Notes on Designing Surficial Elegance

Mastery of technique is as essential as design ability to the production of elegant works. Elegant features can only be realised through an understanding of the systemic logics of the digital environment and a full working knowledge of generative techniques. Benjamin H Bratton of The Culture Industry and Hernan Diaz Alonso of Xefirotarch describe Xefirotarch's wholly visceral, but exacting, approach to the design process. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

德勒兹哲学思想对当代建筑的影响

文章阐述了吉尔·德勒兹的哲学思想对当代建筑师的思维、建筑设计创作方法及其发展趋势的影响."图解"、"块茎"、"褶子"、"游牧"……主要思想是德勒兹哲学的最重要的部分,深刻地反映了现实现象并具有一定程度上的图示和可操作性,对当代建筑师在思想及其对建筑设计的设计手法、生成方式……方面都有广泛而深刻的影响.本文对当代受德勒兹...     

Informalising Architecture: The Challenge of Informal Settlements

Transgression is often driven by the power to exercise choice and consciously cross the line. As Kim Dovey , Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at the University of Melbourne, explains, informal settlements, which have grown up globally out of immediate need for shelter and community, and are legally precarious, transgress established codes of ‘land tenure, urban planning, design and construction’. Their condition requires transgression, even if they are subversion through necessity rather than by design. So what is architecture's future role in informal settlements? And what can be learnt from this more ad hoc and incremental model of urban design?     

Drawing Time

Taking place in time, drawing is ‘the fundamental act of design’. It is instrumental in formulating duration in terms of process and also the ways in which architectural environments might be experienced. In this article, Brian McGrath , Dean of the School of Constructed Environments and Professor of Urban Design at Parsons School of Design in New York, reflects on three decades of experimental graphic work, which take a layered, multidimensional and augmented approach to representation.     

基于游牧空间思想的建筑空间生成方法初探——以茨城快谏机场概念设计为例

游牧空间思想是吉尔·德勒兹哲学体系的重要组成部分．对当代建筑设计理论与实践影响深刻。然而,德勒兹对游牧空间的定义是描述性的．无法直接指导建筑空间的生成。本文以茨城快速机场概念设计为例．尝试将游牧空间描述性的定义转译为生成性的算法．为具有游牧空间特性的建筑空间设计提供新的方法。     

彼德·艾森曼图式理论解读——建筑学图式概念的基本内涵

本文立足当代建筑学图式讨论的元话语——德勒兹的相关哲学理论,对彼德·艾森曼的图式理论展开较深入解读,从中界定出建筑学图式概念的基本内涵。一方面有助于全面了解与评价艾森曼的图式实践(理论与设计两方面);另一方面,则为建筑学图式理论研讨的进一步展开与深入,提供一个基础的理论平台。     

AVATAR and the Politics of Protocell Architecture

The Advanced Virtual and Technological Architecture Research Laboratory (AVATAR) was founded in 2004 at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London (UCL). The original remit was to provide a forum for staff and their units to exchange and share their explorations into the digital and visceral terrain. With Neil Spiller's appointment in September 2011 as Dean of the School of Architecture and Construction at the University of Greenwich, the centre of research has shifted south to Greenwich. Here, one of the principle proponents of AVATAR, Nic Clear describes why, given the present economic and political situation, Protocell Architecture has provided the group with such a fecund field of research. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Cinemetrics FAQ

A new book by Brian McGrath and Jean Gardner questions preconceptions of the digital. Previously, working with computers has often been regarded as a simple matter of acquiring technical facility in particular software and techniques. Cinemetrics: Architectural Drawing Today argues that the full potential of digital lies not in technical finesse, but in a perceptual paradigm shift. This shift could be as seismic as the changes associated with the development of perspective in the early Renaissance. Here, McGrath and Gardner provide an FAQ on their innovative new drawing system, Cinemetrics. Inspired by cinema's visual treatment of matter-flux, this book is set to recast architectural drawing for the 21st century. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Ecological Facades of Patrick Blanc

The urban geographer Matthew Gandy explores the work of French botanist Patrick Blanc, who applies his scientific knowledge and preoccupations to urban design. After his invention of the mur végetal (green wall), a botanical and structural system for greening buildings, in 1988, Blanc's work has gone on to transcend the creation of merely living walls. Through his landscape schemes Blanc has recognised the city's rich potential for verdant metamorphosis, transforming fern- and moss-covered streets and buildings into unlikely ravines or rainforests. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.