Are We So Sure It's Not Architecture?

This essay deals with the question as to whether architecture pre-exists its representations. The tension between architecture and what Marshal McLuhan shows is the dominant framework of Western thought - the pervasiveness of a linear, typographic way of thinking - is explicated, and the position of the architectural book, its avant-garde possibilities and the relation to the new electric spaces of information is discussed. The conclusion is drawn that if we are fully to take into account the coolness (in McLuhan's terms) of architecture, then this requires an overturning of the notion of representation within architectural discourse.