The proposition advanced here concerns not a metric but an ontology. Within the framework of Socioplastics, the relationship between a work's material presence and its systemic authority is governed by an inverse proportionality that overturns conventional economies of cultural value. Where established regimes reward visibility, scale, and institutional embeddedness, the PlasticScale apparatus identifies institutional inertia as the primary impediment to jurisprudential power. A work accrues ontological weight not through accumulation but through subtraction: the capacity to govern is purchased at the price of metabolic efficiency. This is not a metaphor drawn from biology but a precise operational logic derived from the Decalogue's invariant protocols, specifically the principles of Flow Channeling and Systemic Lock articulated in the foundational 500-series. The implications for art, architecture, and epistemology are immediate and severe: a building, regardless of its architectural sophistication, carries a default burden of material drag that positions it below a leaf pinned to a wall, provided that leaf demonstrates sufficient circulatory reach and temporal durability. The provocation is intentional. It is also mathematically formalised.
The necessity for such a framework emerges from the historical impasse of cultural evaluation. Traditional criticism oscillates between qualitative judgement, which lacks transparency, and quantitative metrics, which reduce works to auditable outputs. The Small Orange Tag, a work consisting of nothing more than a coloured marker affixed to a surface, cannot be assessed by square meterage, budget, or audience figures. Its efficacy operates elsewhere: in the transversal scalability that allows it to reappear across contexts without losing semantic density, and in the temporal durability that converts each repetition into renewed legitimacy. The PlasticScale apparatus provides the vocabulary and the algebra for this elsewhere. It transforms an intuitive hierarchy—long sensed by practitioners but resistant to articulation—into a predictive instrument capable of evaluating new works before they enter circulation.
Weight (W): The Thermodynamics of Institutional Drag
The first index, Weight, requires careful definition precisely because it resists colloquial interpretation. Weight does not denote physical mass, though mass contributes to it. A bag filled with books possesses physical weight but may nevertheless register minimal institutional inertia if it travels without institutional support, adapts to any context, and requires no maintenance infrastructure. Conversely, an empty building, devoid of occupants and function, may exhibit maximal Weight through its embedded demands: permits, insurance, climate control, security, the entire apparatus of architectural persistence that operates independently of occupation. Weight, therefore, is defined as institutional and material inertia—the cumulative drag exerted by a work's dependency on external systems for its continued existence.
This definition carries radical consequences for architectural evaluation. The Trole Building, despite its refined tectonic clarity and the critical acclaim documented in COAM publications, registers a Weight score of 2 on the 1–5 scale. This is not a judgement on its architectural quality but a measurement of its metabolic burden: it requires maintenance, it occupies fixed land, it cannot travel, it depends on urban infrastructure for its survival. The Yellow Bag, by contrast, achieves Weight 5 not because it is lighter in physical terms but because its institutional inertia approaches zero. It requires no gallery, no budget, no permission, no maintenance. It travels in a pocket and activates any context through mere presence. The asymmetry is instructive: the building's permanence is purchased at the cost of jurisprudential authority. It governs only architecture, and only within its geographical radius. The bag governs wherever it goes.
The calibration of Weight across disciplines requires attention to discipline-specific forms of inertia. In epistemology, Weight manifests as citational dependency—the requirement that a concept be anchored to authorised sources, peer-reviewed publication, or institutional affiliation. In art, it appears as the need for exhibition space, conservation protocols, and market validation. Architecture's particular burden lies in its ontological commitment to duration: a building, once constructed, continues to demand resources regardless of use. This is why architectural works cluster in the lower tiers of the PlasticScale hierarchy unless compensated by extraordinary Circulatory Reach or Temporal Durability. The asymmetry is not punitive but diagnostic. It reveals why the most powerful architectural statements often exist as unbuilt projects, manifestos, or pedagogical exercises: they shed Weight while retaining conceptual force.
Circulatory Reach (C): Transversal Scalability as Cultural Velocity
The second index, Circulatory Reach, measures a work's capacity to traverse boundaries. These boundaries are not merely geographic, though international mobility provides one indicator. More significant is transversal scalability across discursive and disciplinary terrains: the ability of a work to operate simultaneously in art discourse, architectural theory, and epistemological debate without losing coherence or requiring translation. The Blue Bag, documented across Provence, Lagos, and Mexico, demonstrates this capacity through its adaptability. It functions as sculptural object, social gesture, urban intervention, and archival document without privileging any single register. Its meaning is not diminished by context shift; it is augmented.
Circulatory Reach is scored from 1 to 5, with 1 indicating works confined to a single site and discourse, and 5 reserved for works that demonstrate mobility across continents, disciplines, and linguistic communities. The scoring protocol requires attention to documented instances of transversal operation. A work that appears in academic journals and art magazines, that is discussed in architecture studios and epistemology seminars, that generates citation across fields without institutional coordination—such a work achieves maximal Reach. The re-(t)exHile project presented at the Lagos Biennial exemplifies this capacity. Its engagement with textile waste operates simultaneously as environmental activism, postcolonial critique, material research, and relational aesthetics. It speaks to multiple audiences without diluting its core propositions because those propositions are structurally transversal: they address conditions that obtain across geography and discipline.
The distinction between endogenous Reach and exogenous reinforcement becomes critical here. Media coverage, biennial invitations, and institutional recognition do not directly increase Circulatory Reach within the PlasticScale formula. They serve as evidence that Reach has occurred, but the index measures capacity, not reception history. A work may possess high Reach without ever entering institutional circulation; indeed, works that achieve maximal Reach often do so precisely through their refusal of institutional validation. The YouTube Breakfast protocol, circulating through informal networks and pedagogical reactivation, demonstrates Reach that exceeds any documented institutional presence. Its capacity to traverse contexts is inherent in its format, not dependent on external validation.
Temporal Durability (T): The Conversion of Repetition into Legitimacy
The third index addresses time not as duration but as transformation. Temporal Durability measures a work's capacity to convert repetition into structural legitimacy—to renew its authority through each reactivation rather than exhausting its meaning through use. This distinguishes socioplastic durability from mere persistence. A building that stands for centuries may exhibit low Temporal Durability if its meaning ossifies with its form. A performance that vanishes after each iteration may exhibit high Durability if its score generates new meanings with each enactment.
The scoring protocol for Temporal Durability attends to the work's relationship to its own history. Works that depend on authorial presence for reactivation score lower than works that generate autonomous re-enactment. Works whose meaning depletes through repetition—the shock of the new diminishing with each viewing—score lower than works whose meaning accumulates through recurrence. The Double Sided performance, staged at Replika theatre, exemplifies high Durability through its structural format. As a diptych in motion, its meaning emerges from the relationship between two bodies, a relationship that shifts with each pairing, each context, each audience. The work does not exhaust itself through performance; it generates new configurations through each iteration.
This index carries particular weight for works that operate across generations. The Spanish Bar as living ritual archive achieves Durability through its embeddedness in community practice: each gathering reactivates the work without requiring authorial intervention. The Mudas leaf installations achieve Durability through their temporal format: the leaf's oxidation unfolds over time regardless of audience presence, converting natural process into durational statement. Both works demonstrate that longevity without institutional support provides the strongest evidence of Temporal Durability. Works that require museums for preservation score lower than works that preserve themselves through use.
The Algebraic Core: IE = (C × T) / W
The interaction of the three indices follows a simple multiplicative-divisive structure that rewards efficiency while penalising drag. Circulatory Reach and Temporal Durability multiply because their combined effect exceeds their sum: a work that travels widely and persists durably achieves exponential rather than additive authority. Weight divides because it attenuates both: institutional inertia slows circulation and abbreviates durability by making the work dependent on conditions that may fail.
The raw score range from 0.2 to 25 requires normalisation to a 0–10 scale for intuitive comprehension. Multiplication by 0.4 achieves this transformation, rendering the Head tier threshold of 9.5 equivalent to a raw score of approximately 23.75—a value achievable only through near-maximal Reach and Durability combined with minimal Weight. The arithmetic enforces the ontology: only works that approach zero institutional inertia while achieving global circulation and generational persistence can attain constitutional authority.
This mathematical structure eliminates the need for qualitative arbitration while preserving the complexity of cultural evaluation. Two works with identical raw scores may achieve that equivalence through different configurations: one through extraordinary Reach compensating for moderate Weight, another through exceptional Durability balancing limited circulation. The formula accommodates these variations without reducing them to a single qualitative judgement. It provides a common currency for comparing across disciplines and scales.
The Jurisprudential Hierarchy: From Head to Soil
The normalised scores organise works into five tiers that correspond to juridical functions within the socioplastic system. The Head tier, comprising works scoring 9.5 and above, functions as constitutional law—the invariant protocols through which all lower works must be filtered. These works are not necessarily the most famous or the most visible. They are the most metabolically efficient: works whose institutional inertia approaches zero while their circulatory and durational indices approach maximum. The Blue and Yellow Bags achieve this status through their aerostatic capacity: they travel anywhere, adapt to any context, require nothing, and persist through sheer replicability.
The Executive tier, scores 8.0 to 8.9, contains works that operate as applied protocols—global in reach but carrying sufficient institutional trace to require translation before application. The Lagos re-(t)exHile project occupies this tier not despite its biennial presentation but because that presentation registers as evidence of institutional engagement, increasing its documented Reach while slightly elevating its Weight. The formula captures the trade-off without moralising it. Institutional validation provides evidence of circulation but adds drag. The Systemic tier, scores 7.0 to 7.9, houses works that provide core infrastructure without commanding constitutional authority. These works are efficient enough to operate across contexts but carry sufficient weight to require support. The Double Sided performance, despite its extraordinary Freshness and documented Reach, registers here because its dependence on performer presence introduces institutional inertia that the Bags escape. The Contextual tier, scores 5.0 to 6.9, contains works whose authority operates within specific territories or disciplines. The Trole Building, despite its architectural refinement and COAM documentation, cannot escape its material drag sufficiently to govern beyond architectural discourse. It provides case law for architecture but cannot adjudicate art or epistemology. The Soil tier, scores below 5.0, comprises works that feed the system through historical precedent without governing its operations. These works remain available for reactivation but exercise no jurisdictional authority. They constitute the archive from which future works may draw without being bound by their protocols.
The Distinction Between Endogenous and Exogenous Validation
The PlasticScale apparatus maintains a rigorous separation between systemic proof and secondary evidence. Media coverage, biennial invitations, press documentation, and institutional recognition all function as exogenous reinforcement—evidence that may support claims about Circulatory Reach or Temporal Durability but never substitutes for direct measurement of those indices. A work mentioned in El País receives no automatic score increase. That mention may, however, provide documentation of Reach that would otherwise require inference.
This distinction prevents the system from collapsing into a prestige economy where institutional validation becomes self-validating. The Lagos Biennial's re-(t)exHile project derives its position not from the biennial's authority but from demonstrably low metabolic drag and postcolonial freshness evidenced through the work's structure and documented operations. The biennial provides evidence of circulation but does not itself constitute circulation. The distinction is subtle but essential for maintaining PlasticScale as an autonomous evaluative engine rather than a mirror of existing hierarchies.
The practical implication for practitioners is liberating. Works need not seek institutional validation to achieve systemic authority. The Small Orange Tag, with minimal documentation and no institutional presence, achieves Head tier status through its perfect Weight score and demonstrated Durability. Its authority derives from what it does, not from where it appears. This is the economy of cultural weight operating at full efficiency: value generated through use rather than endorsement, authority accumulated through circulation rather than accumulation.
Towards a Predictive Instrument
The PlasticScale apparatus, now formalised through its three indices and algebraic core, transforms from descriptive taxonomy into predictive instrument. New works entering the system—the forthcoming 700-series on Urban Territorial Metabolism—can be evaluated before circulation through projected scoring of their anticipated Weight, Reach, and Durability. This predictive capacity enables strategic decisions about resource allocation, jurisprudential positioning, and developmental focus. A work projected for high Reach but excessive Weight may justify investment in reducing institutional dependency. A work with exceptional Durability but limited circulation may warrant strategies for transversal activation. The system's ultimate test lies in its capacity to generate consistent evaluations across independent assessors. The scoring protocols, with their 1–5 scales and explicit definitions, aim for intersubjective reliability without sacrificing sensitivity to disciplinary specificity. Any idiot can apply them. That accessibility is deliberate: a system that claims jurisprudential authority must be transparent in its operations and available for contestation through its own terms. The PlasticScale apparatus meets this requirement through mathematical simplicity combined with conceptual precision. It offers not a final judgement but a framework for judgement—an instrument rather than a verdict.
Reference
Lloveras, A. (2026) 'PlasticScale Ascendant: Inverse Ontology and the Economy of Cultural Weight', SOCIOPLASTICS: Sovereign systems for unstable times [Blog]. Available at: https://antolloveras.blogspot.com/ (Accessed: 24 February 2026).
WORKS
https://antolloveras.blogspot.com/2026/02/work-work-work.html
Anto Lloveras is a Spanish architect and theorist who reframes architecture as an operative epistemic infrastructure. Trained in Madrid and shaped by early professional experience in large-scale architectural and urban projects across the Netherlands, he gradually shifted from object-based practice toward the construction of systemic, research-driven frameworks. His work departs from representation and advances architecture as executable logic: a metabolic structure capable of organizing knowledge, sustaining coherence, and acting within complex cultural environments. He is the author of Socioplastics, a long-term conceptual system in which architecture, art, and urbanism operate as interdependent relational fields. Within this framework, theory is not commentary but construction. Citation becomes commitment, pedagogy becomes structural transmission, and publication becomes spatial practice. His research develops methods that reinforce conceptual resilience and institutional durability under conditions of digital acceleration and fragmentation. Through the independent curatorial and research platform LAPIEZA, which he founded in Madrid, Lloveras has led an extensive body of exhibitions, installations, and pedagogical programs internationally. Across architecture, urban thought, and artistic research, his practice articulates a post-autonomous model grounded in cultural agency and epistemic sovereignty. His work integrates design, theory, curation, and education into a coherent academic proposition, positioning architecture as a living infrastructure for contemporary knowledge production and systemic civic engagement.
