Diagrammatic Practice

Definition

Diagrammatic practice names the mode of design in which the diagram — not the form, the plan, or the solution — is the operative instrument: a practice that "pursue[s] a proliferating, generating, and open instrumentalization" (Ben van Berkel). In Clay Odom's chapter, the concept has two loads. It names the lineage Odom's method stands in: Ben van Berkel and Caroline Bos's "Interactive Instruments in Operation: Diagrams" (2001) and Stan Allen's "Diagrams Matter" (1998), whose line — "negotiate a field in which the actual and the virtual assume ever more complex configurations" — closes Odom's chapter twice as the practice's horizon. And it names the property of Odom's own method: "As a transformational tool, patterning is a diagrammatic approach that generates possibilities for relating and sequencing form, material, space, and effects… Due to this fundamental diagrammatic state, it is a process untethered to a particular software or fabrication technique… It is inherently digital… and it may also be enacted through purely analogical means."

The diagrammatic is what allows a practice to be both systematic and open-ended: "a diagrammatic practice pursues a proliferating, generating, and open instrumentalization," and "this type of practice generates fundamentally new conditions." In POP terms, the diagram is the device that lets processes "negotiate a field in which the actual and the virtual assume ever more complex configurations" — the produced condition neither predetermined by the diagram nor independent of it. Odom's formula for its spatial work: productions "function through diagrammatic, active entangling of objects and effects through processes," allowing designers "to move fluidly between these processes and outcomes." The concept belongs to the wiki's digital cluster but is not reducible to it: the diagram's instrumentality is exactly what survives translation from parametric modeling to "analogical installation."

Key Thinkers

• Ben van Berkel (with Caroline Bos) — the concept's canonical statement: "a diagrammatic practice pursues a proliferating, generating, and open instrumentalization" ("Interactive Instruments in Operation: Diagrams," in Surroundings Surrounded, 2001) (not yet paged — see log).
• Stan Allen — the philosophical horizon: "Diagrams Matter" (ANY 23, 1998) — "negotiate a field in which the actual and the virtual assume ever more complex configurations" (quoted twice by Odom, closing the chapter) (not yet paged — see log).
• Clay Odom — the interior-practice operationalizer: patterning as "a diagrammatic approach"; diagrammatic "active entangling" as POPs' function ("These productions… function through diagrammatic, active entangling of objects and effects through processes").
• Gilles Deleuze — the ontology beneath Allen's "actual and virtual" formulation (the diagram as possibility-field; via Allen, not paged as a source here).
• Erin Carraher — the adjacent digital-history carrier: Stan Allen's three phases of digital engagement, cited in her chapter — the same Allen lineage Odom uses for diagrams (see digital-architecture).

Related Concepts

• patterning — Odom's method, "a diagrammatic approach": the concept's operational realization.
• productions — what diagrammatic practice generates: "fundamentally new conditions" — productions as the diagram's output.
• production-oriented-practices — the practices that work through "diagrammatic, active entangling of objects and effects."
• heterogeneous-space — the spatial order diagrammatic practice produces (the actual/virtual field against modernist homogeneous space).
• emergence — the openness the diagram preserves: "the emergent conditions" are what a diagram generates beyond its prefiguration ("both pre-figured and emergent situations," in Odom's Tesseract text).

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• Productions: spatial practices, processes, and effects (Odom 2018) — the concept's wiki source: van Berkel's "proliferating, generating, and open instrumentalization"; Allen's actual/virtual field (quoted twice); the software-agnostic thesis ("untethered to a particular software or fabrication technique… inherently digital… may also be enacted through purely analogical means"); and "diagrammatic, active entangling" as POPs' mode of function.

Open Questions

• Allen's "actual and virtual" field is Deleuzian; Odom's deployment is methodological (a tool for relating form, material, space, effects). Does the diagram's Deleuzian ontology survive its design-method domestication?
• "Open instrumentalization" — can an instrument be open? The phrase suggests the diagram is a means whose ends proliferate; but every POP diagram still "includes material technical components and the organization of these components." Is diagrammatic practice a genuine openness or an instrument with flexible outputs?
• The wiki carries diagrammatic practice twice (Carraher's Allen phases, Odom's van Berkel/Allen): is the diagram the digital cluster's lost ancestor — the concept that links parametricism, patterning, and heterogeneous space into one lineage?