Lecture by Vera Bühlmann, an an introduction to the background issues to Michel Serres’ Text “The Origins of Geometry”. Why is geometry so fundamental to our thinking? What does it mean to our CAAD problematics on finding solutions that cannot be drawn?

The origin of geometry itself, so Serres claims, was of a double nature: Using figures, schemas, and diagrams on the one hand, and using letters, words, and sentences of the system, organized by their own semantics and syntax on the other hand. Geometry is seen by Serres as a double system which represents itself and expresses itself, one by the other. Different schools of thought in different times have liked to privilege the narratives and legends over the proofs or figures, words and formulas – or the other way around. Thus our current problematics of how to deal with our possibility in CAAD to design by scripting first, and then render the design into geometrical concreteness second, is thus as ancient as the origin of geometry itself. The question for us to focus on can thus not be how to close this constitutive gap. Our focus needs to address how to refine, how to differentiate and cultivate the abundant potentials that spring form the “horn of plenty,” as which Serres characterizes geometry in its mediating role between narratives and numbers.

slides: architectonics& mediality& web pdf

Listen to the lecture here: part3