Pulsation In Architecture

Pulsation in Architecture highlights the role of digital design as the catalyst for a new spatial sensibility related to rhythmic perception. It proposes a novel critical reception of computational architecture based on the ability of digital design to move beyond mere instrumentality, and to engage with core aspects of the discipline: the generative engine of digital architecture reinvigorates a discourse of part-to-whole relationships through the lens of rhythmic affect. There is a paradigm shift in spatial perception due to the intense use of computational techniques and the capacity to morph massive amounts of data in spatial patterns; rhythm plays a pivotal role in the articulation of the topology of buildings, generating the atmospheric character that induces moods and throbbing sensations in space. Pulsation introduces the fundamental animate capacity of living form and reshapes our perception of architectural space across the multiple scales of a project, from digital inception to fabrication. An emerging thread of rhythmic sensibility loosely binds a survey of contemporary design practices, including contributions by Peter Eisenman, Jeff Kipnis, Greg Lynn, UNStudio, Preston Scott Cohen, Reiser + Umemoto, Asymptote, Ali Rahim, Hernan Diaz Alonso, Ruy Klein, Gage / Clemenceau, NOX, Evan Douglis Studio, kokkugia, and MONAD Studio.

This book proposes a new critical relationship between computation and architecture, developing a history and theory of representation in architecture to understand and unleash potential means to open up creativity in the field. Historically, architecture has led to spatial representation. Today, computation has established new representational paradigms that can be compared to spatial representations, such as the revolution of perspective in the Renaissance. Architects now use software, robotics, and fabrication tools with very little understanding and participation in how these tools influence, revolutionize, and determine both architecture and its construction today. Why does the discipline of architecture not have a higher degree of authorship in the conception and development of computational technologies that define spatial representation? This book critically explores the relationship between history, theory, and cultural criticism. Lorenzo-Eiroa positions new understandings through parallel historical sections and theories of many revolutionary representational architecture canons displaced by conventional spatial projection. He identifies the architects, artists, mathematicians, and philosophers that were able to revolutionize their disciplines through the development of new technologies, new systems of representation, and new lenses to understand reality. This book frames the discussion by addressing new means to understand and expand architecture authorship in relation to the survey, information, representation, higher dimensional space, Big Data, and Artificial Intelligence – in the pursuit of activating an architecture of information. This will be important reading for upper-level students and researchers of architecture and architectural theory, especially those with a keen interest in computational design and robotic fabrication.

This book is a rigorous account of architecture’s theoretical and technological concerns over the last decade. The anthology presents projects and essays produced at the end of the first digital turn and the start of the second digital turn. This anthology engages and deploys a variety of discourses, topics, criteria, pedagogies, and technologies, including some of today’s most influential architects, practitioners, academics, and critics. It is an unflinchingly rigorous and unapologetic account of architecture’s disciplinary concerns in the last decade. This is a story that has not been told; in recent years everything has been refracted through the prism of the post-digital generation. Design Technology and Digital Production illustrates the shift to an architectural world where we can learn with and from each other, develop a community of new technologies and embrace a design ecology that is inclusive, open, and visionary. This collection fosters a sense of shared experience and common purpose, along with a collective responsibility for the well-being of the discipline of architecture as a whole.

Architectural Exaptation: When Function Follows Form focuses on the significance and the originality of the study of exaptation. It presents exaptation as an opportunity to extend architectural design towards more sustainable approaches aimed at enforcing urban resilience. The use of exaptation’s definition in architecture supports the heuristic value of cross-disciplinary studies on biology and architecture, which seem even more relevant in times of global environmental crises. This book aims to make a critique of the pre-existing and extensive paternalistic literature. Exaptation will be described as a functional shift of a structure that already had a prior, but different, function. In architecture, a functional shift of a structure that already had a function may apply to forms of decorative elements embedded in architectural components, and to both change of function of tectonic elements and the change of use of an architectural space. The book is illustrated with examples from around the globe, including China, Italy, Mexico, New Zealand, the USA and the UK, and looks at different civilizations and diverse historical periods, ranging from the urban to the architectural scale. Such examples highlight the potential and latent human creative capacity to change the use and functions, something that cities and buildings could consider when facing disturbances. Exaptation is shown as an alternative narrative to the simplifications of evolutionary puritanism. It also offers an innovative perspective and presents an opportunity to re-think the manner in which we design and redesign our cities. This book will be of interest to architecture, planning, urban design and biology researchers and students.

This book explores the connection between digital fabrication and the design build studio in both academic and professional studios. The book presents 17 essays and cases studies from well-known scholars and practitioners, including Kengo Kuma, Joseph Choma, Dan Rockhill, Keith Zawistowski, and Marie Zawistowski, whose theoretical and practical work addresses design build at various levels. Four introductory essays trace the history of the design build movement, exploring the emergence of design build in the pedagogy of the Bauhaus, the integration of technology into architectural design, and the influence of the act of making on the design build studio. The rest of the book is divided into two parts; the first part looks at traditional pedagogical models for the design build studio, and the second part focuses on experimental methods used in design build programs. Together, these works discuss human behavior, social-cultural trends, and motivations in socially minded studios which are based on a service-learning model. They look at component-based studios where innovation allows for an increased level of research and testing of new materials and assemblies, sustainable principles, and zero-energy prototypes. Illustrated with over 200 color images, this book will be a valuable resource for architecture students, educators, and practitioners seeking to explore the impact of digital fabrication on the global design build movement.

This book explores urban resilience through significant, original and rigorous academic research, utilising the experiences of town planners, architects and decision makers to create a charter on resilient communities. The second part of the book presents mini-essays discussing the strategic points of the paper, and enabling more casual readers with the ability to access information on urban resilience. The book then explores urban resilience through the work and understanding of the institutions responsible for regulating the professions of urban planner, educators, professionals, and those involved in communication. Providing numerous illustrations and examples, Resilient Communities and the Peccioli Charter will be of interest to researchers, postgraduates, architects, urban designers and planners alike.

Xenoculture is a term coined by Iranian writer and philosopher Reza Negarestani that describes the need for embracing and exploring the unexpected, the alien. In this issue we borrow the idea and explore the realm of Architecture Xenoculture — the work of architects and designers who detach from everything that architecture is supposed to be and look like, including preconceived forms and aesthetics, to look into new architectural and design possibilities. An architectural form that emerges from mathematical processes and new material explorations and proposes something never before seen — an aesthetic yet to be determined. Some of the work showcased has been produced by leading architecture practitioners and academics worldwide including: Hernan Diaz Alonso, Servo, Francois Roche, Marc Fornes, Kokkugia, Zaha Hadid, Volkan Alkanoglu, and Rafael Lozano among others. Architecture Xenoculture is the problematization of work produced by embracing the proliferation of this mist of fear. It argues for the harnessing of this aesthetic of fear towards a yet-to-be determined end – intensifying its practice towards new thresholds, those that unleash the potential of the alien in the world beyond the limited imaginary we have become anesthetized to, conjuring insecure material and behavioral manifestations of the xeno-gene and its ability to adapt, mutate, survive and fight.