The New Materiality

In the last few decades an entirely new conception of the material world has emerged. Here, philosopher Manuel DeLanda , whose work has become synonymous with this ‘new materialism’, introduces this novel understanding of materiality. Like any other conceptual framework, it has precedents in the history of philosophy - the work of the Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza is a good example - but only recently has it become coherently articulated with science and technology. Gone is the Aristotelian view that matter is an inert receptacle for forms that come from the outside (transcendent essences), as well as the Newtonian view in which an obedient materiality simply follows general laws and owes all its powers to those transcendent laws. In place of this, we can now conceptualise an active matter endowed with its own tendencies and capacities, engaged in its own divergent, open-ended evolution, animated from within by immanent patterns of being and becoming.     

路斯住宅空间的公共性与私密性

20世纪90年代,彼瑞兹·克罗米娜 发表《秘境与奇观：阿道夫·路斯的室内》 一文, 探讨了路斯住宅建筑中的视线控制和 随之产生的心理暗示。笔者对该文进行了批 判性回顾,并在此基础上重新分析路斯住宅 空间中的视线设计,探讨了它与剧院空间的 相似之处。通过比较分析一系列路斯设计 的住宅空间,揭示出他基于空间私密性的不 同要求而逐层设计住宅室内的策略: 空间的 开放程度随着私密性需求的增加而减弱。与 此同时,通过对路斯相关建筑文本的解读, 进一步分析了其住宅设计的立场。     

Machines for Rent: Experiments by New-Territories

Robots have captured the popular imagination like no other technology, fuelling science-fiction narratives in novels, art and film. Here, in a text by François Roche and Camille Lacadée of New-Territories, ‘Machines for Rent’ are explored as a phenomenon that inhabits its own visionary realm, becoming a fertile field for experimentation. These fantastical mechanical creatures are visualised in exquisite drawings by François Roche and Stephan Henrich of New-Territories.     

The AADRL: Design,Collaboration and Convergence

Brett Steele, former director of the Architectural Association's Design Research Laboratory (AADRL) and now director of the Architectural Association, reflects upon the DRL as a laboratory for the production of a different kind of student and teacher, and ultimately as a new model for architectural education. His ‘screenshots’ offer an informal image/text-based window through which to browse the general atmosphere of that research endeavour. The DRL was also very active in employing outside specialists from a variety of disciplines including computer programming and robotics. These interests were situated within the DRL's much larger ambition of rethinking the very definition of research itself, not isolated in the purely reflective interests of history and criticism but based on the projective desires of innovation. Moreover, the organisation of these new laboratories of design life begin to resemble their objects of study. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Bricked House: How Code and Law Can Lock You Out

Could we be unwittingly divesting too much control in technology? In so doing, could we be sleepwalking into a future in which our personal assets are no longer ours, but all too easily relinquished by the bank or mortgage company? Molly Wright Steenson , an assistant professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, thinks so. She evokes an arresting vision of a close future in which our smartphones and the operating systems integrated within our cars and homes become our friend-enemy, immediately locking us out when they are no longer programmed to respond directly to our touch.     

Mood,Posture and Rhythmic Feedback: MONAD Studio's Sonic Experiments with 3D-Printed Musical Instruments

Engaging with physical sensations is a primary method of transmitting mood through design. Based in North Miami Beach, Florida, design research practice MONAD Studio has been collaborating with musicians, composers and luthiers to explore new paths for architecture where aural, visual and tactile stimuli come together. Eric Goldemberg , co-founder with Veronica Zalcberg of MONAD Studio, here describes the enigmatic and highly charged results of the collaboration, which use pulsation and morphology to add more sensory and even erotic dimensions to our perception of space.     

Structuring Materiality: Design Fabrication of Heterogeneous Materials

What happens when we invert the usual sequence of the design process - form-structure-material - so materiality becomes the generative driver? Taking nature as her model, Neri Oxman advocates a new material method, Variable Property Design (VPD), in which material assemblies are modelled, simulated and fabricated with varying properties in order to correspond with multiple and continuously shifting functional constraints. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Penang Tropical City,Penang, Malaysia OMA

A mixed-use programme for Penang in Malaysia with the potential to accommodate a resident population of 27,000 required OMA to operate at a planning level, while providing architectural definition. João Bravo da Costa describes how this led to a strategy that focused on types rather than objects, and specifically a typological distribution of programme across the site.     

Polymorphic Matters: Architecture,Change and Imagination

Polymorphism was an important tactic used by Woods to render objects and spaces in the process of transformation and transmutation. Ashley Simone , Associate Professor at the Pratt Institute School of Architecture in New York City, explores the terrain where materiality meets change, where fantasy supplants reality. Her prime example is the suite of drawings for the ‘AEON’ project.     

Brigitta Zics: Working on Interactive Potential

Valentina Croci kicks off a new series on interactive technologies with an investigation of the integrated, interdisciplinary research of the new media artist Brigitta Zics. Zics' projects throw light on how conventional architecture might learn from the interactive, placing a greater understanding on the sensory and the user's perceptual experience of a particular space. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Treatment 1: Notes from an Informal Discussion on Interinstitutional Design Research and Image Production

Since 2003, Benjamin Bratton and Hernan Diaz-Alonso have conducted a series of parallel theory seminars and design studios at SCI-Arc (Southern California Institute of Architecture). These collaborations have addressed questions of collectivity at varying scales: personal (between two individuals, each with separate professional practices), institutional (between two disciplinary positions, one analytical and the other creative) and cultural (between what is inside and outside the architectural imaginary). The work featured in the article represents another primary mandate of their interinstitutional project: the transdisciplinary implications of design as a general form of practice as opposed to the historical definitions of ‘architecture’ or the architect. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

One Space,Many Worlds

‘Cities hold two-thirds of their residents in slums, and the rest in stiflingly limiting, inflexible structures.’ Thus the impoverished parochial Mumbai is one and the same metropolis as the cosmopolitan globalised ‘Bombay’. Ramesh Biswas examines how the speculative housing developments of the aspirational middle classes are creating townships that intensify sprawl and further decentralise cities, squandering the potential for upgrading public space and creating an architecture for the common good. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Xenocells: In the Mood for the Unseen

Forces that were previously invisible to the human eye are now being materialised in new aesthetics made possible by algorithmic design. The aptly named Wonderlab studio at University College London's Bartlett School of Architecture is running an ongoing research programme on these awe-inspiring possibilities. Its XenoCells project uses a cell division algorithm that can be applied in varying resolutions, to vastly different effect – achieving 3D-printed forms that range from sharp crystalline structures to organic folds reminiscent of internal organs. Alisa Andrasek , director of Wonderlab, explains.     

A History of Territories,Movements and Borders: Politics of Inhabitation

If the city is as much about culture as nature, then a cultural understanding of the shaping of the urban is as essential as a scientific one. Here, architect and critic Marina Lathouri , who directs the graduate programme in History and Critical Thinking at the Architectural Association (AA) School of Architecture in London, describes how the concept of planning in the 19th century became intrinsically linked to notions of territory, borders and spatial organisation. She questions whether this might now be tested, and new design technologies used, to expose underlying emerging patterns of disruptive flows beckoning the possibility of the logic of a new social disposition.     

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.     

Ex Silico Ad Vivo: Computational Simulation and Urban Design at Foster + Partners

What makes a successful city? Can this be replicated simply by following tried-and-tested urban typologies? Francis Aish, Adam Davis and Martha Tsigkari of Foster + Partners' Applied Research + Development (ARD) group argue that technology allows other approaches to urban design. They explain that computational simulation is increasingly valuable in predicting how the dynamic and complex systems of a city might play out in an urban context, forging an exciting new alliance between computation and intuition.     

Mapping in Hackney Wick and Fish Island: Observation is Proposition

Hackney Wick and Fish Island, adjacent to the London 2012 Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, has developed a special character over time, accommodating 700 artists' and other creatives' studios in old warehouses. The under-designed ‘scarce’ quality of the public realm contrasts with the highly designed spaces of the Olympic Park. Liza Fior describes how muf has developed an urban strategy that could help assimilate the two sites and cater for the greater expected densities in housing, while retaining the under-determined character of the existing area.     

Galapagos: On the Logic and Limitations of Generic Solvers

A graduate in architecture and urbanism from TU Delft, David Rutten works with software company Robert McNeel & Associates (RMN). The developer of Grasshopper®, he was recently awarded the ACADIA 2012 award for innovative research. The Galapagos plug-in, which Rutten has developed for Grasshopper®, implements two generic solvers (one using a genetic algorithm and one using a simulated annealing algorithm). A generic solver will find a solution to a problem that can be expressed in a mathematical way; however, as he explains here, while these solutions may not be exact, they will be very good.     

Fieldoffice Architects In Situ: Reflecting on the Rural-Urban Mix in Yilan,Taiwan

Yilan is generally considered a rural county with a city at its heart. Fieldoffice Architects, whose team live and work entirely in this area and are deeply immersed in its community, take a more holistic view. Their collaborative approach blurs the boundaries between rural and urban, with architecture and environmental design projects interconnecting to form part of a regional framework. Principal Sheng-Yuan Huang and Project Architect Yu-Hsiang Hung reflect on their practice.     

Interactions: Dialogues on Body,Protections and Derivatives

Could kinetic clothing be the next big thing? A collaboration between Dutch fashion designer Iris van Herpen and Italy-based architect and educator Niccolò Casas has produced a series of dresses that blur the boundaries between the body and the space around it. Casas explains how they have fused handcraft with technology, using 3D printing, mass customisation techniques, and morpho-dynamic simulations, among other means, to produce couture pieces that react to bodily movement in extraordinary new ways.