The fragmentary essays embody a series of ideas and short reflections about a group of terms and concepts frequently used by architects, and they constitute a first and tentative effort to explore a future territory of disciplinary research. The word "fragmentary" has an ambivalent meaning: on the one hand it represents the open and even autonomous character of each essay as an independent entity, and on the other hand, it allows rethinking a kind of dialectic articulation, a conceptual assemblage of heterogeneous and even opposite ideas. The word "essay" has a hybrid connotation: it is a combination of texts and images, a graphic interface of ideas in continuous association, a critical device in permanent evolution.