The structural approach in Gothic architecture is slightly different from the classical architecture. Here walls and roofs are fluently connected, columns and beams are melted throughout the space and the diagram of forces is expressed in the interiority through materialisation into deep ornament, while exteriority is the skin wrapping the bones, and the bones coming into the forefront as pulled from the gravity. Similar renderings we find in the Baroque Architecture, even stronger and more articulated. Baroque is a European style of architecture of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It was based upon the transformation of classical forms with an inventive use of space and decoration. It was characterised by ornate detail, exuberant curvaceous decoration and grand sweeping gestures with spatially complex compositions. Examples of Baroque architecture include the façade in St Peter’s Basilica in Rome and the Palace of Versailles.39 Many architects recently are following Baroque spatial sequences and structures as a starting point to design complex, interwoven systems where form is flowing into the structure and ornament is melting into space and structure as a mediator, exuberant and expressive. Certain new Postmodern architecture theories developed after Deleuze’s text on the ‘Fold, Leibniz and Baroque’ are articulating a new metaphysical and ontological characterisation of space. These new theories are concerned with the dynamic, interactive, multimedia, flexible, ephemeral, event- and process-based methods of designing and experiencing space.40 We find quite relevant for our writing to explore briefly the Baroque architecture under the Deleuze’s Fold and latter on through the Semper’s Bekleidungsprinzip i. Baroque Fold – a Philosophical approach The Baroque Fold tends to liberate form from the usual constrains, where surface is not merely consisting a rational structure but in a form of textile gives; fluidity, stiffness, association, differentiation, movement, and gravity defeating – an antithesis of architectural support. Deleuze's work may be the first and most daring venture to take the Baroque, in the specific figure of the fold, through the history of art, science, costume, mathematics, lyric, and philosophy.41 Deleuze defines the Baroque Fold in two ways, two stages or floors: the pleats of matter, and the folds in the soul.
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Gavin Ambrose, Paul Harris & Sally Stone ‘The Visual Dictionary of Architecture’ AVA Publishing, 2008, p57 Garcia, Mark, 2009: ‘Prologue for a History, Theory and Future of Patterns of Architecture and Spatial Design’ AD Vol 79/6, p17 41 Deleuze, Gilles ‘The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque’ London, 1993, p9 40
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