Theory of Arch 1 (lectures and discussion, term 1) and Theory of Arch 2 (seminar, term 2) are sequential courses, and both will consist of lectures and seminar-like discussions throughout both terms.  While it is possible to take ThArch 1 during the first semester and not ThArch2 during the second, I would recommend not to take ThArch 2 in the second semester without taking ThArch 1 in the first, as the course in the second semester will build upon work done during the first. (Students will be allowed to join ThArch 2 without having followed ThArch 1, but they may be asked to do some supplemental work at the start of the second term, to catch up).    

 

Taken together, Theory of Architecture 1 and 2 aim to present a comprehensive survey of computational design history and theory from around 1945 to this day, with emphasis on the 1990s and on contemporary developments.  This survey will be mostly chronological, with the first term covering events till the late 1990s and the second term covering the last 20 years and contemporary topics, problems, and perspectives.

 

GENERAL COURSE DESCRIPTION (applies to ThArch1 and ThArch2):

 

These two courses will assess the present state of computer-based design by situating today's digital turn within the long duration of the history of cultural technologies.  The first course will start by describing the technical logics of hand-making, mechanical reproductions, and digital making, highlighting the differences between digital variability, manual and artisanal variations, and the mechanical mass-production of identical copies.  It will focus on some instances of identical reproduction that were crucial in architectural history, and particularly on the early modern invention of architectural notations and of architectural authorship (the rise of the ‘Albertian paradigm’ in the Renaissance), and on the modernist principle of standardization in the 20th century.  It will then outline a brief history of the digital turn and of its theoretical and technological premises: starting with a brief survey of the "prehistory of the digital" in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, highlighting the roles of Wiener's cybernetics and the first steps of Artificial Intelligence up to and including works of Cedric Price, Gordon Pask, and Nicholas Negroponte; then discussing decline and fall of technological optimism in the 1970s and the onset of the so-called "winter of artificial intelligence."  It will then focus on the turning point of the early 1990s: the legacies of Post-Modernism, Deconstructivism and the invention of the Deleuzian Fold; works of Bernard Cache and Greg Lynn; the rise of the spline-dominated environment in the late 1990s (Gehry, Catia, and technical history of splines and NURBS); the transition from free-form, topology and digital formalism to mass-customization and non-standard seriality.

 

The second term will start with a brief recap of topics discusses in the first term, then pursue the same historiographic timeline starting from around year 2000: the burst of the dotcom bubble, the re-invention of the "participatory web" (the Web 2.0) in the early 2000s, and more recent developments in digital interactivity, participatory making and building information modelling (BIM), followed by a discussion of general problems of digital authorship ("from mass-customization to mass-collaboration").  ThArch2 will then discuss the present state of digital design theory and computation, and particularly the cultural and epistemological implication of Big Data, recent developments in artificial intelligence and machine learning, and their consequences for the making of form (the legacy of the post-modern sciences of complexity, emergence and self-organizing systems; cellular automata, generative algorithms, simulation, optimization, material computation, bio-computing, and discretization).  Particular attention will be devoted to recent developments in non-standard robotic assembly, on research on "computational discretism" currently pursued at the Bartlett School of Architecture, and elsewhere; and on the politics and social implication of post-parametric design computing. 

 

 

TEACHING METHOD:

 

Both courses will be based on the instructor's presentations, in the format of academic lectures; each lecture will be followed by a round-table discussion.  It is expected that we shall be able to invite a number of guests speakers (either in person or on-line) to present topics derived from their own research or practice.  The timing of these invitations will depend on the guest speaker's availability, so these presentations may not be in sync with the chronological timeline covered by the instructor's own presentations.  Students will be asked to make an effort to reconstruct an orderly sequence of topics and content in spite of some accidental disorder in the sequence of the guest speakers' talks. 

 

SYLLABUS AND SCHEDULES:

 

A 2.5-hour session will be held every two weeks, with extended discussion sessions on days to be determined throughout the two terms, when students may be asked to prepare formal presentations.  Itemized syllabus to follow asap.  Tentative schedule : classes on alternate Mondays, 18:00-20:30, starting  on monday 7 march 2022

 

 

 

Basic Bibliography

 

1 - Textbooks for the course:

Mario Carpo, The Second Digital Turn. Design beyond intelligence (Cambridge : MIT Press, 2017)

---, The Alphabet and the Algorithm (Cambridge : MIT Press, 2011)

---,  The Digital Turn in Architecture, 1992-2012.  An AD Reader (Chicester : Wiley, 2012)

 

2 - Additional readings:

 

---, "Rise of the Machines. Mario Carpo on Robotic Construction." Art Forum 58, 7 (2020): 172-79, 235

 

---, "Digitally Intelligent Architecture Has Little to Do with Computers (and Even Less with Their Intelligence)" GTA Papers (Zurich, ETH), 3 (2019) : 112-120.  On line publication forthcoming.

 

---, "Republics of Makers," in Imminent Commons: Urban Questions for the Near Future, Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism 2017, edited by Alejandro Zaera-Polo and Hyungmin Pai, 302-09 (Barcelona : Actar, 2017). Also on line at http://www.e-flux.com/architecture/positions/175265/republics-of-makers/

---, "The Alternative Science of Computation," E-Flux, New York (electronic publication, June 2017: http://www.e-flux.com/architecture/artificial-labor/142274/the-alternative-science-of-computation/)

---, "Breaking the Curve. Big Data and Digital Design."  Artforum 52,6 (2014): 168-173. 

 

3 - Additional sources to be found in:

Gilles Retsin (ed.), AD 258 (2019), Discrete: Reappraising the Digital in Architecture

Molly Wright Steenson, Architectural Intelligence: How Designers and Architects Created the Digital Landscape (Cambridge, MA : MIT Press, 2017)

Daniel Cardoso Lach, Builders of the Vision. Software and the Imagination of Design (New York : Routledge, 2015)

Pablo-Lorenzo Eiroa and Aaron Sprecher, eds., Architecture In Formation (New York and Abingdon, UK : Routledge, 2013) 

Rivka and Robert Oxman, eds., Theories of the Digital in Architecture (New York and Abingdon, UK : Routledge, 2013)

Marie-Ange Brayer and Frédéric Migayrou, eds., Naturalizing Architecture (Orléans : Frac Center and éditions HYX, 2103)

 

 

 

 

 

 

> Comments English

 

 

ThArch1 :  Registration (enrollment):

Formal registration (for validation, marking and credits) is limited to 40 participants. Priority will be given to architecture students; students from other institutes are welcome so long as there are places.  Non enrolled students are welcome to audit at will (within limits determined by room capacity; with no limits if on line)

Registration is open until two weeks before the start of classes (i.e. until 16 September)  and students will be informed of acceptance at latest one week before the start of classes. 

 

ThArch 2 : Registration (enrollment):

Formal Registration (for validation, marking, and credits) is limited to 30  participants;  non enrolled students are welcome to audit at will (within limits determined by room capacity; with no limits if on line).  Priority for registration will be given to architecture students having successfully completed ThArch1.

Further ranking is made by institute affiliation and semester-level. Students from other institutes are welcome so long as there are places.

 Registration is open until two weeks before the start of classes in the second term (i.e. until 14 February) and students will be informed of acceptance at latest one week before the start of classes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Exam, summer session (emailed and posted on 1 july, 9 am) 

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to all enrolled :

dear all,  this is your exam assignment :     write an essay titled :   The Best or Worst Architectural Theory of the Last Thirty Years    format : max 1500 words, no minimum.    instructions: you must choose ONE recent architectural idea, either because you like it, or because you dislike it particularly, and explain your choice.  by idea, or theory, i mean: a conceptual argument, or set of arguments (ie not a building, not a drawing).  ideally, you should relate your comments to topics and issues discussed in this class during the term; but you may be as personal, or impersonal, as you like.  you may (but do not have to) include one image in the document.  the image must be pasted in your document (ie no attachments, no URL links)
send the document to me (mario.carpo@gmail.com) by monday 4 july in the evening, in this format : one document (MS word or PDF) attached to one email, with the email title formatted as follows :  ArchTh2 followed by your family name. 
have fun!   m.-

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The default mode of validation for ThArch2 will be an exam (a dissertation of around 1,500 words on an assigned topic, to be submitted within 48 hours from the moment the topic is posted; date of the exam, at the end of the term, to be determined asap).  Alternatively, some students in ThArch2 may choose to write a research paper, on a topic to be agreed with the instructor.  This option is recommended for students having followed ThArch1 and ThArch2 sequentially and in full.T his paper may (but does not have to) be a development of the paper submitted at the end of term 1.

All word counts include foonotes but exclude bibliography, captions, and appendixes (documents, drawings, visuals and other multi-media supports if needed)

 

 

classes on 9 may, 10 may: ------

ArchTh2, classes next monday and tuesday

to all enrolled in ArchTh2 :

as mentioned, we have two classes next week, one as per schedule, one rescheduled from 21 march. both classes in lecture theater 1, 6pm.

monday 9 may 6pm:

this is the class that should have taken place in march.  it consists of a pre-recorded talk (the very same one i had already sent you in march, before the class was canceled) and a lecture at school.  i suggest you watch the video before coming to class, if you haven't done so yet, as my talk "live" will continue from where the video stops.

https://youtu.be/y04ZO7VbJMI

tuesday 10 may 6pm:

we have a guest speaker--whom most of you will know as he teaches at school.  Clemens Preisinger will come and tell us the story of Karamba3D, which he developed, and explain, in general terms, the logic of automated structural design.  Title of his talk:

"Computation and Structural Design: A history of Karamba3D"

find appended clemens's bio.  some readings on Karamba are in our folder on the "base"; you will find them here:

https://base.uni-ak.ac.at/cloud/index.php/apps/files/?dir=/2022S%20%E2%80%93%20S03528%20%E2%80%93%20Theory%20of%20Architecture%202/Karamba3D&fileid=11975422

see you on monday, and tuesday,

m.-

 

Clemens Preisinger, D.I. Dr. is a structural engineer and researcher. He started his career as a researcher at the Institute for Structural Concrete at the Technical University Vienna. Since 2008 Clemens is working for the structural engineering company Bollinger–Grohmann. During that time, he contributed to several research projects at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. There he currently heads the department 'Digital Simulation' which investigates possibilities to bring computational modelling techniques into early-stage architectural design. Since 2010 Clemens is developing the parametric, interactive Finite Element program ‘Karamba3D’ as a freelancer.

He holds a PhD in Structural Engineering from the Technical University Vienna.

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class on monday 4 april 6pm 

to all enrolled:

monday's class, as planned, will be devoted to an online talk by our invited guest speaker, professor matias del campo from taubman college, university of michigan.   matias will present his current research on the use of GAN for style transfer in architectural design.   see below matias's bio, a few readings,  and the usual zoom link.  see you on monday,

m.-

Dr. Matias del Campo is a registered architect, designer, and educator. He is an Associate Professor at Taubman College for Architecture and Urban Planning (University of Michigan) and director of the AR2IL – The Architecture and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. He is co-founder of the architecture practice SPAN with Dr. Sandra Manninger. Computational methodologies and philosophical inquiry inform their award-winning architectural designs. SPAN gained wide recognition for the award-winning Austrian Pavilion at the 2010 Shanghai World Expo and the new Brancusi Museum in Paris. He was awarded the Accelerate@CERN fellowship, the AIA Studio Prize, and elected to the board of directors of ACADIA. SPAN’s work is in the permanent collection of the FRAC, the MAK, the Benetton Collection, the Albertina, and several private collections.

Readings : 

Sublime Giant Machines (bibl. data forthcoming);
https://base.uni-ak.ac.at/cloud/index.php/apps/files/?dir=/2022S%20%E2%80%93%20S03528%20%E2%80%93%20Theory%20of%20Architecture%202&fileid=11561415
(note: you must log in to the base to download)

https://www.academia.edu/44435274/Towards_Hallucinating_Machines_Designing_with_Computational_Vision

https://www.academia.edu/43425578/A_Question_of_Style_Style_Artificial_Intelligence_and_Architecture

 

Schedule : classes on alternate mondays, 1800 to 2030, Hörsaal 1, dates as follows:

7 march, 14 march, 21 march, 4 april, 9 may, 23 may, 13 june

in the event of public health mandates, classes will seamlessly shift to online mode.