While mathematics in architecture has historically referenced notions of order, proportion, and ideal form, the discipline of mathematics itself has shifted to encompass uncertainty, incompleteness, relativity, and chaos towards a situation in which truth itself is elusive. This move stems in part from an engagement with real phenomena, in which natural systems were shown to behave non-linearly and unpredictably. In architecture, while computational developments enabling dynamic and variable modeling have been subsumed into our culture of design and production, a new kind of idealism has emerged.
Formally prolific and inherently multiplicitous, this book proposes algorithmic truth and statistical outcomes over predetermined objectives; it signifies a retreat away from reality and back towards abstraction and simulation in the smooth space of possibility. Meanwhile, the consequences of uncertainty have pervaded our culture to its core. Recovering from the initial high of fractal and random geometrical proficiency, architecture is just beginning to re-embrace the underlying issues embedded within this contemporary mathematics: uncertainty, unpredictability, chance, recursion, wildness, and informality. Contributors: Cecil Balmond, Mario Carpo, Lily Chi + Adrian Lewis, Dana Cupkova + Kevin Pratt, Tom Fecht, Francois Roche, Jenny Sabin, Anthony Vidler and others.
CONTENTS:
- Refocusing the Euclidean Horizon / Tom Fecht
- Instruments of Thought: Another Classical Tradition / Bernard Cache
- The Grotesque Body and the Post-Humanist Subject / Val Warke
- The Deformation of Francesco de Marchi / Caroline O'Donell
- Error and Generation / James Siena
- Material Analog and the Impurity of Form / Jenny E. Sabin
- 1: Whatever, The Collapse of Scalar Thinking / Mark Morris
- Dinner with Friends / Jerry Wells and Arthurs Ovaska
- Challenge the Order / Maria Hurtado de Mendoza
- Crocheting Algorithms / Gisela Baurmann and Daina Taimina
- Parametricism, Digital Scholasticism, and the Decline of Visuality / Mario Carpo
- Digital Remediation / Michael Young
- Fo' Sho: A Conversation on Uncertainty / Shohei Shigematsu
- Fuzzy Metrics: Dana Cupkova and Kevin Pratt
- Predictability of the Atmosphere / Gang Chen
- Bio-Mathematics: Experimentation on Human Park / R&Sie(n), Françoise Roche
- ARCH-Games, MATH-Games Archie B. Mackenzie
- A Strategy of Posing Question / Anthony Vidler
- T-h-i-c-k-e-n-i-n-g / Joseph Choma
Publisher: Actar
Pages: 196
Dimensions: 8.9 x 7.8 x 0.7 inches
Language: English
ISBN: 978-0-9785061-2-4
