Jordi Vivaldi

‘Digital Matter”; ‘Intelligent Matter’; ‘Behavioural Matter’; ‘Informed Matter’; ‘Living Matter’, ‘Feeling Matter’; ‘Vibrant Matter’; ‘Mediated Matter’; ‘Responsive Matter’; ‘Robotic Matter’; ‘Self-Organized Matter’; ‘Ecological Matter’; ‘Programmable Matter’; ‘Active Matter’; ‘Energetic Matter’. There is no term enjoying better reputation in today’s experimental architectural discourse. Gently provided by a myriad of studios hosted in pioneer universities around the world, the previous expressions illustrate the redemption of a notion that has traditionally been dazzled by form’s radiance. After centuries of irrelevance, ‘Matter’ has recently become a decisive term; it illuminates not just the field of experimental architecture, but the whole spectrum of our cultural landscape: several streams in philosophy, art and science have vigorously embraced it, operating under the gravitational field of its holistic and non-binary constitution. However, another Copernican Revolution is flipping today’s experimental academic architecture from a different flank. In parallel to matter’s redemption and after the labyrinthic continuums characteristic of the 90’s, discreteness claims to be the core of a new formal paradigm. Beside its Promethean vocation and renewed cosmetics, the discrete design model restores the relevance of a term that traditionally has been fundamental in architecture: the notion of part. However, in opposition to previous architectural modulations, part’s current celebration is traversed by a Faustian desire for spatial and ontological agency, which severely precludes any reverential servitude to its whole. The singular coincidence of matter’s revival on the one side and the discrete turn on the other one opens a debate in relation to its possible conflicts and compatibilities in the field of experimental architecture. This discussion gravitates around one single statement: the impossibility of a materialist architectural part-thinking. The argument unfolds by approaching a set of questions and analysing the consequences of its possible answers: how matter’s revival contributes to architectural part thinking? Is matter’s revival a mere importation of formal attributes? Which are the requirements for a radical part-thinking in architecture? Is matter well equipped for this endeavour? In short, are the notions of matter and part-thinking compatible in an architectural environment?