With the more recent proliferation of information technologies into all aspects of our lives, the knowledge of those technologies has been carried back into the architectural profession. At this point, digital design is full embedded into the design practice, revealing the profound impact on the way architectural objects are conceived, iterated, simulated, analyzed, and produced. Computation is increasingly managed by the intensity of calculation where we can produce models that are more and more complex, resulting in our ability to imagine a series of potentials rather than attempt to locate a single idealistic model. The expanding potentiality is also impacted by the fact that for the first time in history, diverse disciplines are all using the same computational platform, which promotes collaborations with nonarchitectural disciplines.
Instabilities and Potentialities is a compilation of dialogues from leading architectural theorists and experimental practitioners, media artists, and engineers revolving around the way information technologies have transformed how we perceive our human environment. The essays address how information technology has influenced three major shifts in the was we approach architecture: from an abstract mode of codification to the formation of its image; the informed object from fixed entity to statistical model; and the increasing porosity of architecture to other fields of knowledge
| Foreword: Gilbert Simondon's Key Points |
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| Introduction: On the Nature of Knowledge in Digital Architecture |
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1 | (10) |
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PART 1 Images: Effect and Affect in the Digital Representation of Architecture |
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11 | (76) |
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1 Episodes in the Emergence of Imaging Practices |
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17 | (16) |
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33 | (7) |
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40 | (16) |
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4 The Line, the Drawing, and the Model |
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56 | (9) |
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5 Qualitative Spaces → Spatial Operating Environments |
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65 | (9) |
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74 | (13) |
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PART 2 Objects: Topological Evolution of the Architectural Entity |
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87 | (76) |
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7 In Medias Res: Atmospheres and Hauntings |
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91 | (14) |
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8 In Pursuit of Novel Form: Super Light |
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105 | (10) |
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115 | (10) |
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10 Objects: Technology, Technique, Techne: Creation vs. Contingency in Computational Design |
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125 | (11) |
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11 Post-Digital as Design Authorship: In Informed Material Processes |
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136 | (14) |
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12 Mapping in the Age of Electronic Shadows |
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150 | (13) |
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PART 3 Discipline: Transdisciplinarity and Potentialities |
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163 | (58) |
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13 Machines in Architecture: From Performance to Accident: A Modern Trope and Its Afterlife |
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169 | (7) |
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14 Design Outside of the Frame: A Role of Architects in the Era of Artificial Intelligence |
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176 | (7) |
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183 | (11) |
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16 Exercises in Style: A Transdisciplinary Discussion |
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194 | (9) |
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17 From an Autopoietic to a Sympoietic Architecture Discipline |
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203 | (6) |
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18 Dissimilar at First Sight: Structural Abstraction and the Promises of Isomorphism in 1960s Architectural Theory |
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209 | (12) |
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221 | (18) |
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19 Digital Fabrication, Between Disruption and Nostalgia |
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223 | (16) |
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| Biographies |
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239 | (6) |
| Acknowledgments |
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245 | (2) |
| Index |
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Chandler Ahrens is an Associate Professor at Washington University in St. Louis as well as a co-founder of Open Source Architecture (OSA), which is an international transdisciplinary collaboration developing research and commissioned projects. His focus is on the intersection of material investigations, environmental phenomena and computational design processes. He was on the board of directors for Association for Computer-Aided Design in Architecture (ACADIA). His work with OSA has received several design awards and is part of the collection at the Fonds Regional dArt Contemporain (FRAC) in Orleans, France. He was a co-curator of the Gen(h)ome Project and co-chair for the exhibition, Evolutive Means, ACADIA2010.
Aaron Sprecher is Associate Professor at the Technion Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning. In parallel, he is co-founder and partner of Open Source Architecture, a collaborative research group that brings together international researchers in the fields of design, engineering, media research, history and theory. Aaron Sprecher taught at Syracuse University School of Architecture and McGill University School of Architecture. His research and design work focus on the synergy between information technologies, computational languages and digital fabrication systems, examining the way in which technology informs and generates innovative approaches to design processes. He currently leads the Material Topology Research Laboratory (MTRL) at the Technion Israel Institute of Technology. He is co-editor of the book Architecture in FormationOn the Nature of Information in Digital Architecture (2013).
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