In his recently published article, Christoph Brunner (SP 5) discusses the use and deployment of diagrams in the architectural and urban design practices of Estudio Teddy Cruz. It is part of the edited collection Why Guattari? A Liberation of Cartographies, Ecologies and Politics (Routledge 2019).

Brunner shows how the studio engages in urban development projects at the intersection of social, economic, and material (urban/architectural) dynamics and analyzes the studios’ extensive use of diagrams. He demonstrates that the studio’s diagrammatic urbanism expresses the use of aesthetic strategies coupled with social and political intervention.

By focusing on the studio’s aim of re-conceptualising “trans-border urbanism beyond the property line” (Cruz, 2008), Brunner proposes a shift from the traditional notion of the model towards a progressive practice of emergent metamodelisation. Moving from products to processes, metamodelisation as practice and concept, he argues, allows for further explorations of diagrams as ethico-aesthetic devices in support of emergent forms of translocal activism.

More about the book and the article here.