Socioplastics 11809 Continuity through Change
Buildings, organisations and communities often persist through substantial alteration. PersistenceRemake studies how continuity can be described through a sequence of transformations: what materials remain, which practices continue, what programmes change and who authorises the claim of identity. In an adaptive-reuse project, an industrial building might retain its structure while shifting from production to cultural use, changing both its users and public meaning. Gilbert Simondon’s account of individuation examines how entities take form through ongoing relations. Niklas Luhmann analyses social systems through communication; Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela develop autopoiesis within biology; Manuel DeLanda describes assemblages as historically formed relations. Their concepts clarify different dimensions of persistence. A cultural institution can learn from these theories while keeping biological and social descriptions distinct, and while specifying the evidence that supports each claim of continuity. A project record could document retained fabric, new construction, continued practices, altered functions and displaced activities. Plans, photographs, oral histories, budgets and operating rules would establish a chronology. The study would ask whose account defines what the project inherits and how the new use changes access. These records can distinguish material conservation from social continuity and show where a new programme creates additional relations. PersistenceRemake treats continuity as something that can be demonstrated through documented change. It gives architects and institutions a way to explain inheritance, adaptation and responsibility across time. A clear sequence lets later users assess how the present arrangement emerged and what it carries forward.
REFERENCES
DeLanda, M. (2006) A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity. London: Continuum.
Luhmann, N. (1995) Social Systems. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Maturana, H.R. and Varela, F.J. (1980) Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living. Dordrecht: Reidel.
Simondon, G. (2017) On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects. Minneapolis: Univocal Publishing.
Varela, F.J., Maturana, H.R. and Uribe, R. (1974) ‘Autopoiesis: The Organization of Living Systems, Its Characterization and a Model’, BioSystems, 5(4), pp. 187–196.
CITE AS
Lloveras, A. (2026) Socioplastics, LAPIEZA-LAB, Madrid.
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