The diagram . . . never functions in order to represent a persisting world but produces a new kind of reality - taking Deleuze as his point of reference, Robert Somol believes that against the preoccupation with issues of representation and image over the last forty years, professional organizations and publications along with various educational institutions and academics have recently come to call for a return to the real. This has been variously defined as a return to marketable office skills, to essential typologies, to a 1:1 craft ethic of making, to building tectonics, to the everyday, or to a presumably stable referent such as the community or the environment. Somol suggest that for contemporary neo-avantgarde practices the diagram has now achieved the status of the defining trait of the architectural discipline which had, since the Renaissance, been reserved for drawing. Robert Somol is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Architecture and Urban Design at the University of California, Los Angeles where he teaches design studios and seminars and is also a partner in the architecture office PXS.