Concrete curves: architectural curvilinearity, Descartes’ <i>Géométrie</i> , Leibniz's calculus and Eero Saarinen's TWA terminal
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Since the 1990s, analyses of architectural curvilinearity have drawn upon Gilles Deleuze's The Fold, a philosophical consideration of the Baroque in terms of Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz's calculus and theory of matter. Deleuze's analogy between a curvilinear aesthetic and Leibniz's conception of curvature and matter as forces has influenced investigations of both Baroque and contemporary architecture. I argue that architectural curvilinearity can also be understood in terms of another mathematical conception of curves – namely, René Descartes’ geometric representation of curvature. Like Leibniz, Descartes’ understanding of mathematical curvature resembles his theory of matter. I examine how Eero Saarinen's TWA terminal, a Baroque-inspired building, can be considered in terms of Leibniz's notion of curves and matter as forces as well as Descartes’ conception of curves and matter as extensions in space. This paper offers a new understanding of how Deleuze's ideas in The Fold are applicable to investigations of architecture.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.016 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.006 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".