...on Folds

"Skin and Bones - Folded Forms from Leibniz to Lynn" by Anthony Vidler, seeks to explore the meaning of the "fold". Gilles Deleuze introduced the "theme" of the fold after having studied the works of Leibniz. This theme came to register as "a material phenomenon -- as in the folds of Bernini's sculpture of Santa Teresa... and as a metaphysical idea -- as in the 'fold' that joins the soul to the mind without division."  The fold can be broken down even further to the concept of pleat and crease as well. This theme of the fold as something both tangible and abstract interested many architects, for as Vidler states "architects [are] always searching for the tangible attribute of an abstract thought". At the time Baroque architecture became the focus and study for furthering the "fold". To a point however Deleuze and Leibniz disagree over the interpreation of the "fold". Deleuze and the "Deleuzian model" allowed for a more literal and connected interpretation, such as a "literal folding of the envelope...that tends to ignore rather than privilege the interior". However, for Leibniz and the "Leibnizian fold", it is a "continuous movement, enveloping former folds and creating new ones on the surface of the diaphragm". The Leibnizian fold also acts as an interior mechanism that "reflects the outside and represents the forces of the inside".


Moving to Greg Lynn, one sees a transformation of the idea/ theme of "fold". For Lynn the "reductive typologies" of the past, such as the Wittkower/ Rowe nine-square grid, are replaced by "topological experiments" or the blob as seen in Lynn's writings. There is now a move to form no longer being "concieved of as geometric...but rather as seamlessly countercontradictory".