Over at the Netlab site, I have put together a selection of some of the best student projects in Network City, one of my signature courses. 

Here they are.

With the start of a new school year nearly upon us, I have been putting up some student work that I really should have posted last year at the Netlab Web Site. Teaching at Columbia is a real treat and the work my students have done is so frequently superlative. I'll post a little of it here and there prior to the start of the next semester.

Take, for example, Sang Hoon Youm's fantastic prototype book interface. Unlike, say, Apple's Cover Flow artwork, this proposal wouldn't just use graphics as icons, it would allow you to browse in a way that is both familiar and entirely new. Think a book meets a browser meets hypercard meets ... something else.

The project was done for my "Architecture of Interfaces" course, taught last fall.

Beware, this is a 30 mb flash video.

Click here (or on the above image) to open a new window containing the flash video.

Just what is a research studio? I recently reflected on the status of the research studio and its historical evolution in an article for issue 1 of volume 61 of the Journal of Architectural Education. Find a draft of the essay here.

Besides running the Netlab this spring at Columbia, I will be teaching my Network City course there as well. I taught this class for years at SCI_Arc and am excited about updating it for Columbia. Lots of new ideas, from a retooled syllabus that will feature more material on the megalopolis of the Northeast seaboard to, just possibly, podcasts.

Click here for the syllabus.

At BLDGBLOG, Geoff Manaugh interviews me about AUDC, the Columbia NetLab, architecture, urbanism and other matters. See The Logistics of Distance.

Why has this blog been so barren lately? Am I giving up on the Net? No! Far from it. I have, however, been a little busy lately. Now that the project is safely established, we can announce that...

AUDC Establishes Network Architecture Lab

@ Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation

Formed in 2001, AUDC [Architecture Urbanism Design Collaborative] specializes in research as a form of practice. The AUDC Network Architecture Lab is an experimental unit at Columbia University that embraces the studio and the seminar as venues for architectural analysis and speculation, exploring new forms of research through architecture, text, new media design, film production and environment design.

Specifically, the Network Architecture Lab investigates the impact of computation and communications on architecture and urbanism. What opportunities do programming, telematics, and new media offer architecture? How does the network city affect the building? Who is the subject and what is the object in a world of networked things and spaces? How do transformations in communications reflect and affect the broader socioeconomic milieu? The NetLab seeks to both document this emergent condition and to produce new sites of practice and innovative working methods for architecture in the twenty-first century. Using new media technologies, the lab aims to develop new interfaces to both physical and virtual space.

The NetLab is consciously understood as an interdisciplinary unit, establishing collaborative relationships with other centers both at Columbia and at other institutions.

The NetLab begins operations in September 2006.