Matthew Gandy, BJ Nilsen (eds.): The Acoustic City (2014)
Filed under book | Tags: · acoustics, city, ecology, listening, music, noise, sound, urban design, urbanism
“The Acoustic City consists of a series of essays on sound and the city. The book comprises five thematic sections: urban soundscapes with an emphasis on the distinctiveness of the urban acoustic realm; acoustic flânerie and the recording of sonic environments; sound cultures arising from specific associations between music, place, and sound; acoustic ecologies including relationships between architecture, sound, and urban design; and the politics of noise extending to different instances of anxiety or conflict over sound. This essay collection will be of interest to a wide range of disciplines including architecture, cultural studies, geography, musicology, and urban sociology.”
Publisher Jovis, Berlin, 2014
ISBN 3868592717, 9783868592719
217 pages
via Meowth
Liss C. Werner (ed.): Cybernetics: State of the Art (2017)
Filed under book | Tags: · architecture, city, cybernetics, design, systems theory, theory, urban design, urbanism
“Driven by cybernetic thinking, this book engages with pressing questions for architecture, urban planning, design and automated infrastructure; in an age of increasing connectivity, AI and robotization and an evolutionary state of the Anthropocene – perpetuating angst-ridden anxiety as well as excitement and joy of a future, that we will be able to predict with less and less certainty. The book discusses cybernetic principles and devices developed in the late 20th century – mainly developed by Ross Ashby and Gordon Pask (second-order cybernetics), to learn from for a future of mutual relationship and conversation between man and machine.
The anthology reviews and previews cybernetics as design strategy in computational architecture, urban design and socio-ecological habitats – natural and artificial. It weaves together cybernetic-architectural theories with applications and case studies ranging from regional planning to the smart home.
Nine chapters written by an international group of authors are structured into two complimenting parts. While ‘A Concept and a Shape’ focuses on the history and theory of cybernetics, its temporary disappearance and future impact (Raúl Espejo, Michael Hohl, Paul Pangaro, Liss C. Werner), ‘System 5’ – relating to Stafford Beer’s project ‘Cybersyn’ – discusses applications, the role of the individual and human feedback; also with a strong theoretical underpinning (Raoul Bunschoten, Delfina Fantini van Ditmar, Timothy Jachna, Arun Jain, Kristian Kloeckl).”
With foreword by Omar Khan
Publisher Universitätsverlag der TU Berlin, Berlin, Nov 2017
Con-versations series, 1
Creative Commons BY 4.0 International License
ISBN 9783798329539
xxvii+173 pages
Colin Rowe, Fred Koetter: Collage City (1978–) [EN, DE, ES]
Filed under book | Tags: · architecture, bricolage, city, collage, modernism, postmodernism, theory, urban design, urban planning, urbanism, utopia
“A theoretical treatise that sets out various analyses of urban form in a number of existing cities known to be aesthetically successful, examining their actually existing urban structure as found, revealing it to be the end product of a ceaseless process of fragmentation, the collision / superimposition / contamination of many diverse ideas imposed on it by successive generations, each with its own idea.”
A major thesis on urban interaction which first introduced the concept of “bricolage” to urban theory.
Publisher MIT Press, 1978
ISBN 0262180863, 9780262180863
186 pages
Commentary: ANY 7-8, dedicated to Rowe’s work (ed. Robert Somol, 1994), K. Michael Hays (Architecture Theory Since 1968, 1998), Joan Ockman (Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 1998), Anthony Vidler (Architectural Review, 2011).
Review: Ed Cutler (2010).
Collage City (English, 1978, 99 MB, via)
Collage City (German, trans. Bernhard Hoesli, 1984, 37 MB)
Ciudad collage (Spanish, trans. Esteve Riambau Sauri, 1998, 23 MB, via)
Introduction to French edition (1993)