Summary

The Space Reader provides a highly pertinent and contemporary understanding of space for a new generation of students and architects. It espouses a definition of space that is heterogeneous (an object or system consisting of a diverse range of different items). An example of heterogeneous space, for instance, is Manhattan where complex and multiple social and technological conditions are overlaid. (This is to be contrasted with highly centralised and ordered Modernist cities.) With the onset of globalisation and the Web, heterogeneneous space, with its emphasis on differentiation, is more relevant to the contemporary condition, which encourages the mixing of space, than a much more static conception of Modernist space. This book foregrounds spatial issues and the potential of heterogeneous space through a threefold strategy: 1). Its compilation of seminal essays on the discourse of heterogeneous space. These are to include previously published key texts by Reyner Banham, Andrew Benjamin, Robin Evans, Jeff Kipnis and Henri Lefebvre, as well as new texts by important contemporary commentators, such as Mark Cousins, Werner Durth and Anthony Vidler. 2) By commenting on these seminal texts and drawing links between them. 3). By distilling from the first two efforts a contemporary outlook on a discourse of heterogeneous space that is of future significance.

Author Biography

Michael U Hensel

Dipl Ing Grad Dipl Des AA Architekt AKNW

Member OCEAN Research Network

Professor for Research by Design, AHO Oslo School of Architecture and Design

Director, Emergent Technologies and Design, Architectural Association School of Architecture, London

Innovation Fellow – UTS University of Technology Sydney

Board Member BIONIS (Biomimetics Network for Industrial Sustainability)

Michael U Hensel is an architect, researcher and writer. He is a member of the independent and

interdisciplinary research network OCEAN and a board member of BIONIS (the Biomimetics

Network for Industrial Sustainability). His writings and collaborative research and design work have

been published worldwide. He has lectured and taught worldwide and is currently Professor for

Research by Design at AHO, the Oslo School of Architecture and Design and Director of the

Emergent Technologies and Design masters programme at the Architectural Association in London.

Recent publications he co-edited include: AD Emergence: Morphogenetic Design Strategies (John

Wiley & Sons Limited, 2004); AD Techniques and Technologies in Morphogenetic Design (John Wiley

& Sons Limited, 2006); Morpho-Ecologies (AA Publications, 2006); AD Versatility and Vicissitude:

Performance in Morpho-Ecological Design (John Wiley & Sons Limited, 2008); Arch+ Vol. 188 Form

Follows Performance – Zur Wechselwirkung von Material, Struktur, Umwelt (Archplus Verlag, 2008).

He is currently working on a peer-reviewed journal on research by design and is an editorial board

member of AD (John Wiley & Sons Limited) and JBE (Journal of Bionic Engineering, Elsevier Scientific

Press).

www.ocean-designresearch.net

Christopher Hight

BA, BArch, MA, PhD

Assistant Professor, Rice School of Architecture, Rice University

Christopher Hight is an assistant professor at the Rice School of Architecture where he is pursuing

design research on the nexus of landscape, ecology and emerging forms of urbanisation. He has

been a Fulbright Scholar and obtained a masters degree in histories and theories of architecture

from the Architectural Association (AA), and a PhD from the London Consortium at the University of

London. He has taught in the Architectural Association’s Design Research Laboratory (DRL) and has

worked for the Renzo Piano Building Workshop. He was the co-editor of AD Collective Intelligence in

Design (John Wiley & Sons Limited, 2006) and has recently published a book on cybernetics, posthumanism,

formalism and post-World War II architectural design, Architectural Principles in the Age of Cybernetics (Routledge, 2008).

Achim Menges

AA Dipl (Hons) RIBA II

Professor for Computational Design

Director of the Institute for Computational Design, Faculty of Architecture, Stuttgart University

Studio Master Emergent Technologies and Design, Architectural Association School of Architecture,

London

Member OCEAN Research Network

Partner Emergence and Design Group

Achim Menges is Director of the Institute for Computational Design at Stuttgart University. He has

been teaching at the Architectural Association as Studio Master of the Emergent Technologies and

Design masters programme since 2002 and as Unit Master of Diploma Unit 4 from 2003 to 2006.

From 2005 to 2008 he was Professor for Form Generation and Materialisation at the HfG Offenbach

University for Art and Design in Germany.

Achim Menges’s research focuses on the development of integral design processes at the

intersection of evolutionary computation, parametric design, biomimetic engineering and computeraided

manufacturing that enable a highly articulated, performative built environment. His research

projects have been published and exhibited in Europe, Asia and the United States. He received the

FEIDAD (Far Eastern International Digital Architectural Design) Outstanding Design Award in 2002,

the FEIDAD Design Merit Award in 2003, the Archiprix International Award 2003, RIBA Tutor Price

2004, the International Bentley Educator of the Year Award 2005 and the ACADIA 2007 Award for

Emerging Digital Practice.

Recent publications he has co-edited include: AD Emergence: Morphogenetic Design Strategies (John

Wiley & Sons Ltd, 2004); AD Techniques and Technologies in Morphogenetic Design (John Wiley &

Sons Ltd, 2006); Morpho-Ecologies (AA Publications, 2006); AD Versatility and Vicissitude:

Performance in Morpho-Ecological Design (John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 2008); Arch+ Vol. 188 Form

Follows Performance – Zur Wechselwirkung von Material, Struktur, Umwelt (Archplus Verlag, 2008).

Foreword	p. 7
En route: Towards a Discourse on Heterogeneous Space beyond Modernist Space-Time and Post-Modernist Social Geography	p. 9
Questions of Space	p. 39
The Smooth and the Striated - The Mathematical Model	p. 44
Mass Absence	p. 52
Figures, Doors and Passages	p. 73
Towards A New Architecture	p. 97
From Object to Field: Field Conditions in Architecture and Urbanism	p. 118
An Introduction to Umwelt	p. 145
Environmental Management	p. 149
Putting Out the Fire with Gasoline Parables of Entropy and Homeostasis from the Second Machine Age to the Information Age	p. 159
Atmospheric Politics	p. 173
The Inside of Space: Some Issues Concerning Heterogeneity, the Interior and the Weather	p. 185
The Heterogeneous Space of Morpho-Ecologies	p. 195
Biographies	p. 216
Select Bibliography	p. 218
Index	p. 220
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

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