The Metapolis Dictionary Of Advanced Architecture

A dictionary for a world whose cities are linked by fiber optic cables and whose citizens are virtually global, a world where airports are meeting places and meetings take place via web conference, the Metapolis Dictionary of Advanced Architecture in the Information Age.

Publisher description

During the last 30 years, Advanced Architecture has consolidated an interactive and informational logic that differs from that of Modernity and Postmodernity. This logic is threefold; it is modulated through three coexisting protocols -modes of action- whose peaks of intensity occur in three different decades: Conformative Protocols (1990-2000), Distributive Protocols (2000-2010) and Expansive Protocols (2010-2020). This work proposes a threefold cultural narrative whose interactive and informational logic differs from that of modernity and postmodernity. It positions three different ethos by critically approaching the architectural side of a cultural mutation that has been affecting the Western experimental areas of knowledge and practice since the end of the last century. A transformative process constituted by a constellation of transdisciplinary manifestations, accelerations, turns, shortcuts and clusterizations that by no means can be read under one single epistemological umbrella. In this sense, rather than approaching the practice of architecture focusing on its disciplinary inner specificity, this book approaches the research of experimental architecture focusing on its extra-disciplinary entanglements. It argues that a vast multiplicity of fields of knowledge participates in a cultural endeavour modulated through three protocols -forms of action- that singularize three decades: Conformative Protocols (1990-2000), Distributive Protocols (2000-2010) and Expansive Protocols (2010-2020). These three periods shouldn’t be read as three hermetic and concatenated monades, but as three different modulations of the same narrative, that is, as three overlapping and coexisting systems whose peaks of intensity occur in three different decades. However, the main purpose of this book is not limited to unveiling the ethos of these three conjugations. It also aims at using this framework as a “time-field”, a narrative map that moves from the classificatory to the cartographical in order to vectorize the last 30 years of experimental architecture. In this sense, this book argues that this threefold set of protocols represents the progressive attempt to constitute critical interiorities “looking for” and “produced through” interactions that are increasingly more intimate and whose agents are increasingly more diverse. A tendency oriented towards the consolidation of an “intimacy between strangers” that highly resonates with the cultural and technological landscape in which experimental architecture operates.

Es bien sabido que la arquitectura es un tipo muy especifico de arte, de ciencia o de acto etico,porque los edificios, las ciudades y los territorios son artefactos fisicos y sociales, no representaciones «virtuales», como sucede en el cine, en la literatura, etc. Mijail Bajtin era consciente de esta especificidad cuando afirmaba que la arquitectura, «toda la arquitectura», solamente tiene «sujetos esteticos potenciales», no «heroes esteticos reales».1 Sin embargo, estas cualidades especificas de la arquitectura no significan que «el proyecto arquitectonico virtual», es decir, un proyecto aun no construido, aun no usado, sea real. - See more at: http://ebooks.upc.edu/product/arquitectura-y-virtualidad-architecture-virtuality#sthash.qKiK1LUK.dpuf

Polemics and reflections on how to bridge the gap between what architecture actually is and what architects want it to be. Architecture depends—on what? On people, time, politics, ethics, mess: the real world. Architecture, Jeremy Till argues with conviction in this engaging, sometimes pugnacious book, cannot help itself; it is dependent for its very existence on things outside itself. Despite the claims of autonomy, purity, and control that architects like to make about their practice, architecture is buffeted by uncertainty and contingency. Circumstances invariably intervene to upset the architect's best-laid plans—at every stage in the process, from design through construction to occupancy. Architects, however, tend to deny this, fearing contingency and preferring to pursue perfection. With Architecture Depends, architect and critic Jeremy Till offers a proposal for rescuing architects from themselves: a way to bridge the gap between what architecture actually is and what architects want it to be. Mixing anecdote, design, social theory, and personal experience, Till's writing is always accessible, moving freely between high and low registers, much like his suggestions for architecture itself.

Ugly, Useless, Unstable Architectures traces productive intersections between architecture and the discourses of Post-Structuralism and New Materialism. It investigates how their unique ‘ontological regimes’ can be mobilised to supersede the classical framework that still informs both the production and the evaluation of architecture. Throughout its three main chapters, this enquiry challenges one of the most prevalent tropes of architectural assessment: Beauty, Utility and Stability. Author Miguel Paredes Maldonado critically unpacks the spatial and operational qualities of these three idealised concepts, before setting out an alternative framework of spatial practice that draws from Gilles Deleuze’s post-structuralist take on the production of the real and Manuel DeLanda’s model-based branch of New Materialism. This book reads and situates a series of spatial works through the lens of this critical methodology to contest the conceptual aspects traditionally underpinning architectural ‘value’. It posits that architecture can operate as a continuous, generative spectrum encompassing a broad range of potential configurations. Written for academics and students in architectural theory, design and contemporary philosophical thought alike, this book should appeal to a wide audience.

The Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia calls its 8th Advanced Architecture Contest titled “Design for Living,” an opportunity for a global reflection to rethink human habitats where 126 proposals from all around the world help to shape our understanding of contemporary design and architecture. This effort offers the opportunity for a global reflection to rethink human habitats, at a time when the fight for life and climate allows us to consider how we would like to live in the coming decades. We like to think that each person’s life begins at home, which is the center of their universe and the origin of their social interactions. During the pandemic, we had been confined to our homes and they have become microcities where we live, work and rest, connected to the world through information networks. So, after this experience, how do we imagine the future for our living environment? The contest encourages participants to propose a design related to their way of life, at the scale that most interests them from our bodies to the city, anywhere in the world, and that reflects different cultural, environmental, economic or social conditions. In total, the competition received 193 proposals from all around the world and the book includes all the rules and results of the competition, the 33 members of the international jury and the images and information of 126 selected projects. Seen as a whole, this effort serves to build a contemporary vision of the conditions that are currently shaping design and architecture and will continue to shape it in the following years.

Studio environments can be defined as multi-dimensional integrated production spaces where basic design trainings take place and where design issues including theoretical notions such as sociological, political, phenomenological, and other dimensions are discussed. Present approaches within the literature and social media on this topic gives cause for students to evaluate their future professions over finished and pictorial products rather than ontological and processual means. While there are many resources available on the present approaches of aesthetics and visuality of interior spaces, there is not much research available on new design methodologies, related design processes, and new applied methods in interior arcitecture. Based on different contexts, these methods of design practice have the potential to enrich design processes and create multiple discussion platforms within project studios as well as other design media. These different representations and narration methods for research in the context of interior architecture can be effectively used in design processes. The Handbook of Research on Methodologies for Design and Production Practices in Interior Architecture proposes new design methodologies and related design processes and introduces new applied method approaches while presenting alternative methods that have been used within design studios in the field of interior architecture. The chapters deal with four major sections: the design process and interdiciplinary approaches; then scenario development and content; followed by material, texture, and atmosphere; and concluding with new approaches to design. While highlighting topics such as spatial perception, design strategies, architectural atmosphere, and design-thinking, this book is of interest to architects, interior designers, practitioners, stakeholders, researchers, academicians, and students looking for advanced research on the new design metholodologies and processes for interior architecture.