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.     

After the Event: Speculative Projects in the Aftermath

Working on speculative architectural projects in the aftermath of traumatic events requires both fearlessness and sensitivity on the part of the designer. Samantha Spurr describes how architecture studios organised by the University of Technology, Sydney, held in Shenzhen, Berlin and Beirut, have brought students into direct contact with these issues and fragile sites. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Historicism Versus Communication: The Basic Debate of the 1980 Biennale

The first Venice Architecture Biennale in 1980 provided a vital springboard for Post-Modernism, providing it with an international stage. The Strada Novissima, with its facades by eminent architects of the time, is now a seminal image of 20th-century architecture. As Léa-Catherine Szacka explains, the prominence given to the past in the show's theme was a point of contention among the exhibition's organisers. This has had an enduring impact on architectural culture to this day. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

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.     

Site/Non-Site: Extending the Parameters in Contemporary Landscape

As the world teeters on the verge of environmental collapse, landscape architecture has taken on a new significance offering a longed-for sanctuary for our increasingly urbanised lives. Here, in his introduction to the issue, guest-editor Michael Spens explains how by taking its impetus from land art, landscape architecture, as an expanded field, transcends the conventional confines of site. This renders it possible to read architecture ‘as landscape, or as non-landscape, as building becomes non-site’ and the ‘site indeed materialises as the work per se’. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Parametric Patterns

For Patrik Schumacher of Zaha Hadid Architects, articulation is the central core competency of architecture; and designed patterns provide one of the most potent devices for architectural articulation. Schumacher ushers in a new era of parametric architecture in which pattern becomes an innovative and powerful register of articulation, providing amplification of surface difference and correlation, ultimately resulting in dynamic, high-performance ornamentation.     

The Persistence of the Pastoral

Architect, animator and educator Nic Clear challenges the contemporary notion of the pastoral to go beyond the simplistic binary opposites of the untainted rural idyll and the industrialised city. He explores how the narratives of the pastoral have provided a mainstay for science fiction and how this can be used to re-imagine nature itself with the aid of advanced biotechnologies to create new architectures for the 21st century.     

The Deep Structure of the Picturesque

The late Paul Coates was one of the first students at the Architectural Association (AA) in London to submit an international computation-based diploma, in 1969. Responsible for introducing a series of computational techniques, Coates was also the founder of the MSc in Computing and Design at the University of East London, and in 2002 the Centre for Evolutionary Computing in Architecture (CECA). In this unpublished article from 2008, which has been prepared and rewritten for publication by Christian Derix , Coates recounts his pursuit of ‘the particle physics of architecture’ - geometric rules that inform both unplanned and planned human occupation of space.     

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.     

CJ Lim/Studio 8 Architects: Through the Looking Glass

CJ Lim is one of architecture’s greatest illustrators, visualising through his beautiful and delicate drawings and models an enchanted world inspired by Lewis Carroll, William Heath Robinson and Chinese fables. Howard Watson describes how Lim is now breaking through the visionary’s glass ceiling with his realisation of a tunnel installation for the Victoria & Albert Museum in London and a project at an altogether different scale for an eco-city in China. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Concrete Constructs: The Limits of Rationalism in Swiss Architecture

Ákos Moravánszky explains why for him ‘the traces of Mediterranean Rationalism in the new Swiss-German architecture are like the imitation stitching on the moulded plastic dashboard of a new car’. It is an influence which, despite the undeniable impact of Aldo Rossi and the Ticino School at ETH Zurich in the 1970s, remains skin-deep, sharing little with the present in terms of ideology or the interpretation of the historic past. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Emerging Technologies and Drawings: The Futures of Images in Architectural Design

Mark Garcia , Senior Lecturer in History and Theory in the Department of Architecture, University of Greenwich, explores the technologically mediated future of drawings in architecture ‘without hands’. He highlights how multiple technological innovations are putting us on the brink of an exploding spectrum of possibilities for the image, and looks at three distinct areas of potential: new media and materials; emerging and future technologies; and theory embodied in fiction and art.     

Too Good to Be True: The Survival of English Everyday PoMo

‘Intelligent, eclectic, witty, profoundly humanistic, and keen to debunk an inflexible, elitist and dangerously authoritarian Modernism’: Kester Rattenbury evokes the spirit of early British Post-Modernism. She reminds us of how in the early 1980s it spearheaded a spirited community architecture that played a strategic role in protest against wholesale, motorway-led redevelopments and the survival of Convent Garden. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Mathematics and the Sensible World: Representing,Constructing, Simulating

The Paris-based scientific historian Amy Dahan-Dalmedico asks why a knowledge of numbers, algebra and abstract forms should be key to our understanding of the sensible world. As she reveals, mathematics, like the world itself, has shifted and fluctuated over time since its earliest origins in ancient Egypt. Evolving and morphing as a discipline, it has covered a diverse range of practices and theories. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Design and Society: Innovation Through Appropriation and Adaptation

‘To strive for a culture framed on great design is itself a fundamental innovation imperative.’ Here, Guest-Editor Mark Burry poses the difficult question of how innovation might be achieved at a wider cultural level. How can society effectively seek to demand great design with confidence and authority? Burry looks specifically at the role of the design commissioner and the challenge of creating an overarching design system, as exemplified by the figure of Frank Pick, who in the first half of the 20th century steered London Underground's design identity, developing its enduring, highly distinctive graphics and architecture.     

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.