When looking at the ten projects in Condemned Building, each of them comes with a design idea that Darden called "Dis/continuous Genealogy." This is where he takes four to six images that he finds embody the ideas and mechanisms that are inspirational to him, and he overlays them all into an ideogram. Above we see the four images he selects for Confessional, and below is the ideogram created from them.
Confessional ideogram, from project file
For some projects it seems rather contrived. Other projects it seems very legitimate. Others are a toss-up. In reality, these Dis/continuous Genealogies were made after the project was completed, with the exception of Sex Shop and possibly Oxygen House. Some were made years after the project was complete, such as Saloon for Jesse James and Museum of Impostors. Sex Shop's ideogram was created for the publication of Condemned Building, even though he had done no work on the project, hence its absence from the book. Oxygen House, as best as I can determine, may have actually been created while Darden was working on the design. The earliest sketch I find for Oxygen House is in March 1988, almost two years before he completed it, indicated the idea for Oxygen House was maturating in his head long before producing it. He would create three other projects in the interim of producing Oxygen House. However, there are early sketches and notes for the idea of Condemned Building that date to mid-1988, indicating that he had the idea to produce the book five years before publication. This also appears to be around the time when he develops the idea of doing his Dis/continuous Genealogies.
Darden appears to have gotten the idea of the Dis/continuous Genealogies from his friend Ben Ledbetter. Ledbetter describes in his blog of a time when he and Darden were discussing the basic principle of doing these ideograms, in which Ledbetter wanted to call them "archaeologies," whereas Darden preferred "genealogies," and later "discontinuous genealogies." This is probably around the time that Darden gives a lecture at the New Jersey Institute of Technology called "Genealogy/Ideology" delivered in April 1987 (I have looked extensively through the project files and have not been able to find a copy of the lecture, but the timeline seems appropriate). The whole idea of Dis/continuous Genealogy is reminiscent of Marcel Duchamp's idea of "archaeology of knowledge," in which the sources of inspiration are concealed by the artist. Philippe Duboy speaks of Marcel's "archaeology of knowledge" in his work LeQueu: An Architectural Enigma, published in 1987, and may have been the starting point for this whole concept, as Darden was very fond of this book.
Let us break this down. The term "archaeology" implies that historical things, human evidence got covered up and need to be uncovered to understand where things are today. That is a bit oversimplified, but it fits our understanding of Duchamp, Ledbetter, and Darden. For Duchamp, it means he covered up his inspirations and ideas, and through archaeology we can find the original evidence of his works. In a way, for Duchamp, it is not "archaeology of knowledge," but "burying of knowledge," and it is the viewer that will be the archaeologist. For Ledbetter and Darden, it is the use of inspiring images composited to produce an ideogram that becomes the process of "burying knowledge," and through intense analysis of the project, and even the prestigious position of being able to view the project files, that the archaeology can begin. However, Darden recognizes that design is a process with iterations of ideas and forms, much like evolution, or more appropriately "genealogy." So these inspiring images are family members on a family tree that yield the ideogram. By adding "dis/continuous" to this term, Darden is implying that there is a continuity, but also a discontinuity; that it is a part of the design process and narrative, but irrelevant of the active design process that produces the final product.
However, we should not dismiss the Dis/continuous Genealogies as mere afterthoughts. Just because they were created after the project was completed does not mean they do not hold value. It is always dangerous to tell people that the Dis/continuous Genealogies were developed after the project, because then they are seen as being a lie, a cover-up, a total contrivance that should be dismissed. This could not be further from the truth.
The Dis/continuous Genealogies are equally a part of a the narrative Darden builds around his projects as the letter from the client in Oxygen House, the doctor-patient conversation in Clinic for Sleep Disorders, et cetera. When Darden provides additional materials for his projects, they contribute to a narrative he is building. The drawings and photographs of the models (photographed at a great distance with a telescopic lens to make them appear as orthographic as possible) are the direct representations of the design. The texts, letters, descriptions, and diagrams, even the Dis/continuous Genealogies, contribute to the narrative he is building for the project. So even though most of them were created post facto, they still give us insight into Darden's thought process and add color to the project.
There are some curious selections for the Dis/continuous Genealogies, some that even seem literally discontinuous. For instance, in Temple Forgetful, the Colosseum seems to have had an impact, especially given that the site plan is enlarged to include it (see my previous post on this), yet it is not included as one of the images, but it is for Night School's Dis/continuous Genealogy. None of these images are inappropriate, as they embody ideas in the design or in the literary sources that inspire the design. For instance, Melvilla includes an Iroquois meeting hut and an Iroquois hand loom, both of which are appropriate for Queequeg, the indigenous islander Ishmael becomes best friends with in Moby-Dick.
As I have stated before, it is important to interpret Darden's sources of inspiration through the project and narratives he builds, not the other way around. The Dis/continuous Genealogies are no different. For instance, let us look back at Melvilla, in which he includes the Iroquois meeting hut and an upside-down New England meeting house. He is making a play on Ishmael and Queequeg's friendship, and perhaps may be a homage to something Ishmael says: "Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunk Christian." It could also be a reference to Darden's rejection of his Presbyterian upbringing (something he alludes to in his writing "Confidences of a Spec-Writer"). Obviously, we can keep playing with this.
Needless to say, the Dis/continuous Genealogies are important. Most people do not know they were usually created after the project was finished, but even in knowing this, they cannot be dismissed. They need to be understood as important aspects of the narratives Darden builds.
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