, one that is yet to be clearly articulated.