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’.     

Weisz + Yoes (WXY architecture + urban design)

Few small avant-garde practices have an impact on visitors to New York like that of WXY, as the firm is sometimes called. Theirs is particularly surprising since, as Jayne Merkel notes, they have only completed a handful of freestanding buildings. But this mid-career husband-and-wife team of Claire Weisz and Mark Yoes - and their new partner, Layng Pew, whom they met at Yale 20 years ago - are changing the face of Times Square and redesigning historic Battery Park at the southern tip of Manhattan where ferries leave for the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. These heavily used public places are only the most recent ones that they have inventively improved over the last decade and a half. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Spatial Computing for the New Organic

In the last few years, parametric design has predominated in architectural research and practice. Christian Derix and Åsmund Izaki of the Computational Design and Research (CDR) group at Aedas|R&D explain how the research and design unit, based at Aedas in London, has pursued an alternative course by shifting the focus to behavioural and perceptive occupant simulation of spatial configurations. A human-centric approach, it draws its inspiration from earlier British pioneers in spatial computation, as well as the designers of the Organic Architecture movement of the early 20th century.     

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.     

The Builder's Name: SHoP and the Ethics of Knowledge Transfer

Since its inception in 1996 in New York City, SHoP Architects has fixed its sights on reshaping the relationship between design and construction; not only by pioneering the use of new building and modelling technologies, but by assuming a new level of responsibility for the management and assembly of components. Philip Nobel , architectural author and Editorial Director at SHoP, describes how the practice's longstanding engagement with construction has led to an awareness of the importance of the empowerment of builders, leading to responsiveness to local conditions and a proper connection between designers and those who deliver their designs.     

Evolving Patterns: Correlated Systems of Interaction

Over the last four decades, the onset of computation has enabled architects and designers to employ generative patterns in their exploration of emergent social, material and spatial systems. Theodore Spyropoulos provides an overview of the field and discusses how it has been developed by the Design Research Lab (DRL) at the Architectural Association into an ‘Adaptive Ecologies’ agenda. In the context of parametric urbanism, the DRL has explored models of living through behavioural patterns found in nature, examining the role of the singular and the collective. 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.     

Lightness and Fluidity: Remarks Concerning the Aesthetics of Elegance

Over the last century, elegance as a term has been conspicuously absent from discussions centred on both architecture and the philosophy of aesthetics. Elegance's time has, however, now come. David Goldblatt describes how the maturation of digital discourse has led to the onset of a new, multifaceted, sensual rationality that is evident in recent designs and constructed works. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.