The Social Consequence of Geometry: Igor Siddiqui’s New Book on Claude Parent and his Theories of Obliqueness

Why Claude Parent, and why now?  

Igor Siddiqui: Interest in Parent’s 1960s oblique architecture, mainly the period of his collaboration with the theorist Paul Virilio, was first revived in the 1990s when a new generation of experimental architects rediscovered his work as a precursor to their own formal and conceptual preoccupations. More than 30 years later, this constructed lineage between Parent and contemporary architecture continues to be reiterated primarily through formal affinities and resemblance. My intuition was that we can get more from Parent’s work today than nonorthogonal geometries and life on sloped floors. As it turns out, we indeed can!  

As I argue, obliqueness is a theory of not only form but, more broadly, of experimental practice — especially as an approach to overcoming obstacles, making new connections, and taking detours in order to realize ambitious goals. In our age of profound uncertainty, we can all use inspiration for how to experiment against the odds. Parent models a way of exploring radical ideas, not only about architecture, but about how we are to live in the context of the everyday.  

Share more about your interest in the cultural significance of geometry.  

The central claim of Parent and Virilio’s theory of obliqueness was that the geometry of architectural form has social consequences. By tilting the geometry of the ground, people would relate to themselves, one another, and their surroundings differently than if the angle were straight. What is significant about Parent’s installations is not necessarily how they materialize this premise, but how they are an outcome of his realization that what these geometries do to people is not up to him, but up to them. This is what makes the installations experimental: They were used as instruments for generating evidence in relation to a hypothesis.  

The question at the start and end of the book is “What if everything straight were oblique?” Here, I introduce the possibility that Parent’s work, and historical precedents in general, are always open to new interpretations.  

How do you feel this book expands your other practices?  

This book has expanded how I practice both in terms of methods and output. The notion that interiority is generated by the ground rather than by enclosure has driven my preoccupation with interiors in new directions. Parent’s work has inspired me to articulate something I have always intuited about experimental practice: For a practice to be experimental, it needs to be driven by motives that go beyond fulfilling a project’s given objectives. There has to be something else to figure out, explore or produce that is in excess of doing a “good job.” This, to me, is obliqueness.  

How can archival research empower the next generation of designers?  

When Parent first developed the oblique function with Paul Virilio, they claimed it was something entirely unprecedented — a rupture from the world as they knew it. After the two split, Parent changed his tune. He claimed that the oblique function had always already existed, referring to the act of retroactively constructing the lineage of his work as “the archaeology of the future.” This shift in attitude is the moment when the book’s narrative starts.  

I also draw upon the work of other scholars, like architecture historian Beatriz Colomina, who tells us that manifestoes are written by rewriting other manifestoes. What is in the archives is material, and it has yet to generate possibilities for the future. In trading my usual workspace for the archives, I became aware of how powerful this realization is for a designer, and I hope that design education can do a better job of connecting these spaces for the benefit of students.