The Cornell Journal of Architecture 10

Spirits

Caroline O’Donnell

Issue 10 of the Cornell Journal of Architecture will collect a spectrum of specters from the phenomenal to the digital, and question the role and the possibilities of the spirit in architecture today

In distilling, the small amount of alcohol evaporated during the aging process is known as the angels’ share. at is, while lost to us, the alcohol does not cease to exist, but instead is given to — or taken by — the angels.

Architecture’s own angels’ share—the notion of an absent and intangible other—has too been personi ed. From Genius Loci to Zeitgeist, the gure of the spirit is perhaps the most fundamental component of architecture, even before walls or columns. Whether phenomenal or conceptual, without this ickering spirit, one might say, there is no architecture. As technology enables the virtual realm to be inhabited in more everyday ways, the notion of another kind of spirit becomes more present yet more blurred. e digital, as architecture’s alternate and now ickering specter, skirmishes with architecture’s existing ghosts.