Time, Question, Fold

With Deleuze's Le Pli something else is being brought into consideration. Here there is another philosophical possibility. More exactly, however, it has, in part, already been brought in, and therefore the fold--also le pli --is already present in contemporary architectural theory and practice.<br />
&nbsp;<br />
The final question that must be considered is where this situation leaves architecture's relation to philosophy. Again, it may be that the ultimate point of connection is that both work to conserve. Architecture, in order to endure as itself, must work to house and thus to shelter. What this means is that architecture cannot be conflated with its language--present as architectural images or metaphors within philosophical or theoretical texts; it must have form. Accepting this necessity, architecture's inescapable constraint, need not close down the question of form. Form, however, will always be mediated by the immediate specificity of function. Neither function nor housing nor shelter can be raised as though they exist in themselves. The presentation of function --its being housed in a certain way--is always inscribed within a network, of values and relations of power. This network has a mediating connection to form, since it will always come to be articulated by the form itself. In other words what is at work here is the complex interconnexion that conserves architecture--allows for the repetition of its telos --while accounting for the form of its presence. The same presentational procedures also mark the philosophical. A specific conclusion can be drawn from this state of affairs. In taking up architecture from within the self-conserving place of philosophy, and in architecture's own work with philosophy, it is the conflation of practice with language that will need to be examined.