Released October 2009

Digital Architecture: Passages Through Hinterlands, is a collection of the latest, provocative projects from the field of digitally-enabled architecture. Oscillating between the analog and the digital, from concept to realisation this is a book that maps process.

The book covers a spectrum of London’s leading graduates and young practices, featuring projects from the Architectural Association, Bartlett School of Architecture (UCL), University of Westminster and Royal College of Art, and case studies and interviews with architects including Amanda Levete Architects, Plasma Studio, JDS Architects, sixteen* (makers), Horhizon, marcosandmarjan, Mette Ramsgard Thomsen, Philip Beesley, David Greene, Samantha Hardingham, Usman Haque and Neil Spiller.

I’m pleased to announce that “Digital Architecture: Passages Through Hinterlands” is now available here. It has been co-Authored by myself and Sara Shafiei. Book design Emily Chicken and Edited by Joanna Lee.

Abstract

Designers do not require the use of the most advanced electrical, mechanical & computational engineering to build highly sophisticated interactive devices, art & architecture. Instead what is crucial is that the conceptual framework within which they are conceived has a thorough understanding of interaction.

A common current misconception fostered by so called ‘human computer interaction’ design is that by giving functional devices, or aesthetic works of art & architecture, the ability to ‘React’ in some way to the stimuli of a ‘User’, qualifies this artefact as ‘Interactive’. Such an over simplification trivialises the powerful & productive quality of interaction.

This paper insists on Interactivity as a more productive & advanced form of Reactivity, & explains the process of interaction as a conversational activity between participants. The conversational model is examined through this authors recent art installation & reflects on the powerful precedent Gordon Pask provides for understanding interaction through the experimental machines
that he built to embody his Conversation Theories.

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Bob Sheil (Editor)

The illusive and uncertain world of translating ideas into matter is a negotiation between the ideal and the real and a central preoccupation of architectural production. By invading the toolbox of digital fabrication, design has transgressed into protocols of manufacturing previously the domain of other disciplines and skills sets. Craft, assembly and installation, once the realm of trades, are qualities that are now dependent upon design information and its status as an instruction to make. The ensuing loop between the physical and tactile, the imaginary and speculative, has defined a new expectation in making architecture as a construct that is part real, part ideal.

Bartlett Designs: Speculating with Architecture

Iain Borden (Editor)

Bartlett Designs: Speculating With Architecture is a collection of the very best of this student work from the last decade. Through a detailed presentation of over 170 student projects, each succinctly explained by the individual tutors concerned, the book shows how architectural designs and ideas can creatively address some of the world’s most pressing urban and social problems through buildings and other forms of architectural invention. The wide range of projects on show deal inventively with such important issues as cultural identity, housing, climate change, health and public space, as well as architectural concerns with the imagination of exciting forms and aesthetic languages.

Interactive Architecture

Michael Fox & Miles Kemp

In Interactive Architecture, authors Michael Fox and Miles Kemp introduce us to a brave new world where design pioneers are busy creating environments that not only facilitate interaction between people, but also actively participate in their own right. These spaces able to reconfigure themselves in response to human stimuli will literally change our worlds by addressing our ever-evolving individual, social, and environmental needs. In other words, it’s time to stop asking what architecture is and start asking what it can do.

Sensing Space

Nadine Heinich & Franziska Eidner

To what extent can the integration of new technologies allow us to create spaces that move us, and in which we feel in the best case significantly more at home? Can architecture thus provide appropriate answers to the new needs of a mobile, globally networked society? What does “home” mean in the twenty-first century? What is really meant by “interactive” or “intelligent” architectures?

Sensing Space presents projects, experiments and perspectives on architectures and spaces of the future from, among others, Dunne & Raby, G TECTS, Ruairi Glynn, J. Mayer H., Usman Haque, Toyo Ito, Cedric Price, realities:united, and Adam Somlai-Fischer.

Propagaciones

Criptonita

Ya esta disponible el libro PROPAGACIONES: nuevos escenarios y campos de investigación tecnológica, editado por (Cpt) Criptonita. Un libro que aborda las transformaciones socioculturales y arquitectónicas originadas por el desarrollo tecnológico moderno.Son 144 de con colaboraciones de Stelarc, Neil Gaiman, Ruairi Glynn, Ciro Najle, Sergio Araya, Martin Hemberg etc.