Scripting Cultures

With scripting, computer programming becomes integral to the digital design process. It provides unique opportunities for innovation, enabling the designer to customise the software around their own predilections and modes of working. It liberates the designer by automating many routine aspects and repetitive activities of the design process, freeing-up the designer to spend more time on design thinking. Software that is modified through scripting offers a range of speculations that are not possible using the software only as the manufacturers intended it to be used. There are also significant economic benefits to automating routines and coupling them with emerging digital fabrication technologies, as time is saved at the front-end and new file-to-factory protocols can be taken advantage of. Most significantly perhaps, scripting as a computing program overlay enables the tool user (designer) to become the new tool maker (software engineer). Though scripting is not new to design, it is only recently that it has started to be regarded as integral to the designer's skill set rather than a technical speciality. Many designers are now aware of its potential, but remain hesitant. This book treats scripting not only as a technical challenge, requiring clear description, guidance and training, but also, and more crucially, answers the question as to why designers should script in the first place, and what the cultural and theoretical implications are. This book: Investigates the application of scripting for productivity, experimentation and design speculation. Offers detailed exploration of the scripting of Gaudí's final realised design for the Sagrada Família, leading to file-to-factory digital fabrication. Features projects and commentary from over 30 contemporary scripting leaders, including Evan Douglis, Marc Fornes, Sawako Kaijima, Achim Menges, Neri Oxman, Casey Reas and Hugh Whitehead of Foster + Partners.

This open access volume reveals the hidden power of the script we read in and how it shapes and drives our minds, ways of thinking, and cultures. Expanding on the Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis (i.e., the idea that language affects the way we think), this volume proposes the “Script Relativity Hypothesis” (i.e., the idea that the script in which we read affects the way we think) by offering a unique perspective on the effect of script (alphabets, morphosyllabaries, or multi-scripts) on our attention, perception, and problem-solving. Once we become literate, fundamental changes occur in our brain circuitry to accommodate the new demand for resources. The powerful effects of literacy have been demonstrated by research on literate versus illiterate individuals, as well as cross-scriptal transfer, indicating that literate brain networks function differently, depending on the script being read. This book identifies the locus of differences between the Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans, and between the East and the West, as the neural underpinnings of literacy. To support the “Script Relativity Hypothesis”, it reviews a vast corpus of empirical studies, including anthropological accounts of human civilization, social psychology, cognitive psychology, neuropsychology, applied linguistics, second language studies, and cross-cultural communication. It also discusses the impact of reading from screens in the digital age, as well as the impact of bi-script or multi-script use, which is a growing trend around the globe. As a result, our minds, ways of thinking, and cultures are now growing closer together, not farther apart.

One type of analysis cannot fit every play, nor does one method of interpretation suit every theatre artist or collaborative team. This is the first text to combine traditional and non-traditional models, giving students a range of tools with which to approach different kinds of performance.

An inside look at a "no-excuses" charter school that reveals this educational model’s strengths and weaknesses, and how its approach shapes students Silent, single-file lines. Detention for putting a head on a desk. Rules for how to dress, how to applaud, how to complete homework. Walk into some of the most acclaimed urban schools today and you will find similar recipes of behavior, designed to support student achievement. But what do these “scripts” accomplish? Immersing readers inside a “no-excuses” charter school, Scripting the Moves offers a telling window into an expanding model of urban education reform. Through interviews with students, teachers, administrators, and parents, and analysis of documents and data, Joanne Golann reveals that such schools actually dictate too rigid a level of social control for both teachers and their predominantly low-income Black and Latino students. Despite good intentions, scripts constrain the development of important interactional skills and reproduce some of the very inequities they mean to disrupt. Golann presents a fascinating, sometimes painful, account of how no-excuses schools use scripts to regulate students and teachers. She shows why scripts were adopted, what purposes they serve, and where they fall short. What emerges is a complicated story of the benefits of scripts, but also their limitations, in cultivating the tools students need to navigate college and other complex social institutions—tools such as flexibility, initiative, and ease with adults. Contrasting scripts with tools, Golann raises essential questions about what constitutes cultural capital—and how this capital might be effectively taught. Illuminating and accessible, Scripting the Moves delves into the troubling realities behind current education reform and reenvisions what it takes to prepare students for long-term success.

This book provides a clear-sighted analysis which suggests that architectural design may yet shape and order the future of cities. A clear argument that emerges is that to retain their future agency, architects must understand the contours and ecologies of practice that constitute the global system of architectural production.

Today’s design professionals are faced with challenges on all fronts. They need not only to keep in step with rapid technological changes and the current revolution in design and construction processes, but to lead the industry. This means actively seeking to innovate through design research, raising the bar in building performance and adopting advanced technologies in their practice. In a constant drive to improve design processes and services, how is it possible to implement innovations? And, moreover, to assimilate them in such a way that design, methods and technologies remain fully integrated? Focusing on innovations in architecture, this book covers new materials and design methods, advances in computational design practices, innovations in building technologies and construction techniques, and the integration of research with design. Moreover, it discusses strategies for integrating innovation into design practices, risks and economic impacts. Through numerous case studies, it illustrates how innovations have been implemented on actual architectural projects, and how design and technical innovations are used to improve building performance, as well as design practices in cutting-edge architectural and engineering firms. Projects of all scales and building types are discussed in the book, ranging from small-scale installations, academic and commercial buildings to large-scale mixed-use, healthcare, civic, academic, scientific research and sports facilities. Work from design firms around the globe and of various scales is discussed in the book, including for example Asymptote Architecture, cepezed, CO Architects, Consarc Architects, FAAB Architektura, Gerber Architekten, HOK, IDOM-ACXT, MAD Architects, Morphosis Architects, SDA | Synthesis Design + Architecture, Studiotrope, Perkins+Will, Richter Dahl Rocha & Associés, Snøhetta, Rob Ley Studio, Trahan Architects, UNStudio and Zaha Hadid Architects, among many others.

This volume looks at facets of cultural interactions between India and Thailand---two historically significant countries of the South East Asian region. For the first time a comprehensive discussion on historical and contemporary cultural interactions between Indian and Thailand has been attempted in this volume. Asianization has become an important contemporary concept and, in this context, understanding cultural exchange within Asia is an important exercise. The chapters in this volume include contributions from noted scholars based in India and Thailand on different areas of cultural exchange: from religion, to art, artefacts, clothing, music---especially Indian classical music, cuisine, and the contemporary use of shared civilizational tools in the cultural diplomacy of both countries. Written in a lucid and accessible language, the chapters in this insightful volume are of interest to academics and researchers of cultural studies, Asian studies, development studies, modern Asian history, policy makers and general readers.

This book presents a contrastive analysis of various forms of address used in English and Italian from a cultural semantics perspective. The analysis investigates the different cultural values underlying address practices in English and Italian and emphasizes the risks of miscommunication caused by differences in intercultural interactions.