Architectural principles in the age of cybernetics / Christopher Hight.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hight, Christopher.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Architecture--Philosophy.

Architecture.

Humanism in architecture.

Ratio and proportion.

Physical Description:

vii, 239 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : Routledge, 2008.

Summary:

Architectural Principles in the Age of Cybernetics offers a theoretical account of the body, anthropomorphism and proportion in modern architecture, daringly bridging Renaissance and mid-twentieth century architecture with today's interest in post-humanism and digital design-in the process, radically challenging conventional modern architecture.

An innovative analysis of the mid-century interest in proportion by architects and writers such as Le Corbusier and Rudolf Wittkower reveals how these widespread but now mostly forgotten debates provided the intellectual terrain upon which recent and seemingly opposed work by architects and theorists ranging from Greg Lynn to Joseph Rykwert has been constructed. In doing so, the book transforms the understandings of contemporary architectural design and debate, raises new questions regarding modern architecture's relationship to the Renaissance and humanism, while relating modern architecture to its contemporary philosophical and technological context. The book argues that much of what we take to belong to a classical architectural tradition, such as the Vitruvian Figure, are far more recent constructions that helped formulate architecture's concepts and use of form, subjectivity and technology in the twentieth century. In turn, it suggests what might be at stake for architecture in today's post-cybernetic culture.

The book is written for an informed but non-specialized architectural audience, designed to appeal to professional architects, academics and students, by serving as a general introduction to central issues of architectural history, theory and design over the past fifty years while suggesting new formulations of what that history constitutes.

Contents:

Prologue: Infernal Returns 3

The Body of Architectural Knowledge 5

Chapter 2 The Phenomenal Origin of Architecture 15

Primal Identification 18

The Home of Man 20

The Decay of Modern Architecture 22

The Pathos of Phenomenology 29

Chapter 3 The Structural Continuities of Classicism 33

Classical Systems of Knowledge and Subjects 36

Gendered Bodies of Architecture 38

The Hidden Interior of Architecture 41

Modernity as "The End of the Classical" 44

The Paradoxes of Not-Modern Architecture 48

Post-Structural Problems 51

Chapter 4 Modulor Residues of History 55

Recalling the Modulor 57

The Residual Historicity of the Modulor 61

The Modulor as "One Example" 62

The Modulor as Vitruvius's Heir 64

Unfinished Business 67

Chapter 5 A Mid-Century Renaissance 71

Wittkower's Renaissance 73

A Paradigm Shift? 76

The Architectural Principles of the Modulor 77

Points of Emergence 79

The Rowe Effect 81

Diagrams of Discoursivity 88

Chapter 6 The Schema and the Diagram 91

The Modern Problem of Knowledge 93

The Schema and the Post-Kantian Subject 96

Neo-Kantian Networks, aka, Architectural History as Anthropological Epistemology 97

Proportion as a Modern Problem 100

The Subject of Architecture 103

Chapter 7 The Symbolic Strikes Back 111

The Mechanization of Life and Death 114

Researching the New Human: Giedion's Activities in the 1950s 117

Disputed Boundaries of Man and Animal 118

"Man" as "Animal Symbolicum" 121

The Netz-worked Body 125

Simian Architecture 128

A Manifesto for Equipoise 131

Chapter 8 Measured Response 135

Prehistory of the Golden Section 141

The Golden Section as a Natural Constant 143

A Measure of Empathy 147

The Golden Section as a Modern Quasi-Object 152

Chapter 9 Reflections of the Modulor 157

A World of Flow 162

The Ideal Average 164

Corrective Lenses 167

Post-War Anamorphorsis 170

Containment Protocols 179

Chapter 10 Measuring Vortices 183

Untimely Mediations 189

Aqueous Solutions and Conclusions 193.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 202-230) and index.

ISBN:

9780415384810

0415384818

9780415384827

0415384826

OCLC:

122337994