Rethinking Technology: A Reader in Architectural Theory

by Braham; William W.

• ISBN13: 9780415346542
• ISBN10: 0415346541
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2006-12-26
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

This book will be an essential reference for all students of architecture, design and the built environment. It provides a convenient single source for all the key texts in the fast developing discipline of the philosophy of technology. It focuses on the interplay between technology and society and considers the impact of technology on fields as diverse as: art and visual culture; politics, the environment, gender and the hottest topic of all in today's digitally mediated world - the promise of a virtual future inside the fluid 'space' of the computer.Each section is introduced with a brief critical commentary, situating the readings in a historical and theoretical context. The collection draws on the work of many of the key figures in twentieth century philosophy and cultural theory, including Martin Heidegger, Walter Benjamin, Michel Foucault, Marshall McLuhan, Jean Baudrillard and Paul Virilio as well as a range of writers at the cutting-edge of contemporary digital culture such Manuel de Landa, Marcos Novak and Hubert Dreyfus.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. viii
Acknowledgments	p. ix
Introduction	p. xii
The Art and Craft of the Machine	p. 1
Manifesto of Futurist Architecture	p. 17
Paleotechnic and Neotechnic	p. 22
Engineer's Aesthetic and Architecture	p. 32
Construction. Industry. Architecture	p. 37
Architecture: The Expression of the Materials and Methods of our Times	p. 42
4D Time Lock	p. 46
Architecture in the Industrial Age	p. 51
The House as an Organic Structure	p. 55
Technical Syncretism and Toward an Organic Ideology	p. 57
Biotechnics: Functional Design and the Vegetable World	p. 63
On Correalism and Biotechnique: A Definition and Test of a New Approach to Building Design	p. 66
Industrialization as a Fundamental Event	p. 80
The Assembly Line and Scientific Management	p. 83
Technology and Architecture	p. 113
The Doom Manifesto	p. 115
Survival Through Design	p. 117
Seven Theses	p. 127
The Biological Analogy	p. 129
Functionalism and Technology	p. 138
Organics	p. 148
The Selfconscious Process	p. 151
Housing: New Look and New Outlook	p. 161
A Home is not a House	p. 167
Comprehensive Propensities	p. 176
What is the Systems Approach?	p. 181
Experiment is an Inevitable	p. 188
Microevent/Microenvironment	p. 195
Velocity Population	p. 203
Function Follows Form (Structure Before Performance)	p. 207
The "Industrial Revolution" in the Home: Household Technology and Social Change in the Twentieth Century	p. 213
The Philosophy of Metabolism	p. 229
What Remains of the Analogy? The History and Science of the Artificial	p. 244
Symbolic and Literal Aspects of Technology	p. 265
Organisms and Mechanisms, Metaphors of Architecture	p. 270
The Patterns of Innovation and Change	p. 290
Technology Transfer	p. 294
Mixing Humans and Nonhumans Together: The Sociology of a Door-Closer	p. 308
Some Characteristics of a New Concept of Technology	p. 325
Organic and Mechanical	p. 337
Shearing	p. 350
Speculations on Structures and Services	p. 354
Machinic Heterogenesis	p. 358
Time in Office Design	p. 373
The Third Interval	p. 375
Techniques: Network Spin, and Diagrams	p. 384
A Theory of Ecological Design	p. 388
Digital Semper	p. 396
Deleuze and the Use of the Genetic Algorithm in Architecture	p. 407
Surface Architecture	p. 413
A Brief History of the Industrial Revolution	p. 421
E-Bodies, E-Buildings, E-Cities	p. 426
Changing Speeds	p. 437
Space of Flows, Space of Places: Materials for a Theory of Urbanism in the Information Age	p. 440
Bibliography	p. 457
Index	p. 460
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