Digital Cities

Code, it would seem, is everywhere. We are beginning to understand that much of our natural environment is based on rule-based behaviours, from the emergent swarm intelligence of flocks of birds and schools of fish, to the complex patterns of snowflakes, ferns, seashells and zebra skins. And nothing escapes. Not even the human body. The human genome is being mapped out and sequenced by scientists to provide a genetic blueprint of human life itself. In this context, it is hardly surprising that architects are now beginning to explore similar principles in the design studio. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Exuberance,I Don't Know; Excess,I Like

Hernan Diaz Alonso redefines ‘excess’ and ‘exuberance’ on his own terms. Fully au fait and comfortable with the excessive, he describes how in relation to his own work he views excess as more of a tendency or a logic, which sums up his approach; whereas he perceives the exuberant as removed from the design process and more like an ‘adjective’, an ‘emerging quality’ observed by others. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Parallel Indexing: Infrastructure and Space

As governments around the world open the public coffers in an attempt to pull their economies back from collapse, Holger Kehne and Jeff Turko describe how they have extended the work of the Architectural Association Diploma Unit 12 to incorporate the pertinent subject of infrastructure and architecture, employing ‘indexical systems’. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An Architectural Chemistry

Protocell technology has a precedent in the innovative use of plastic in the 1960s, when chemistry first came up with an innovative new material that could be applied to architecture, interiors and product design. Omar Khan describes how at the Center for Architecture and Situated Technologies at the University at Buffalo in New York, he is developing a line of research that builds on the legacy of the 1960s and 1970s for soft materials and the capabilities of an elastic responsive architecture. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Fabricating Design: A Revolution of Choice

Berlin-based practice Barkow Leibinger has become synonymous with expertise in digital fabrication. For 12 years, the firm has been engaged in designing buildings for machine-tool company Trumpf in Stuttgart - a relationship that has given the firm remarkable insights into the laser cutting of sheet metal. Here, Frank Barkow describes the fruitful research that the studio has undertaken in laser cutting as well as two innovative projects that have resulted from it. He explains why a new technology like that of digital fabrication must be for architects by necessity ‘a revolution of choice’ - a speculation on where best to exploit new possibilities, albeit informed by research and experimentation. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Lighting Up

Through the work of London practice Cinimod Studio, led by Dominic Harris, Valentina Croci explores the potential that lighting design offers for interactive work, whether it is transforming unwelcoming urban spaces or enhancing the public's experience of the city. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

(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.     

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.     

On Design Engineering

London-based Adams Kara Taylor (AKT) is one of the most innovative design-led structural and civil engineering practices in the UK. Seeking out creative collaborations with leading architectural firms and schools of architecture and design internationally, it has, as Hanif Kara , Co-Founder and Director at AKT, explains, developed a holistic approach in which architecture and engineering converge. Here Kara defines the emerging methods of ‘design engineering’, emphasising the importance of early input at the conceptualisation stage and research over even the contribution of digital technologies. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Living: Surface Tensions

‘Our work begins with the premise of a dynamic world. Political and cultural conditions change: what if the walls and windows morphed in response?’ New York-based team The Living, led by David Benjamin and Soo-in Yang, have developed a practice of deep, open-source interfaces of participation. Jordan Geiger describes how for The Living their home city and its environs is a site of evolving forms of public space whether on land, air or water. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

ecoLogicStudio

From their office in Hackney, in London's East End, Italian duo Claudia Pasquero and Marco Poletto, have established an international reputation as ecoLogicStudio, an innovative practice that fuses digital technologies with environmental design. As Terri Peters explains, the ethos and approach of the studio extends beyond that of finding technological solutions to ecological design projects. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

‘Never Mind All That Environmental Rubbish,Get On With Your Architecture’

Could the primacy of green architecture in recent years be eroding the discipline? Is it reducing architecture to a mere ‘environmental techno-science’? Penelope Dean argues for a revised environmental agenda that is driven by ideas and concepts rather than subservient technologies. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Bugs,Bats and Animal Estates: The Architectural Territories of ‘Wild Beasts’

For architecture, animals and insects have conventionally represented the threat of infestation - a parasitic and insanitary uninvited presence. Could the animal world, however, offer previously untapped opportunities for design innovation? At a time when the relationship between architecture and nature is coming under question, Ben Campkin takes the opportunity to bring attention to the wider social and geographical processes lying beneath the occupation of the man-made environment by insect and animal life. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Trauma Within the Walls: Notes Towards a Philosophy of the City

Renowned philosopher and critical theorist Andrew Benjamin provides a framework for thinking about trauma and the city. He returns to Sigmund Freud's definition of trauma as repressed memory and to Aeschylus' formulation of the unmasterable as portrayed in mythical Athens in the Oresteia trilogy. This view of unaccustomed or unpredictable forces, such as civic strife, as ever present and integral to democracy, enables the maintenance of the urban project avoiding repression. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Ethics of the Imperative

The bald desire to innovate is not sufficient in itself. To go beyond mere technical invention and make a positive difference, innovation requires an engagement with overall ethical intent. Here, Guest-Editor Pia Ednie-Brown espouses a design ethos that values an open-ended approach to architectural innovation. She illustrates the ethical impact of implementing new technologies with two opposing paradigms – one dark and one affirmative – as exemplified by two classic films from 1968: 2001: A Space Odyssey and Barbarella.     

Optioneering: A New Basis for Engagement Between Architects and Their Collaborators

Conventionally, architects are somewhat tardy when inviting engineers to join their projects. By only introducing consulting engineers to participate in the later stages of the design process, engineers are commonly assigned a fixing role. This provides little opportunity for creative engineering solutions at the generative stage. Optioneering, a new business management model, however, offers the possibility of a new collaborative method for interaction between designers and their partners. Dominik Holzer and Steven Downing describe how a research project between the Spatial Information Research Laboratory (SIAL) at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) and the engineering firm Arup investigated the capability of this new form of collaboration. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.