Fritz Neumeyer: The Artless Word: Mies van der Rohe on the Building Art (1986/1991)

“Mies van der Rohe’s architecture has been well documented, yet his writings, which contain the key to understanding his work, have been largely unexplored. From a body of writing that is surprisingly large for the self-described “unwilling author,” Fritz Neumeyer reconstructs the metaphysical and philosophical inquiry on which Mies based his modernism.

An appendix presents all of the essential texts by Mies, including some that have not previously appeared in English. Of special interest is the manuscript notebook from the Mies van der Rohe Archive in the Museum of Modern Art, New York, dating from the crucial years 1927-28 and published for the first time in this book.”

First published as Mies van der Rohe. Das kunstlose Wort. Gedanken zur Baukunst, Siedler, Berlin, 1986.

Translated by Mark Jarzombek
Publisher MIT Press, 1991
ISBN 0262140470
xxii+386 pages

WorldCat

PDF (26 MB)

Ben van Berkel, Caroline Bos (eds.): ANY, 23: Diagram Work: Data Mechanics for a Topological Age (1998)

A special issue of the magazine ANY (Architecture New York) focusing on the diagram and diagrammatics (page 14 onwards).

With contributions by Ben van Berkel and Caroline Bos, Stan Allen, R.E. Somol, Peter Eisenman, Manuel De Landa, Christine Buci-Glucksman, Andrew Benjamin, Karl Chu, Brian Massumi, Greg Lynn, Mark Rakatansky, Sanford Kwinter, and Wes Jones.

Publisher Anyone Corporation, June 1998
ISSN 10684220
62 pages
via waskleist

Commentary: Hélène Frichot (2011).

Publisher

PDF (13 MB)

Luciana Parisi: Contagious Architecture: Computation, Aesthetics, and Space (2013)

“In Contagious Architecture, Luciana Parisi offers a philosophical inquiry into the status of the algorithm in architectural and interaction design. Her thesis is that algorithmic computation is not simply an abstract mathematical tool but constitutes a mode of thought in its own right, in that its operation extends into forms of abstraction that lie beyond direct human cognition and control. These include modes of infinity, contingency, and indeterminacy, as well as incomputable quantities underlying the iterative process of algorithmic processing.

The main philosophical source for the project is Alfred North Whitehead, whose process philosophy is specifically designed to provide a vocabulary for “modes of thought” exhibiting various degrees of autonomy from human agency even as they are mobilized by it. Because algorithmic processing lies at the heart of the design practices now reshaping our world—from the physical spaces of our built environment to the networked spaces of digital culture—the nature of algorithmic thought is a topic of pressing importance that reraises questions of control and, ultimately, power. Contagious Architecture revisits cybernetic theories of control and information theory’s notion of the incomputable in light of this rethinking of the role of algorithmic thought. Informed by recent debates in political and cultural theory around the changing landscape of power, it links the nature of abstraction to a new theory of power adequate to the complexities of the digital world.”

Publisher MIT Press, 2013
Technologies of Lived Abstraction series
ISBN 0262018632, 9780262018630
392 pages

For a New Computational Aesthetics: Algorithmic Environments as Actual Objects lecture by Parisi (2012, video, 72 min).

Reviews: Lecomte (Mute, 2013), Ikoniadou (Computational Culture, 2014).

Publisher
WorldCat

PDF (24 MB, updated o 2021-10-28)