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The ligature Æ structurally binds the letters A & E, and is herein used to symbolically unify the study of ARCHITECTURE [A] with ELECTRICITY [E].
Specifically, Æ represents a new paradigm of ARCHITECTURAL understanding, an ARCHITECTURE OF ELECTRICITY, which displays the following qualities:
As a new 'way of seeing' the concept Æ will need to be thoroughly debated with reason and logic both inside and outside of ARCHITECTURAL institutions for its legitimation as a common sense REALITY. (0.01n) Still, there may be disagreement and opposition by individuals which will need to be overcome so as to institute the new paradigm of knowledge, because Æ may at first appear to be an irrational cognition: "The basic assumption is that two or more cognitions should "fit" together, be consonant, and if they are not consonant, and not irrelevant, they will be dissonant. Dissonant cognitions are considered to be uncomfortable and to cause psychological tension. In order to reduce this tension, a person may take a number of actions in order to change [his|her] cognitive structure and to reduce or eliminate the dissonance between cognitions. One way for an individual to change [his|her] cognitive structure is to change [his|her] perception of certain events in reality." (0.1) If successfully reasoned, the cognitive dissonance of the ARCHITECTURE OF ELECTRICITY will be eliminated by a vital change in perspective. This radical new vantage will enable a seemingly irrational concept to be assimilated as new knowledge by individuals and institutions, similar to Foucault's Archaeology of Knowledge, Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals, and Benedikt's Architecture of Reality. Towards Æ, then, is a way of enframing the ARCHITECTURAL and ELECTRICAL past, present, and future anew. It can be summarized in a single statement: Like Foucault states, "[t]he threshold of the statement is the threshold of the existence of signs." (0.2) It is critically important that this statement 'makes sense' within the threshold of our daily experience of REALITY... "The statement ... is a function of existence that properly belongs to signs and on the basis of which one may then decide, through analysis or intuition, whether or not they 'make sense', according to what rule they follow one another or are juxtaposed, of what they are the sign, and what sort of act is carried out by their formulation... [A statement is] a function that cuts across a domain of structures and possible unities, and which reveals them, with concrete contents, in time and space." (0.3) Thus, to understand the ARCHITECTURE OF ELECTRICITY in detail, we need to rationalize the ELECTRICAL INFRASTRUCTURE as ARCHITECTURE in the past, present, and future. To do this, we will need to combine archaeological interpretation with ARCHITECTURAL knowledge in a 'discursive practice' so as to analyze ELECTRICAL ARTIFACTs and their ASSEMBLAGEs in terms of an evolving ELECTRICAL CIVILIZATION in built form. (0.4n) 
This discursive analysis of Æ allows us to "see" a specific derivation of the shared interconnection between ARCHITECTURE and ELECTRICITY extended in the form of the ELECTRICAL INFRASTRUCTURE, as Foucault states:
"One can thus describe a tree of enunciative derivation: at its base are the statements that put into operation rules of formation in their most extended form; at its summit, and after a number of branchings, are the statements that put into operation the same regularity, but one more delicately articulated, more clearly delimited and localized in its extension." (0.5) Using this experimental archaeological ARCHITECTURE to understand and "write" Æ, we will outline our method, deconstruct significant ARCHITECTURAL texts, and offer a comparison between the TRADITIONAL ORDER and the ELECTRICAL ORDER, which posits the ELECTRICAL INFRASTRUCTURE as an 'extension of antiquity'. The ARCHITECTURE OF ELECTRICITY [Æ] thus ultimately deciphers the ELECTRICAL code in ARCHITECTURAL terms. |
