Considering how much work has gone into the study of diagrams in architecture, the
place of diagrams within architectural theory and practice still remains somewhat
allusive. After all what relation do they have to sketches, plans or elevations? Or is it not
so much the single diagram but the linkages that they engender, linkages that mark the
teleological nature of architecture itself? Is it not the architectonic quality of diagrams
that invites readers to think of them as related to cosmology as early as Plato’s Timaeus?
But while intellectual ground may be found for diagrams in antiquity, far more practiced
terrain for approaching diagrams in architecture comes from strategies that would
emphasize the place of diagrams within architectural design. Diagrams are not
hermeneutical in a strict sense but heuristic because they are accompanied by an
expectation that they participate in a process that turns words and experience into
structure. Diagrams engage not simply an horizon of understanding but a terrain in which
structures literally appear in the world. If we are to think about diagrams closely, we
must do more than simply mark their presence. Instead we should register their cognitive
significance as they direct work and establish networks of relationships between multiple
symbolic fields. Diagrams are important and indeed so much so that rather than drifting