What happens when we reduce architecture to the logic of representation? This question is set in perspective by the recent re-emergence of certain discourses in architecture that see the world in terms of style, and that privilege the appearance and form of a design over its performance and the processes that generate it. This in turn is being fed by certain digital platorms that encourage the user to see the world solely in visual terms. The issue comes to a head with the practce of zooming in and out on the computer screen, a practce that helps architects to operate seemingly effortlessly at a range of different scales, from jewelry through to the city, but is not without its problems. This paper looks first at the challenges of operatng at different scales by drawing on insights from the world of biology, and considers the performance-based issues being overlooked in this process of zooming in and out. It then goes on to theorize the problem by drawing upon the distnction between extensive and intensive propertes as promoted by Manuel DeLanda following the work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guatari, and considers the relevance of this distnction for architectural design. The paper concludes that we can never escape representation, but by focusing solely on it at the expense of performance - and vice versa - we are overlooking an important factor that defines architecture.
