Emergent Molarities: Resistances on the Molecular Plane of Biology and Digital Architecture

Abstract

The appropriations of biology in digital architectural design, particularly genetic models for the emergence of form, tend towards the molecular, whereby emergence is given by discrete forms in relation. This paper argues for the reconsideration of the biological paradigm in architecture from the point of view of molarity, in which relations between entities are experienced as relations that are in themselves actual abstract extensions. Drawing on the work of two philosophers whose thinking has been influential in Deleuze and Guattari's molecular materialist philosophy, namely Georges Canguilhem and Gilbert Simondon, this paper identifies the status of actual molar concretisations of relations in the form of codes, diagrams and material traces of processes, and the transduction of information through these molar forms, in the ontogenetic processes of individuation of human beings and technological machines alike.