The Space-Time of Pre-emption: An Interview with Brian Massumi

The philosopher Brian Massumi is known for his explorations of experience, art, media theory and politics and has recently turned his attention to understanding the impact that sustained fear has on perception in a post-9/11 world. In an interview with guest-editor Charles Rice , Massumi defines threat by distinguishing it from real danger and how it manifests itself in both civil and military spaces of pre-emptive action that are primed to the possibilities of attack. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An Interview with Giorgio Grassi

In January 2007, Lucia Tozzi visited Giorgio Grassi's office in Milan. Their conversation touched on Grassi's recent work on Leon Battista Alberti, which is examined here in the context of Grassi's obliquely expressed views on contemporary architecture and the cult of personality. As perhaps the most intellectually rigorous and formally consistent Rationalist architect of his generation, Grassi's work and thinking retain a hermetic aspect, but one notable for its philosophical self-questioning and underlying political commitment. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Twenty Years After (Deconstructivism): An Interview with Bernard Tschumi

Michele Costanzo interviews Bernard Tschumi about his work and his vision of the changing field of contemporary design research. How do the younger generation of students receive Tschumi's seminal theoretical works? Is a lack of time merely the current scapegoat for a more considered conceptual approach? How does Tschumi view the proliferation of architectural fetishes in the urban landscape? How is his own theoretical landscape shifting? Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Architecture as a Dissident Practice: An Interview with Diller Scofidio + Renfro

For three decades architect Liz Diller and artist Ricardo Scofidio have been collaborating on projects that test the boundaries between art and architecture. They have done more than any other practice to champion interdisciplinary research and to advocate architecture as a wider form of cultural production. Olympia Kazi went to talk to Liz Diller to ask her if she thinks theory could really be dead, or merely in a ‘lull’. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Bridging the Threshold of Interior and Landscape: An Interview with Petra Blaisse

In a design practice dedicated to fusing insides and outsides, Petra Blaisse converses with Lois Weinthal about the atmospheric calling of interior textiles. As curtains and floor coverings furnish programmatically organised interior environments, they reflect larger spatial and historic contexts to demonstrate a confluence of micro and macro scales. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Textile Tectonics: An Interview with Lars Spueybroek

‘Architectural design is not about having ideas, but about having techniques, techniques that operate on a material level. It's about making matter think and live by itself.’ Here Lars Spuybroek of NOX talks to Maria Ludovica Tramontin about his engagement with the work of Gottfried Semper and Frei Otto and how it has led him to his own brand of textile tectonics or ‘soft constructivism’, in which textiles are transformed into the tectonic through conventional textile techniques - weaving, bundling, interlacing, braiding, knitting or knotting - effectively building structure through softness and flexibility. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Formalisation: An Interview with Hernando de Soto

The Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto is internationally renowned for his writings on the informal economy. Through his work as the President of the Institute for Liberty and Democracy (ILD) in Lima, he has effectively advocated the creation of a legal system to help the poor access property rights. In his latest book, The Amazon is not Avatar, he makes a significant shift away from the problems caused by massive urban migrations to cities to focusing on the benefits of property and business rights for resource-rich indigenous communities in the Amazon. Angus Laurie interviews De Soto on his current thinking and highlights why he has had such an important influence on social housing in Latin America. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

On the Threshold of Rationalism

No longer a leading architectural trend, Rationalism has fallen out of fashion. At best ‘marginalised’, even its tenets appear questionable. Guest-editors Andrew Peckham, Charles Rattray and Torsten Schmiedeknecht describe what motivated them to uncover and reassess the Rationalist sensibility among current European practices. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Virtual Corpses,Figural Sections and Resonant Fields

The ‘figural section’ is one of the most potent but under used forms of architectural communication. It enables slices, extrusions, fragments and surfaces of buildings to become the media of the non-expressive and deadpan. Here Sean Griffiths of FAT looks at Venturi Scott Brown's influence in the development of the figural section and how it has evolved into a key trope in his practice's own work. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

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.     

The World's Biggest Sculptor: The Architecture of Massimiliano Fuksas

At the start of the new millennium, Massimiliano Fuksas was one of the most significant Italian architects working outside his home country. His reputation in Italy and abroad, however, was taken to a further level by his completion of the New Milan Trade Fair. Stefano Casciani, an ex-student of Fuksas, provides an insightful and intriguing account of his ‘old’ professor: a robust and seemingly contradictory figure who is capable of great voluminous expression and delicacy. Casciani also finds constancy in his unrelenting energy, freshness and wit. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

‘To Go Beyond or Not to Be’ Unsolicited Architecture: An Interview with Ole Bourman

The complex dynamics of today's architecture require a deep intellectual freedom. This is something that Dutch architectural critic Ole Bouman espouses through his provocative writings and lectures and his advocacy of ‘unsolicited architecture’. Luca Guido invited Bouman to reflect on what it means to be an architect today and how it might be possible to pursue critical practice beyond the conventional construction processes. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Curating the Digital: An Interview with MoMA's Paola Antonelli

As Senior Curator in the Department of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Paola Antonelli treats digital and analogue design with equal regard. Here she talks to Guest-Editor Neil Leach about some of her decisions. She discusses the distinctions between design, art and architecture; how she keeps a clear head amid the prevailing euphoria over new technologies, in order to choose only those pieces that also represent successful design; whom she views as paragons of design in the digital age; and why she believes that architectural education needs to be reinvented.     

Alice in Technoland

At their most supernatural, interactive design environments can have a transformative effect. They take the visitor to somewhere else. By actively involving the public they are both ‘porous’ and ‘responsive’, beckoning us like the rabbit in Alice in Wonderland to enter and participate in another world. Here Lucy Bullivant kicks off her introduction to this issue of AD by looking at an installation designed by Daan Roosegaarde for the Netherlands Media Art Institute in Amsterdam which epitomises this approach. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Nothing More than a Fragile Edge: Blurring the Boundaries with Mario Cucinella

The main focus of Mario Cucinella's work is an overlapping preoccupation with technology and the natural environment. In his hands buildings are transformed into complex climatic machines. Anna Giorgi explains how, when combined with an instinctive sense of place, these concerns allow Cucinella's buildings to remain open objects, fragments of a greater natural or urban system. Copyright © 2007 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.     

Questions of Taste

Charles Holland of FAT picks up the Post-Modern baton from Venturi Scott Brown and Charles Jencks and raises the neglected topic of taste. Though the way architecture is experienced by people is bound up with taste, it remains an area of discomfort for architects – tied up with awkward discussions of privilege and class. Holland shows how in FAT's Islington Square housing project the DIY taste of the residents was not only embraced, but fully accommodated. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Beyond the Flatline

High Post-Modernism with its understanding of the significance of the image anticipated the flattening of culture, first in advertising and the printed media, and more recently online. Sam Jacob of FAT speculates on architecture's relationship with the Internet, ‘a flatland of undifferentiated information’, and how Radical Post-Modernism might be best placed to resist the ubiquity of global culture while reanimating the social and cultural agenda of Modernism and Post-Modernism. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Radical Post-Modernism and Content: Charles Jencks and Rem Koolhaas Debate the Issue

The following debate took place on 28 December 2009 between Charles Jencks and Rem Koolhaas , and was transcribed and edited by Eva Branscome. Jencks and Koolhaas have exchanged ideas since the late 1960s. Jencks was the one to insist that Koolhaas come to the 1980 Venice Biennale, originally entitled ‘Post-Modernism’. (Paolo Portoghesi invited Jencks to collaborate with him on this first Biennale before it expanded into historicism.) In January 2002, Jencks was also a judge of the competition for the CCTV Building, the headquarters for China Central Television in Beijing, discussed below. Jencks and Koolhaas continue to thrive on their discussions and disagreements. Although they have very different commitments to the issue of ‘content’, their varying positions help to clarify what is meant here by ‘radical’. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.