Contingent Excess

Abstract

This “visual essay” was written in response to an invitation to write a thousand word essay accompanied by one image. It addresses the definition, by the author, of architecture as an act of contingent excess. Without disagreeing with George Bataille’s understanding of excess as waste, I argue that, in the case of architecture, the excess displayed in aesthetic elaborations associated with design is not always pointless consumption. Some of this excess is recoupable. The essay examines the manner in which acts of design are in concert with, but work in a different register from, the construction of a material building. It explores how aesthetic economies (contingent excess) are at work in architecture and how legal systems come to codify and legalize proprieties of living embedded in these economies.

Keywords

• architecture
• law
• aesthetics
• contingency
• excess