Praxis 8

Praxis 8 is now available from amazon.com.

My essay “Programming After Program: Archizoom’s No Stop City” explores the history of the Italian radical architecture group as a kind of retroactive manifesto for the sort of work that I am doing these days.

The editors explain the issue theme:

“RE: programming” reflects upon the complex, ambiguous and ultimately paradoxical set of ideas denoted by the term program. The elusive definition of program is not only because of its complex history but more importantly because of its continuous redefinition in contemporary architectural practice. A broader shift in the term program, with the emergence of computer culture, has empowered architects to see what was traditionally considered a given, as something that can be reprogrammed at will.

Book Cover

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Networked Publics Book Draft On-Line

As a culmination to the Networked Publics program, the faculty research group that I have been working at for the last year, we will be publishing a collaboratively written group book with the MIT Press. Three of drafts of our essays are finished (on place, culture, and politics) and available online at the Networked Publics site.

Throughout the Networked Publics program, we have tried to employ collaborative scholarship whereever possible and effective. Readers, colleagues, and friends are invited to to contribute by posting comments at the end of each essay (note that easier to read versions of the essays can be also be downloaded from the appropriate pages). Our hope is to take the comments that we receive and append them to the essay in a virtual symposium to follow each chapter.

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rethinking wikipedia

One of my colleagues at the Institute for the Future of the Book, Ben Vershbow, wrote an intelligent post pointing to a front page New York Times on steps being taken within Wikipedia to deal with controversies over articles.

What Ben’s post and the NY article (which was on the front page) point to is that Wikipedia is bringing back the need to read critically, a skill that was increasingly being lost””?and not only due to the Internet. Moreover, for any good historian, the controversies and the changing nature of the entries on Wikipedia is a great thing, reminding us that knowledge is always in flux and often contested.

Somehow, in our rush to absorb as much information as possible (or is it to surf as much information as possible?), these age old lessons from historiography seem to have been forgotten. Wikipedia is a great thing since it brings them to the fore. And (especially when downloaded to my Treo) it’s so darn handy too! (broken post fixed)

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The Next Googleplex

Is exurbia the next frontier for massive digital infrastructure projects? The New York Times explores the construction of the Googleplex on a remote site in The Dalles, Oregon, on the banks of the Columbia River. Google paid $1.3 million for 30 acres! They’re going to be paying a lot more to hook up fiber to the grid out there. Is this a response to the concentrated nature of telecoms in cities? Of course, if you have sufficient means, any place can be made a command and control center for the global city. Silicon Valley was once farmland as well.

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urban konsumterror

Two years ago AUDC put together a project on Urban Konsumterror for our friend Paulette Singley’s book Eating Architecture.

Things Magazine picked it up earlier this month, then Anne Galloway blogged it at Space and Culture, and Jo-Anne Greene at Networked Performance posted it too. So, I thought I’d post it as well. If you haven’t seen it, enjoy.

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Architecture Magazine Redesigned

Last Friday, I attended the launch party of the revamped Architecture Magazine at Richard Neutra’s VDL House. I am delighted that two former students from (what were in my opinion the best days of) SCI_Arc, Julie Eakin and Mimi Zeiger are now senior editors and I will am beginning my own role at Architecture as History-Theory columnist beginning in July. The redesign of Architecture is impressive, making it the best looking architecture magazine in this country since Architectural Forum in the 1970s and I’m excited to be associated with this fantastic publication.

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