Differences: Topographies of Contemporary Architecture

Differences brings together ten essays written since the mid-1980s by the Spanish architect and theorist Ignasi de Sola-Morales. Many of the essays have never previously been translated, and the author has provided a new introduction especially for this English edition. Contemplating the panorama of contemporary art and architecture, de Sola-Morales posits that there is no one way to describe today’s practice; instead he concentrates in elucidating the present dynamic of contrast, diversity and tension. In an unorthodox pairing, de Sola-Morales derives his inspriation from both phenomenology and Deleuzean poststructuralism. Combining these philosophical inheritances allows him to reinvoke the human subject without referring to classical humanism or announcing the death of the object. His retrospective review of the disciplines of art and architecture, particularly as they have developed since World War II, provokes him to design, draft and ultimately build a description of modernism’s lineage of subjectivity. The result is a construction of fluid topographies that articulate, rather than depict, the shaky ground on which our current artistic and architectural production rests.