Old Dispersions and Scenes for the Production of Public Space The Constructive Margins of Secondarity

The density of development in Belgium is such that the entire country has become an open city, with little sense of where one metropolitan area begins and another ends. Bruno De Meulder describes the underlying logic of this unbroken urbanscape, and the opportunity it affords for re-editing and reinserting informal social spaces in areas of wasted land. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Cross the River by Touching the Stones: Chinese Architecture and Political Economy in the Reform Era: 1978-2008

China's Open Door Policy and economic development set in motion in 1978 can be regarded as the triumph of pragmatism over theory - specifically Chairman Mao's brand of Marxist theory. Tao Zhu traces the progress of reform over the last 30 years, and its impact on Chinese architectural culture. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Architecture and Mathematics: Between Hubris and Restraint

The introduction of calculus-based mathematics in the 18th century proved fatal for the relationship of mathematics and architecture. As Antoine Picon, Professor of History of Architecture and Technology at Harvard Graduate School of Design, highlights, when geometry was superseded by calculus it resulted in an ensuing estrangement from architecture, an alienation that has persisted even with the widespread introduction of computation. It is a liaison that Picon characterises as having shifted between hubris and restraint. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Natural Methods of Interaction Or Natural Interaction in the Everyday Digital World

Computers, mobiles and automatised machines are so omnipresent that the means by which we interact with digital devices is now generally regarded as a given. Italian practice iO Agency, though, questions our use of mechanised interfaces and the language that they require us to learn. Valentina Croci explains how iO Agency has developed more natural ways for people to interact with digital environments through physical or tactile ‘triggers’. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Future of Information Modelling and the End of Theory: Less is Limited,More is Different

The computational design strategist Cynthia Ottchen , who was previously Head of Research and Innovation at OMA, offers insights into the future of building information modelling (BIM). Now in the Petabyte Age of the data deluge, she argues that in our adoption of BIM we have to surpass mere data collection and technical optimisation and open up new ways of thinking with the creative use of ‘soft data’. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Future is Unwritten: Global Culture,Identity and Economy

Is architecture no more than a mere handmaid to global capitalism and the international property market? Murray Fraser , Professor of Architecture and Global Culture at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, asserts that the true picture is both much more complex and less homogeneous than it might appear. While acknowledging that economic conditions are significant drivers in architecture, he argues that it is still possible for designers to respond creatively with suppleness and foresight in their exploration of paths for a better future.     

(Science) Fiction,Ecophysical Apparatus and Skizoid Machines: Animism,Vitalism and Machinism as a Way to Rearticulate the Need to Confront the Unknown in a Contradictory Manner

François Roche of R&Sie(n) ruminates on the contradictory nature of the present: a time that is ‘vibrating’ while ultimately ‘lacking momentum’. Reclaiming ‘the scenarios and substances that condition architecture’, he rejects the large-scale flights of fancy of international signature architects and argues for the reactivation of ‘a throbbing, complex and unfinished “localism”’. In so doing, he advocates a machinism that enables fictionalisation and speculation. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Renewable Types and the Urban Plan

The notion of designing according to building type for some might imply constraint, or even a reversion to convention. In Diploma Unit 6 at the AA in London, Christopher Lee and Sam Jacoby have proved typology can be used to liberating effect, producing series that harness ‘the cumulative intelligence’ of type, while ‘surpassing both its idea and its deep structure’. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Basking in a World of Your Own Making

As the credit crunch bites in, are pockets of young architects reviving a battle against commodified materialism? Neil Spiller describes how he has experienced this close to home with his own class of 2009 at the Bartlett which has reactivated its own brand of Surrealist cybernetic research, inspired by Dalí. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Behavioural Complexity: Constructing Frameworks for Human-Machine Ecologies

Founded by Patrik Schumacher and Brett Steele in 1997, the Architectural Association Design Research Laboratory (AADRL) Master's programme,based at the AA in London, provides an important research base for Parametricism. The current Director of AADRL, Theodore Spyropoulos , continues to push the boundaries of advanced computing and machine intelligence. Here he describes the work that he has undertaken at the AA and through his practice Minimaforms into adaptive ecologies that employ responsive machine learning to enable spatial transformations.     

Distinguishing Concepts: Lexicons of Interactive Art and Architecture

Interactive design has come about as a result of the intermingling of disciplines. As a consequence, the language it uses has become blurred - borrowed or stolen with little restraint from elsewhere. Though particular terms have become ubiquitous, the original concepts that lie behind them have been lost. This means that all too frequently they are no longer knowingly used. Usman Haque sorts the wheat from the chaff and brings clarity to bear on the vocabulary and thinking behind interactivity. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Pastoral Manoeuvres: Ecologies of City,Nature and Practice

In the 21st century, the greening of public open spaces has proved one of the most compelling marketing teasers, but also one of the biggest ‘elephants in the room’. Architect, educator and urban designer Duncan Berntsen describes how students within the School of Architecture, Design and Construction at the University of Greenwich were encouraged to tackle this by developing ‘measurable innovative disruptions’ that could contribute positively to an urban sense of place.     

Meeting the New Boss: After the Death of Theory

Christopher Hight seeks to find out what might be left over after the death of theory. Have theoretical questions become merely replaced by reproducible techniques and business plans? How should architects think and practise if they no longer - in the wake of Koolhaas - solely think architecturally? Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

(Ut)opiates: Rethinking Nature

Much of what is currently regarded as ‘green’ is predicated on a pre-modern, even Romantic, notion of nature; with sustainable design often overtly seeking to readdress the balance in nature by countering man's destructive forces. Here, Fabiola López-Durán and Nikki Moore pursue a more nuanced view of sustainability and architecture through a lineage of ideas, embedded within Lamarckian eugenics - the early 20th-century movement that sought the advancement of the human race through the transformation of the environment. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Urban [IM]plants Tactics for Recombining Landscape and Collective Space in Bonheiden,Belgium

Bonheiden, in the province of Antwerp in Belgium, lies in a region known for its exceptional natural beauty. Though the surrounding rural setting has remained protected this has often been to the detriment of urban life, as the built environment has been subject to a process of banal suburbanisation. Els Verbakel and Elie Derman explain how they propose to turn this situation around by creating public spaces that use the town's ‘original landscape as the base material’. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Artists of the Floating World: SANNA,Niedermayr and the Construction of Atmosphere

Hugh Campbell expands upon the mutually collaborative spatial qualities evoked in the photographic works of Walter Niedermayr and the architecture of Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa of Tokyo-based practice SANAA. Describing their relation as forming a ‘thickened presence’, he alludes to a particular atmosphere reliant on an ambiguity of scale, detail and discernible proximity that serves to liberate the architecture and the photographs from mere documentation whereby instead they figure as transparent recordings of spatial intentions. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Cities and Grids: In Search of New Paradigms

The wider global influences of expanded populations, new technologies and economies in both Europe and the Far East are having a direct impact on the pattern and planning of urban form. Joan Busquets , the principal of B Arquitectura I Urbanisme (BAU) in Barcelona, and Professor in Practice of Urban Planning and Design at Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD), describes how the urban grid is continuing to evolve with these changes, becoming ‘a matrix for innovation within urban development, allowing the creation of sustainable and compact cities’, enabling the forming of ‘new networks and innovative city systems’.     

The Visceral City and the Theatre of Fear

Over the last decade in India, intensive urbanisation, with the aid of the mass media, has unleashed a new culture of fear. Widespread access to TV, text messaging and the Internet have heightened and played upon individuals' anxieties. Ravi Sundaram describes how in Delhi, in particular, the media provided the catalyst for ‘mass hysteria’ and ‘psychosis’ during the summer of 2002. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.