Category Archives: technology
Morphogenetic Metaphors in Architecture – The Quixotic Contributions of Conrad Waddington
For historians and theorists interested in the intersection of biology and architecture, the work of the British developmental embryologist Conrad Waddington is the physical equivalent of a black hole; important, yet allusive – better known through its affects, than from … Continue reading
Architectural Cyborgs – Nanotechnology and the Potential for Living Architecture
The real destiny of the machine [is] to merge itself with natural organisms. - Jack Burnham, Beyond Modern Sculpture, 1968 Prelude: In 1928, R. Buckminster Fuller presented the design for his Dymaxion House to the American Institute of Architects (AIA) … Continue reading
Function Follows Form: Rethinking the ‘Function’ of ‘Form’ in Architecture
“[Life] is a property of form, not matter, a result of the organization of matter rather than something that inheres in the matter itself. - Christopher Langton, Artificial Life, p. 41 “There is… a well-defined difference between the magical and … Continue reading
Domes, Films and Toys: The Role of Education in the Works of Bucky Fuller and Charles and Ray Eames
In Architecture or Techno-utopia: Politics After Modernism, Felicity Scott maps the migration of military technologies into the popular imagination, focusing specifically on how these technologies became potent tools for the counterculture of the 1960s. Not surprisingly, her lens is focused … Continue reading
Buckminster Fuller, Mixed Metaphors and the Radiolarian
With the introduction of “Buckyballs” and “Fullerenes” into the scientific lexicon in 1985, Fuller’s conquest of the molecular milieu seemed complete, and his system of geodesic design gained the full weight of scientific legitimation. This kind of migration, from the … Continue reading
Ecological Obsolescence – Towards Total Disposability
…obsolescence as a process is wealth-producing, not wasteful. It leads to constant renewal of the industrial establishment at higher and higher levels, and it provides a way of getting a maximum of good to a maximum of people…The waste occurs … Continue reading
The Original Sputnik Shuffle – Reflections on the Apollo Spacesuit
I recently found the following clip on YouTube: While this short video should be appreciated for both its humor and its strangeness, there is much more content behind it than appears at first perusal. It seems to date from … Continue reading
Buffalo Grain Elevators – The Future That Could Have Been; The Past That Is Disappearing
For whatever reason, whether it was because they were more interested in the systems of abstraction, purism and essentialism that were being developed in the arts at the time, or because the technical and cultural conditions of their era were … Continue reading
Provocation 3: The Human Servomechanism
For the last several months, I have been researching the field of cybernetics in preparation for a thesis that I will be preparing throughout the course of the next academic year. At the current time, this research is admittedly broad, … Continue reading
