The Presence of the Weather

Modern architecture has dedicated much of its discourse to crystal-ball gazing – dwelling on the visionary and the speculative. Conversely, Kevin Nute , Professor of Architecture at the University of Oregon, puts the case for the present over the future and the past. To enhance experiences of the present, he describes how architects can harness the effects of changing temporal and weather conditions – sun and shadow, wind and rain. Design can heighten the sensory stimuli these conditions generate, keeping us ‘in the moment’ while still enjoying the comfort of being indoors.     

Intuitive Material Distributions

Panagiotis Michalatos and Sawako Kaijima describe how the Optimisation Design team at Adams Kara Taylor (AKT) work with mathematical algorithms to develop interactive software applicatons that help inform structural behaviour in the early parts of the design process. This is exemplified by the project-specific software they developed for Thomas Heatherwick's British Pavilion at the 2010 Shanghai Expo. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Post-Epistemological Details of Oceanic Ontologies

The convergence of advanced technologies such as nanotechnology, biotechnology, information and cognitive (NBIC) technologies is opening up the possibilities of working in architecture with lifelike systems and detailing dynamic matter. Here Rachel Armstrong , a co-director of the Advanced Virtual and Technological Architectural Research (AVATAR) group at the University of Greenwich, London, explores the potentials and limits of these emerging ‘Oceanic Ontologies’.     

100 Year City (Maribor): The Virtual Concourse Reframed

For interactivity, the virtual world so often relies on a physical component, but how might virtual spaces be made more tangible as spatial environments for exchange? Under the direction of architect and RMIT University professor Tom Kovac, in 2012 the 100 Year City project rose to this challenge as part of the Maribor European Capital of Culture programme. Here, Guest-Editor and Deputy Curator of the project, Fleur Watson , describes how this ‘super studio’ incites cross-disciplinary exchange and the sharing of progressive design ideas for sustainable blueprints for our cities. It is an initiative that is to be continued under Kovac's directorship with the 100 Year City-themed Malaysian Biennale in the summer of 2015.     

The City Beyond Analogy

Is the city really all that complex? Can urban social behaviour be explained in the evolutionary drama of cross-species competition? Is urban self-organisation in fact the urban norm? Is the emphasis on systems that the ‘system city’ tag conjures up unduly restrictive? Colin Fournier , Emeritus Professor of Architecture and Urbanism at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London (UCL), prods and probes the precepts behind the System City issue, while being simultaneously fascinated and enthralled by it.     

Martin Wagner in America: planning and the political economy of capitalist urbanization

Martin Wagner’s contribution to planning thought and management during the Weimar Republic is widely known, but he recedes into obscurity afterwards. However, he maintained a tenacious intellectual activity in his American exile, conducting teaching-oriented research as Associate Professor of Planning at Harvard Graduate School of Design and prolonging these explorations until his passing in 1957. Working with students and other colleagues – most prominently Walter Gropius – Wagner devised comprehensive proposals for an alternative regional urbanization pattern that combined radical city-core renewal for conspicuous services and high-end residence with a massive suburbanization of middle- and working-class housing and industrial activities. This scheme exacerbated his earlier conceptions and simultaneously incorporated new inflections stemming from a critical engagement with contemporary debates in the US, which allow a better understanding of his German period and the transatlantic transfer of planning ideologies. At Harvard, Wagner reinforced the political-economic perspective of his work, following a contradictory imperative to secure the implementation of proposals by assimilating capital’s spatiality in design strategies. Taking the dynamics of profit-oriented urbanization to their logical conclusion, the American Wagner envisioned a dark albeit consistent ‘diagram’ of the potential reach of a stark capitalist approach to territorial restructuring, prefiguring major urban shifts in subsequent decades.     

Design Through Making: An Introduction

Should a sound understanding and experience of making underpin design skills? In an age of design data, what does the architect still have to gain from the physical and tacit? Bob Sheil , guest-editor of Design through Making, outlines the ideas behind the issue and how they have prompted intriguing and impassioned responses from a diverse array of contributors. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Applications of a New Property of Conics to Architecture: An Alternative Design Project for Rio de Janeiro Metropolitan Cathedral

This paper describes the mathematical discovery of a new property of conics which allows the development of numerous geometric projects for use in architectural and engineering applications. Illustrated is an architectural application in the form of an alternative project for Río de Janeiro Metropolitan Cathedral featuring the integration of a circular base and a cross in the top plane. Two alternative designs are presented for the cathedral, based on the choice of either the Latin Immisa or Greek cross.