Cornell Journal of Architecture 10

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. That 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 personified. From Genius Loci to Zeitgeist, the figure
of the spirit is perhaps the most fundamental component of architecture,
even before walls or columns. Whether phenomenal or conceptual, without
this flickering 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. The
digital, as architecture's alternate and now flickering specter, skirmishes with
architecture's existing ghosts.