This Is Tomorrow exhibition catalogue (1956)

This Is Tomorrow was a seminal art exhibition in August 1956 at London’s Whitechapel Art Gallery, facilitated by curator Bryan Robertson. The core of the exhibition was the ICA Independent Group.

It has become an iconic exhibition notable not only for the arrival of the naming of Pop Art but also as a captured moment for the multi-disciplinary merging of the disciplines of art and architecture.

The exhibition included artists, architects, musicians and graphic designers working together in 12 teams—an example of multi-disciplinary collaboration that was still unusual. Each group took as their starting point the human senses and the theme of habitation.

The exhibition catalogue featured essays by Reyner Banham and Lawrence Alloway. McHale wrote the text for the page Are they Cultured? and it was intended to be featured with the McHale designed collage that got mispaginated in the catalogue.

Edited by Theo Grosby
Designed by Edward Wright

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Simon Sadler: Archigram: Architecture without Architecture (2005)

In the 1960s, the architects of Britain’s Archigram group and Archigram magazine turned away from conventional architecture to propose cities that move and houses worn like suits of clothes. In drawings inspired by pop art and psychedelia, architecture floated away, tethered by wires, gantries, tubes, and trucks. In Archigram: Architecture without Architecture, Simon Sadler argues that Archigram’s sense of fun takes its place beside the other cultural agitants of the 1960s, originating attitudes and techniques that became standard for architects rethinking social space and building technology. The Archigram style was assembled from the Apollo missions, constructivism, biology, manufacturing, electronics, and popular culture, inspiring an architectural movement—High Tech—and influencing the postmodern and deconstructivist trends of the late twentieth century.

Although most Archigram projects were at the limits of possibility and remained unbuilt, the six architects at the center of the movement, Warren Chalk, Peter Cook, Dennis Crompton, David Greene, Ron Herron, and Michael Webb, became a focal point for the architectural avant-garde, because they redefined the purpose of architecture. Countering the habitual building practice of setting walls and spaces in place, Archigram architects wanted to provide the equipment for amplified living, and they welcomed any cultural rearrangements that would ensue. Archigram: Architecture without Architecture—the first full-length critical and historical account of the Archigram phenomenon—traces Archigram from its rediscovery of early modernist verve through its courting of students, to its ascent to international notoriety for advocating the “disappearance of architecture.”

Publisher MIT Press, 2005
ISBN 0262693224, 9780262693226
242 pages

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Rainey, Poggi, Wittman (eds.): Futurism: An Anthology (2009)

In 1909, F.T. Marinetti published his incendiary Futurist Manifesto, proclaiming, “We stand on the last promontory of the centuries!!” and “There, on the earth, the earliest dawn!” Intent on delivering Italy from “its fetid cancer of professors, archaeologists, tour guides, and antiquarians,” the Futurists imagined that art, architecture, literature, and music would function like a machine, transforming the world rather than merely reflecting it. But within a decade, Futurism’s utopian ambitions were being wedded to Fascist politics, an alliance that would tragically mar its reputation in the century to follow.

Published to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the founding of Futurism, this is the most complete anthology of Futurist manifestos, poems, plays, and images ever to bepublished in English, spanning from 1909 to 1944. Now, amidst another era of unprecedented technological change and cultural crisis, is a pivotal moment to reevaluate Futurism and its haunting legacy for Western civilization.

Editors Lawrence Rainey, Christine Poggi, Laura Wittman
Publisher Yale University Press, 2009
Henry McBride Series in Modernism and Modernity
ISBN 0300088752, 9780300088755
Length 604 pages

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Marshall Long: Architectural Acoustics (2005)

Architectural Acoustics presents a comprehensive technical overview of the field at a level suitable for working practitioners as well as advanced undergraduate or introductory graduate architecture or engineering course. The book is structured as a logical progression through acoustic interactions. Beginning with an architectural history, it reviews the fundamentals of acoustics, human perception and reaction to sound, acoustic noise measurements and noise metrics, and environmental noise. It then moves into wave acoustics, sound and solid surfaces, sound in enclosed spaces, sound transmission loss, sound transmission in buildings, vibration and vibration isolation, noise transmission in floor systems, noise in mechanical systems, and sound attenuation in ducts. Chapters on specific design problems follow including treatment of multifamily dwellings, office buildings, rooms for speech, sound reinforcement systems, rooms for music, multipurpose rooms, auditoriums, sanctuaries, and studios and listening rooms. While providing a thorough overview of acoustics, it also includes the theory of loudspeaker systems and sound system modeling as well as an in-depth presentation of computer modeling, ray tracing and auralization. It will be particularly beneficial for architects and engineers working in fields where speech intelligibility, music appreciation, and noise isolation are critical.

Publisher Elsevier, 2006
Series: Applications of Modern Acoustics
ISBN 0124555519, 9780124555518
Length 844 pages

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Barry Blesser, Linda-Ruth Salter: Spaces Speak, Are You Listening? Experiencing Aural Architecture (2007)

We experience spaces not only by seeing but also by listening. We can navigate a room in the dark, and “hear” the emptiness of a house without furniture. Our experience of music in a concert hall depends on whether we sit in the front row or under the balcony. The unique acoustics of religious spaces acquire symbolic meaning. Social relationships are strongly influenced by the way that space changes sound. In Spaces Speak, Are You Listening?, Barry Blesser and Linda-Ruth Salter examine auditory spatial awareness: experiencing space by attentive listening. Every environment has an aural architecture.

The audible attributes of physical space have always contributed to the fabric of human culture, as demonstrated by prehistoric multimedia cave paintings, classical Greek open-air theaters, Gothic cathedrals, acoustic geography of French villages, modern music reproduction, and virtual spaces in home theaters. Auditory spatial awareness is a prism that reveals a culture’s attitudes toward hearing and space. Some listeners can learn to “see” objects with their ears, but even without training, we can all hear spatial geometry such as an open door or low ceiling.

Integrating contributions from a wide range of disciplines—including architecture, music, acoustics, evolution, anthropology, cognitive psychology, audio engineering, and many others—Spaces Speak, Are You Listening? establishes the concepts and language of aural architecture. These concepts provide an interdisciplinary guide for anyone interested in gaining a better understanding of how space enhances our well-being. Aural architecture is not the exclusive domain of specialists. Accidentally or intentionally, we all function as aural architects.

Publisher MIT Press, 2007
ISBN 0262026058, 9780262026055
Length 437 pages

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Gerda Ridler (ed.): Trans_Mission: Vadim Kosmatchof: Organic Solar Sculptures (2007) [English/German]

Der aus Moskau stammende Bildhauer Vadim Kosmatschof lebt und arbeitet seit 1980 in Deutschland und Österreich. Das Museum Ritter präsentiert hier eine Auswahl seiner aktuellen Projekte für den öffentlichen Raum in Bildern und Texten. In Fortsetzung der konstruktivistischen Tradition entwickelt Vadim Kosmatschof das Konzept der biomechanischen Skulptur. Dabei bezieht er neueste Entdeckungen der Biologie, Biomimetik und physikalischen Chemie mit ein.

“Trans_Mission” vermittelt natürliche Energieströme und integriert sie in den städtebaulichen Kontext. Kosmatschof zeigt in seinem großmaßstäblichen Projektzyklus, zu welch innovativen Formen und Typen die Anwendung natürlicher Prozesse und Phänomene auch in der Kunst führen kann. Seine subtilen Konstruktionen treibt eine Energie an, die der Photosynthese ähnlich ist. Sie reagieren mit Gestaltveränderung, Bewegung und Lichteffekten auf ihre aktuelle Umgebung. Fachbeiträge renommierter internationaler Experten beleuchten die kunsttheoretischen und naturwissenschaftlichen Aspekte dieser innovativen Arbeit.

Editor Museum Ritter – Gerda Ridler
Publisher Springer, 2007
ISBN 321170972X, 9783211709726
Length 134 pages

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Kostas Terzidis: Expressive Form: A Conceptual Approach to Computational Design (2003)

With the increased use of computers, architecture has found itself in the midst of a plethora of possible uses. This book combines theoretical enquiry with practical implementation offering a unique perspective on the use of computers related to architectural form and design. Notions of exaggeration, hybrid, kinetic, algorithmic, fold and warp are examined from different points of view: historical, mathematical, philosophical or critical. Generously illustrated, this book is a source of inspiration for students and professionals.

Publisher Taylor & Francis, 2003
ISBN 0415317436, 9780415317436
Length 90 pages

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Kostas Terzidis: Algorithmic Architecture (2006)

Why does the word design owe its origin to Latin and not Greek roots? Where do the limits of the human mind lie? How does ambiguity enter the deterministic world of computation? Who was Parmenides and why is his philosophy still puzzling today? This unique volume challenges the reader to tackle all these complex questions and more. Algorithmic Architecture is not a typical theory-based architectural book; it is not a computer programming or language tutorial book either. It contains a series of provocative design projects, and yet it is not just a design or graphic art book per se. Following the tradition of architecture as a conglomeration of various design fields – engineering, theory, art, and recently, computation – the challenge of this book is to present a concept that, like architecture, is a unifying theme for many diverse disciplines. An algorithm is not only a step-by-step problem-solving procedure, a series of lines of computer codes or a mechanistic linguistic expression, but is also an ontological construct with deep philosophical, social, design, and artistic repercussions. Consequently, this book presents many, various and often seemingly disparate points of view that lead to the establishment of one common theme; algorithmic architecture.

Publisher Architectural Press, 2006
ISBN 0750667257, 9780750667258
Length 159 pages

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Wolfgang Lefèvre (ed.): Picturing Machines 1400-1700 (2004)

Technical drawings by the architects and engineers of the Renaissance made use of a range of new methods of graphic representation. These drawings—among them Leonardo da Vinci’s famous drawings of mechanical devices—have long been studied for their aesthetic qualities and technological ingenuity, but their significance for the architects and engineers themselves is seldom considered. The essays in Picturing Machines 1400-1700 take this alternate perspective and look at how drawing shaped the practice of early modern engineering. They do so through detailed investigations of specific images, looking at over 100 that range from sketches to perspective views to thoroughly constructed projections.

In early modern engineering practice, drawings were not merely visualizations of ideas but acted as models that shaped ideas. Picturing Machines establishes basic categories for the origins, purposes, functions, and contexts of early modern engineering illustrations, then treats a series of topics that not only focus on the way drawings became an indispensable means of engineering but also reflect the main stages in their historical development. The authors examine the social interaction conveyed by early machine images and their function as communication between practitioners; the knowledge either conveyed or presupposed by technical drawings, as seen in those of Giorgio Martini and Leonardo; drawings that required familiarity with geometry or geometric optics, including the development of architectural plans; and technical illustrations that bridged the gap between practical and theoretical mechanics.

Publisher MIT Press, 2004
ISBN 0262122693, 9780262122696
Length 347 pages

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Volume 16: Engineering Society & Volume 17: Content Management (2008)

Volume 16: Engineering Society (2008, 2)

Just as there was a time before the book, there will also be a time after it. In this issue ‘The Last Book’ project is taken up, but as to the consequences of publishing exclusively online – the loss of filters such as the publisher, editor and publication costs – we can only guess. Yet it is clear that our centuries old house of knowledge is undergoing a fundamental renovation, beginning with the solid base of the library.

Volume 17: Content Management (2008, 3)

At the close of this era of expansion and surplus Volume speculates on one of the period’s emblematic inventions: Content Management, or the collecting, organizing and sharing of digital information. Our retrospective appraisal of recent developments in the managing of information offers inside into the ability of Content Management to serve the current realities of digital abundance and material shortage, and to protect both vast and extremely limited quantities.

Publisher: Archis Publishers

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Elizabeth Grosz: Architecture from the Outside. Essays on Virtual and Real Space (2001)

To be outside allows one a fresh perspective on the inside. In these essays, philosopher Elizabeth Grosz explores the ways in which two disciplines that are fundamentally outside each another—architecture and philosophy—can meet in a third space to interact free of their internal constraints. “Outside” also refers to those whose voices are not usually heard in architectural discourse but who inhabit its space—the destitute, the homeless, the sick, and the dying, as well as women and minorities.

Grosz asks how we can understand space differently in order to structure and inhabit our living arrangements accordingly. Two themes run throughout the book: temporal flow and sexual specificity. Grosz argues that time, change, and emergence, traditionally viewed as outside the concerns of space, must become more integral to the processes of design and construction. She also argues against architecture’s historical indifference to sexual specificity, asking what the existence of (at least) two sexes has to do with how we understand and experience space. Drawing on the work of such philosophers as Henri Bergson, Roger Caillois, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Luce Irigaray, and Jacques Lacan, Grosz raises abstract but nonformalistic questions about space, inhabitation, and building. All of the essays propose philosophical experiments to render space and building more mobile and dynamic.

Foreword by Peter Eisenman
Publisher: MIT Press, June 2001
ISBN: 0-262-57149-8, 978-0-262-57149-4

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Mario Carpo: Architecture in the Age of Printing. Orality, Writing, Typography, and Printed Images in the History of Architectural Theory (2001)

The discipline of architecture depends on the transmission in space and time of accumulated experiences, concepts, rules, and models. From the invention of the alphabet to the development of ASCII code for electronic communication, the process of recording and transmitting this body of knowledge has reflected the dominant information technologies of each period. In this book Mario Carpo discusses the communications media used by Western architects, from classical antiquity to modern classicism, showing how each medium related to specific forms of architectural thinking.

Carpo highlights the significance of the invention of movable type and mechanically reproduced images. He argues that Renaissance architectural theory, particularly the system of the five architectural orders, was consciously developed in response to the formats and potential of the new printed media. Carpo contrasts architecture in the age of printing with what preceded it: Vitruvian theory and the manuscript format, oral transmission in the Middle Ages, and the fifteenth-century transition from script to print. He also suggests that the basic principles of “typographic” architecture thrived in the Western world as long as print remained our main information technology. The shift from printed to digital representations, he points out, will again alter the course of architecture.

Translated by Sarah Benson
Publisher MIT Press, 2001
ISBN 0262032880, 9780262032889
Length 246 pages

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Michele Emmer (ed.): Mathematics and Culture II. Visual Perfection: Mathematics and Creativity (2005)

Creativity plays an important role in all human activities, from the visual arts to cinema and theatre, and in particular in science and mathematics .

This volume, published only in English in the series “Mathematics and Culture”, stresses the strong links between mathematics, culture and creativity in architecture, contemporary art, geometry, computer graphics, literature, theatre and cinema. So this book is designed not only for mathematicians but for all the people who have an interest in the various aspects of culture, both scientific and literary, with a special emphasis on the visual aspects.

Publisher Springer, 2005
ISBN 3540213686, 9783540213680
Length 203 pages

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Emily Thompson: The Soundscape of Modernity: Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in America, 1900-1933 (2004)

In this history of aural culture in early-twentieth-century America, Emily Thompson charts dramatic transformations in what people heard and how they listened. What they heard was a new kind of sound that was the product of modern technology. They listened as newly critical consumers of aural commodities. By examining the technologies that produced this sound, as well as the culture that enthusiastically consumed it, Thompson recovers a lost dimension of the Machine Age and deepens our understanding of the experience of change that characterized the era.

Reverberation equations, sound meters, microphones, and acoustical tiles were deployed in places as varied as Boston’s Symphony Hall, New York’s office skyscrapers, and the soundstages of Hollywood. The control provided by these technologies, however, was applied in ways that denied the particularity of place, and the diverse spaces of modern America began to sound alike as a universal new sound predominated. Although this sound—clear, direct, efficient, and nonreverberant—had little to say about the physical spaces in which it was produced, it speaks volumes about the culture that created it. By listening to it, Thompson constructs a compelling new account of the experience of modernity in America.

Publisher MIT Press, 2004
ISBN 0262701065, 9780262701068
Length 510 pages

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Wilhelm S. Wurzer (ed.): Panorama: Philosophies of the Visible (2002)

The new electronic age has seen a radical transition from book to screen, a development which has obscured the fact that it is not what we see which matters but how we see what we see. We live in a time when the visible needs to be retheorised. Panorama presents a broad analysis of philosophies of the visible in art and culture, particularly in painting, film, photography, and literature. The work of key philosophers–Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Levinas, Barthes, Blanchot, Foucault, Bataille, Derrida, Lyotard and Deleuze–is examined in the context of visibility, expressivity, the representational and the postmodern. Contributors: Zsuzsa Baross, Robert Burch, Alessandro Carrera, Dana Hollander, Lynne Huffer, Volker Kaiser, Reginald Lilly, Robert S. Leventhal, Janet Lungstrum, Ladelle McWhorter, Ludwig Nagl, Anne Tomiche, James R. Watson, Lisa Zucker.

Publisher Continuum International Publishing Group, 2002
ISBN 0826460046, 9780826460042
Length 254 pages

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