To invent the sailing ship or the steamer is to invent the shipwreck. To invent the train is to invent the rail accident of derailent. To invent the family automobile is to produce the pile-up on the highway. To get what is heavier than air to take off in the form of an aeroplane or dirigible is to invent the crash, the air disaster.

Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain, and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime; that is, it is productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling.

These performative qualities can be expressed in spatial dimensions or relations, technical devices, or other physical conditions. But when we talk about the machine in architecture, we are not referring merely to a context of production or a normative mechanism; we are also describing a place from which we conceptualise the fundamental connection between the architectural object and the natural, cultural or social processes related to it.

Yet, while the operative qualities of the machine have become part of everyday existence, they remain, in effect, an invisible presence so long as they function. They only become apparent when the infrastructure breaks, when the connection is interrupted, or the comfort is lost.

Crossing a bare common, in snow
puddles, at twilight, under a clouded
sky, without having my thoughts
any occurrence of special good fortune,
I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration.
I am glad to the brink of fear...

I become a transparent eye-ball;
I am nothing; I see all.