08 La Universidad Torcuato Di Tella es una institución sin fines de lucro fundada en 1991, hered- era del espíritu innovador industrial de la fábrica SIAM Di Tella (1910) y de la visión artística y social de vanguardia del Instituto Torcuato Di Tella (1958). Su misión es la formación de las nuevas generaciones empresariales, políticas, aca- démicas, sociales y artísticas de nuestro país y la producción de conocimiento básico y aplicado, en el marco de la excelencia aca- démica, el pluralismo de ideas y la igualdad de oportunidades. Rector: Ernesto Schargrodsky Ph. D. in Economics Harvard University Vicerrectora: Catalina Smulovitz Ph.D. in Political Science The Pennsylvania State University Universidad Torcuato Di Tella Escuela de Arquitectura y Estudios Urbanos Campus Alcorta Avenida Figueroa Alcorta 7350 Sáenz Valiente 1010 Ciudad de Buenos Aires Argentina ISSN 2314 - 3029 ARCHIVOS DE ARQUITECTURA 08 SYMMETRY Archivos de Arquitectura 08 Escuela de Arquitectura y Estudios Urbanos Universidad Torcuato Di Tella Symmetry The One and the Many Author David Salomon Edition Santiago Miret Models Andrew Pringle Sattui This number has a prologue by Ciro Najle “Playing Dumb, or the Power of Indifference,” followed by the text “Theory´s Hardware” by Julián Varas, and the essay “The One and the Many” by David Salomon. The material is organized in twelve chapters corresponding to the semi- nar classes dictated by David Salomon in 2015. Each chapter includes a drawing by Andrew Pringle Sattui that structures the organization of symmetry across case studies. The epilogues “Never Even” by Manuel Mensa and “A Symmetrical Story” by Santiago Miret foster relation- ships with a re-contextualization and direct instrumentalization of symmetry. Symmetry is the coolest and most gracefully effortless, and probably the most effective way to deal with unnecessary difference in a world where worthlessness has become currency, comfort zone, cliché, and commodity. Symmetry turns the inherent impoverishment of the value of difference upside down by reducing it and constructing higher levels of intelligence and beauty with its absence. Symmetry is the means to sharpen difference through sameness, distilling traits and individuations out of the general indifference resulting of the addiction to difference for the sake of it. Symmetry is a resource to the power of indifference, an aggressive cultural form that generates difference in kind by eroding from within the lowest degree of difference: that which makes no difference. Symmetry dries out lagoons and secures knowledge. It is a breach opened up in the midst of the nothingness of fullness. Symmetry speaks unheard of voices and creates little cores of significance across the mute continuum of difference. It is the spoken word that both murmurs and shouts out new forms of language, the ultimate means for meaningful suspensions, the resonance box that neutralizes irrelevance, the sweet revenge of oneness in the sea of multiplicities, the fold by which indifference turns into its opposite: singularity.