Architecture, Emergence, Order

n response to Manuel DeLanda's “Emergence, Causality and Realism”, this essay discusses the relation between causes, and the telos , or right and good end of architecture and of the city. It takes as an historical exemplar Aristotle's understanding of the relation between causes, ends and emergence, or entelechy. The role of architecture as defining the conditions in which emergence can be represented is explored in relation to our inheritance of ancient Near Eastern creation mythologies. Here, architecture is pressed into service as the immanent representation of a transcendent and reciprocal order. In subsequent narratives of the heavenly city, as in the Temple of Marduk, or in the architectural vision of Ezekiel, emergent possibilities are cast as revelation, where ends and origins become conflated in architectural representation