The book is organised into three distinct sections that in turn highlight the significance of spatial intelligence for architecture: the first section provides an overview of spatial intelligence as a human capability; the second section argues how the acknowledgement of this capability in architectural education and the profession should enable the demystification of the practice of design, forming the basis of a more democratic interface between society and practice; the final section explores exciting new opportunities for practice in the linking of real and virtual environments in the information age.
Spatial Intelligence examines public and professional conceptions of the relationships between thinking about spatial attributes and active engagement in spatially related constructions and designs. Even though children’s and adolescents’ spatial propensities in constructive activities parallel the skills needed by professionals in both established and emerging fields, spatial education is often missing from K–12 curricula and is easily impeded by teachers, parents, or other individuals who do not provide contexts in formalized settings, such as schools, to nurture its potential. This book bridges the gap by linking the natural spatial inclinations, interests, and proclivities of individuals from a variety of cultures with professional training and expertise in engineering, architecture, science, and mathematics. Educators will be better able to achieve the skills and awareness necessary to provide children and young adults with the vital opportunities inherent in spatial education.
In the late 1960s the world was faced with impending disaster: the height of the Cold War, the end of oil, and the decline of great cities throughout the world. Out of this crisis came a new generation of thinkers, designers and engineers who hoped to build a better future, influenced by visions of geodesic domes, walking cities, and a meaningful connection with nature. In this brilliant work of cultural history, architect Douglas Murphy traces the lost archeology of the present-day through the works of thinkers and designers such as Buckminster Fuller, the ecological pioneer Stewart Brand, the Archigram architects who envisioned the Plug-In City in the '60s, as well as co-operatives in Vienna, communes in the Californian desert, and protesters on the streets of Paris. In this mind-bending account of the last avant garde, we see not just the source of our current problems but also some powerful alternative futures.
New modes of practice are now emerging in architecture. Rural Studio, Exyzt, Muf, Assemble and many more have led the way by challenging conventional ideas of ‘The Architect' and reclaiming the notion of architecture as something public that should work ultimately towards the collective good. This quiet revolution is born out of a crisis in the profession and a wider vacuum in the political, environmental and economic situation. On the one hand, architecture as a profession has seen its influence diminish rapidly over the last 50 years through privatisation and the dominance of finance, while on the other hand it has also lacked collective courage and readiness to evolve. Without necessarily being aware of each other, studios around the world are now redefining the profession of architecture as something more proactive, self-aware and political. They are broadening their skill sets and becoming deeply involved in their projects, initiating them themselves, financing them and running them. Though much of this work is dealing with local issues at a relatively small scale, it is inherently ambitious with global application. Contributors include: Shumi Bose, Indy Johar, Alison Killing, Douglas Murphy, and Finn Williams Featured architects: Aterlier d’Architecture Autogérée (AAA), adamo-faiden; Baupiloten, Grupo Toma, Hector, Inteligencias Colectivas, raumlaborberlin, studioBASAR, Studio GutGut, Taller Ken, and We Made That.
Architects who engaged with cybernetics, artificial intelligence, and other technologies poured the foundation for digital interactivity. In Architectural Intelligence, Molly Wright Steenson explores the work of four architects in the 1960s and 1970s who incorporated elements of interactivity into their work. Christopher Alexander, Richard Saul Wurman, Cedric Price, and Nicholas Negroponte and the MIT Architecture Machine Group all incorporated technologies—including cybernetics and artificial intelligence—into their work and influenced digital design practices from the late 1980s to the present day. Alexander, long before his famous 1977 book A Pattern Language, used computation and structure to visualize design problems; Wurman popularized the notion of “information architecture”; Price designed some of the first intelligent buildings; and Negroponte experimented with the ways people experience artificial intelligence, even at architectural scale. Steenson investigates how these architects pushed the boundaries of architecture—and how their technological experiments pushed the boundaries of technology. What did computational, cybernetic, and artificial intelligence researchers have to gain by engaging with architects and architectural problems? And what was this new space that emerged within these collaborations? At times, Steenson writes, the architects in this book characterized themselves as anti-architects and their work as anti-architecture. The projects Steenson examines mostly did not result in constructed buildings, but rather in design processes and tools, computer programs, interfaces, digital environments. Alexander, Wurman, Price, and Negroponte laid the foundation for many of our contemporary interactive practices, from information architecture to interaction design, from machine learning to smart cities.
This book offers the first comprehensive overview of alternative approaches to architectural practice. At a time when many commentators are noting that alternative and richer approaches to architectural practice are required if the profession is to flourish, this book provides multiple examples from across the globe of how this has been achieved and how it might be achieved in the future. Particularly pertinent in the current economic climate, this book offers the reader new approaches to architectural practice in a changing world. It makes essential reading for any architect, aspiring or practicing.
What can you do with a degree in architecture? Where might it take you? What kind of challenges could you address? Architects After Architecture reframes architecture as a uniquely versatile way of acting on the world, far beyond that of designing buildings. In this volume, we meet forty practitioners through profiles, case studies, and interviews, who have used their architectural training in new and resourceful ways to tackle the climate crisis, work with refugees, advocate for diversity, start tech companies, become leading museum curators, tackle homelessness, draft public policy, become developers, design videogames, shape public discourse, and much more. Together, they describe a future of architecture that is diverse and engaged, expanding the limits of the discipline, and offering new paths forward in times of crisis. Whether you are an architecture student or a practicing architect considering a change, you’ll find this an encouraging and inspiring read. Please visit the Architects After Architecture website for more information, including future book launches and events: architectsafterarchitecture.com
Presenting diverse case studies of contemporary sustainable urban practice from Europe, Africa, India, South America, the USA and Australia, this book offers the reader a fantastic wealth of practical material from a range of internationally renowned authors. Each practical case study has addressed issues and then offered solutions to implement sustainable cities across a range of urban scales and cultures. Urgent design challenges explored include population density, recreating infrastructure that supports carbon neutral or low carbon (emission) intensive urban activities, and retrofitting for sustainability. Highly illustrated, thematically focused and with superb global coverage, this book presents a multi-voiced and yet highly cohesive reference for anyone interested in green issues in urban design and architecture.
Essays at the intersection of philosophy and architecture explore how we understand and inhabit space. To be outside allows one a fresh perspective on the inside. In these essays, philosopher Elizabeth Grosz explores the ways in which two disciplines that are fundamentally outside each another—architecture and philosophy—can meet in a third space to interact free of their internal constraints. "Outside" also refers to those whose voices are not usually heard in architectural discourse but who inhabit its space—the destitute, the homeless, the sick, and the dying, as well as women and minorities. Grosz asks how we can understand space differently in order to structure and inhabit our living arrangements accordingly. Two themes run throughout the book: temporal flow and sexual specificity. Grosz argues that time, change, and emergence, traditionally viewed as outside the concerns of space, must become more integral to the processes of design and construction. She also argues against architecture's historical indifference to sexual specificity, asking what the existence of (at least) two sexes has to do with how we understand and experience space. Drawing on the work of such philosophers as Henri Bergson, Roger Caillois, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Luce Irigaray, and Jacques Lacan, Grosz raises abstract but nonformalistic questions about space, inhabitation, and building. All of the essays propose philosophical experiments to render space and building more mobile and dynamic.
Design Practice Research at RMIT University is a longstanding program of research into what venturous designers actually do when they design. It is probably the most enduring and sustained body of research of its kind: empirical, evidence-based and surfacing evidence about design practice. This first Pink Book documents some of its past achievements. It is probably the most enduring and sustained body of research of its kind: empirical, evidence-based and surfacing evidence about design practice. It is a growing force in the world, with a burgeoning program of research in Asia, Oceania and Europe. This book documents some of its past achievements. Two kinds of knowledge are created by the research. One concerns the ways in which designers marshal their intelligence, especially their spatial intelligence, to construct the mental space within which they practice design. The other reveals how public behaviours are invented and used to support design practice. This new knowledge combined is the contribution that this research makes to the field of design practice research.
