Applied Virtuality Book Series
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Edited by:
Ludger Hovestadt
Edited by Ludger Hovestadt and Vera Bühlmann
Applied Virtuality is a book series which is edited by Ludger Hovestadt, ITA Institute of Technology in Architecture, ETH Zürich, Switzerland and Vera Bühlmann, Technical University Vienna, Institute for Architectural Theory.
Based on the thesis that technology changes character over time, the series aims and scopes are to reflect that change by describing and analyzing the most recent explorations and innovations in technology, as well as their implications for a more philosophically comprehensive understanding of technics in our contemporary symbolical, information saturated, climatic environments. The overall interest thereby is to (1) affirm the mightiness of the generic without embracing homogeneity as a necessary consequence, (2) to affirm calculation, computation and automatization without embracing the reduction of human intellect to mechanisation without arcane ésprit, and (3) to oppose in principle the contemporary attitude that tends towards a certain “intellectual chicness” that seems to rather narcissistically celebrate itself in a strangely detached competition for “critical divination” of soon-to-be-expected cultural doom and decay.
With the birth of abstract/symbolic/universal algebra in the late 19th century, many scholars associate a fundamental crisis that affects human culture at large. We owe all of our contemporary electric and information-based infrastructures for living to these developments in mathematics, and it is no coincidence that we tend to find the symptoms that point to the manifestation of this crisis in the changes this new form of technics imposes on the people who begin to rely on it. This crisis is classically conceived as a crisis of intuition (Hans Hahn, Edmund Husserl et cetera). But from a more appreciative stance towards the sheer unlikeliness and fantastic power of intellection which is at work everywhere in the reality of such media-ized living environments, we might just as well see in this characterization an anxious (even if all-too understandable) misconception of the critical developments we are experiencing. From this stance, the sheer prominence of this misconception today indicates what appears like a certain fatigue of thinking, perhaps an exhaustion-through-overwhelming of our collective power to imagine.
We mean no offence by saying this. Let us illustrate more concretely: John Orton maintains in his book Semiconductors and the Information Revolution: Magic Crystals That Made IT Happen, that “as a human achievement,” semiconductors ought to “rank alongside the Beethoven Symphonies, Concord, Impressionism, medieval cathedrals and Burgundy wines and we should be equally proud of it” (2009, p. 2). Why is it, indeed, that this demand feels odd? Of course this lack of appreciating our current form of technics is owed partially to its abstractness and the degree of expertise it seems to demand from us. But has this not been the case for any of the abovementioned artifacts we all meanwhile hold as precious and dear?
We hope to find the right dosage of irony and humor that seems so necessary for theorizing technics, arts, intellection in a manner that seeks to escape (1) the servile irresponsibility that attaches to programs of mechanization, as well as (2) the narrow-mindedness and missionary commitment that attaches to ideological doctrine and programmatic. By celebrating moments of intellectual quickness, with our interest in theory and abstraction, we pursue a genuinely comparatistic approach. We regard artifacts as theoretical objects, constituted by the intelligible codes and symbolic grammaticality that give them consistency. But we don’t see the reality of artifacts in the white spectrum of these codes and symbols; rather, we see their reality in that which is enciphered thereby. The amb
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What is architecture when computers redefine it? Two books explore the nature and potential of architecture in the age of artificial intelligence. Inspired by architect Fritz Haller (1924-2012), a virtual persona asks him about the architecture of the future. The first book uses artificial intelligence to network the Internet of Things into a new architecture. The second presents six works by Fritz Haller in the multidisciplinary light of the 2020s and shows them like icons that already contain what was only thought of later.
The two volumes are neither historical nor analytical - they are visionary and projective and, in some respects, represent an experiment in themselves. They show an architecture that does rethink and does not evaluate.
- An experiment on the 100th birthday of Fritz Haller, the pioneer of integral planning
- What would Fritz Haller say today about the architecture of the future?
- Volume 24 of the Applied Virtualiy Book Series (only available together)
Treatise on digital architecture
Hovestadt’s treatise strictly follows the model of the famous treatises by Vitruvius (De architectura) and Alberti (De re aedificatoria), based on the supposition that we find ourselves in a comparable situation today. Vitruvius and Alberti expressed the meaning of architecture in their eras: Roman antiquity and the Renaissance. Hovestadt has done the same for the present day, incorporating considerations of physics, mathematics, technology, literature, and philosophy.
Books 1 to 3 deal with the role of the architect and the objectivity of architecture.
Books 4 to 6 address the modalities of speaking about and encoding architecture: the secret, the public, and the private.
Books 7 to 10 are dedicated to actual digital mechanisms: artificial intelligence, natural communication, gnomonics, and cultural heritage.
- An architectural treatise for our age in 10 books
- Inspired by the works of Vitruvius and Alberti
- Published in three volumes in the Applied Virtuality series
Treatise on digital architecture
Hovestadt’s treatise strictly follows the model of the famous treatises by Vitruvius (De architectura) and Alberti (De re aedificatoria), based on the supposition that we find ourselves in a comparable situation today. Vitruvius and Alberti expressed the meaning of architecture in their eras: Roman antiquity and the Renaissance. Hovestadt has done the same for the present day, incorporating considerations of physics, mathematics, technology, literature, and philosophy.
Books I to III deal with the role of the architect and the objectivity of architecture.
Books IV to VI address the modalities of speaking about and encoding architecture: the secret, the public, and the private.
Books VII to X are dedicated to actual digital mechanisms: artificial intelligence, natural communication, gnomonics, and cultural heritage.
- An architectural treatise for our age in 10 books
- Inspired by the works of Vitruvius and Alberti
- Published in three volumes in the Applied Virtuality Book Series, Vol. 19, 20, and 21
Treatise on digital architecture
Hovestadt’s treatise strictly follows the model of the famous treatises by Vitruvius (De architectura) and Alberti (De re aedificatoria), based on the supposition that we find ourselves in a comparable situation today. Vitruvius and Alberti expressed the meaning of architecture in their eras: Roman antiquity and the Renaissance. Hovestadt has done the same for the present day, incorporating considerations of physics, mathematics, technology, literature, and philosophy.
Books I to III deal with the role of the architect and the objectivity of architecture.
Books IV to VI address the modalities of speaking about and encoding architecture: the secret, the public, and the private.
Books VII to X are dedicated to actual digital mechanisms: artificial intelligence, natural communication, gnomonics, and cultural heritage.
- An architectural treatise for our age in 10 books
- Inspired by the works of Vitruvius and Alberti
- Published in three volumes in the Applied Virtuality Book Series
Ludger Hovestadt, professor of architecture and CAAD, ETH Zurich
Free thinking, unconstrained by facts
The book is based on the thesis that we live in a world of abundance, full of natural riches, and cultural artifacts, full of human intellect and powerful technologies. Our thinking, however, is dominated by the opposite, the notion of scarcity. The limits of nature act as an inevitable necessity.
In his book, David Schildberger adopts a novel approach to the subject of resources, with the help of intelligent instruments that introduce new foods, such as chocolate made from cocoa cell cultures, and even a fruit-bearing vine raised far from a vineyard. With his imagined scenarios, the author invites the reader to dare stretch their intellectual imaginations and ultimately presents nature as a contingent.
- Conceptual models on the subject of nature and alternative ways of producing food
- Recommended reading for architectural IT specialists
- New volume in the Applied Virtuality Book Series
How does coding change the way we think about architecture? This question opens up an important research perspective.
In this book, Miro Roman and his AI Alice_ch3n81 develop a playful scenario in which they propose coding as the new literacy of information. They convey knowledge in the form of a project model that links the fields of architecture and information through two interwoven narrative strands in an “infinite flow” of real books. Focusing on the intersection of information technology and architectural formulation, the authors create an evolving intellectual reflection on digital architecture and computer science.
In this anthology with contributions about architecture, media, and infrastructure technology, the authors investigate in what multifaceted way architecture and information is in tune with contemporary technology, and in what way we live with them.
The book is divided into following parts: BREEDING (medialising matter), BREATHING (transcending language), and INHABITING (making things inhabitable). The compilation of various text contributions creates a lexicon of ‘naturing affairs’ and is written for readers who look for an inspiring overview of our medialised environments.
In Natural Communication, the author criticizes the current paradigm of specific goal orientation in the complexity sciences and proposes an alternative that envisions a fundamental architectonics of communication. His model of "natural communication" encapsulates modern theoretical concepts from mathematics and physics, in particular category theory and quantum theory. From these fields it abstracts precise concepts such as to constitute a terminological basis for this theory which offers the opportunity to open up novel ways of thinking about complexity. The author is convinced that it is only possible to establish a continuity and coherence with contemporary thinking, especially with respect to complexity, through looking into the past.
In this book, the editors focus on architecture and communication from various different perspectives – taking into account that the term “architecture” is used for buildings as well as in the context of computer software. Data and software also impact on our cities; raw data, however, do not convey any information – in order to generate information and communication they have to be organized and must make sense to the reader.
The contributions avoid clear separation of the various communication spheres of their disciplines. Instead, they use the wide range of approaches to explore meanings – an ambitious aim that leaves the destination wide open; the reader is invited to share in this adventure.
This scientific work focuses on computer-aided computational models in architecture. The author initially investigates established computational models and then expands these with newer approaches to modeling. In his research the author integrates approaches to analytical philosophy, probability theory, formal logic, quantum physics, abstract algebra, computer-aided design, computer graphics, glossematics, machine learning, architecture, and others. For researchers in the fields of information technology and architecture.
Imagine a world where the power is always on, where there is not just enough energy, but an abundance of it. Such a world is no Utopia, it is a possible reality. Using indefinitely available sources of energy – especially photovoltaic solar, in combination with others – and networking this energy, much in the way that we have networked information, we can get beyond our current energy ‘crisis’ and resolve it. The world we then find ourselves in is not a world without problems – we will face new challenges on the way – but in terms of energy it is a world of plenty. Rooted in sound theory and based on technology that is available now, A Genius Planet offers an accessible but detailed and insightful perspective on how we can free ourselves from our dependency on natural resources and generate, trade, and use energy in ways that open up the genuine potential that we have at our disposal today.
We know the specific strengths of various cities, are aware of their ranking, are able to discuss their density and growth. But what do all cities have in common, what do we know about the “lowest common denominator”?
The “city as a species”, the “primal genetic material of the city”: this is the subject of A Quantum City. This colossal work is a love letter to the city and intellectual culture.
We follow the fictional narrative figure, Orlando, beginning in 320 BC, on his odyssey through the Western world up to the present time. The book is divided into four interrelated chapters and can be read page by page in a discursive manner, however randomly browsing through the book also offers new and multi-faceted interpretations. Great intellectual achievements are compared with obscure and mundane events. A Quantum City offers an inspiring view of the city that is in us and around us.
The Atlas of Fantastic infrastructures deals with the characterization of architecture, media and digital infrastructure. In concrete terms, it deals with the materiality of buildings and the intangibility of data. While technical or functional studies often tend to "flatten" the multiplex phenomena, the author speculatively propose four abstract prisms: 1) AFFAIR WITH PHANTOMS – who do we want to meet in a digitally mediated space, and what kind of conversation/activity will we have?; 2) PARA-DESIRE – where do our surreal desires live, and what are their strategies?; 3) MEDIATED SPACE CATALOGUE – what kinds of data, information, things, spaces and places are available in the world, and how our activities blend them?; 4) GIFTS OF THE GARDENS – how can an idea enter physical reality, and what are the pathways of such becomings?
The author examines buildings and projects by Toyo Ito, Philippe Rahm, Olafur Eliasson, Greg Lynn, MVRDV, Electroland, Troika, NOX, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer and others.
In times where the very concept of ‘nature’ is questioned not only in its philosophical dimension, but in the core of its biological materiality, we need to reconsider the interrelations between architecture and nature. This not only applies to strategies on environmental responsibility but equally on anticipatory human behavior and cultural or demographic variety.
To address these challenges this book proposes to embrace the unknown and cultivate the architectural discipline towards an integrated and cross-disciplinary practice. It unravels compelling innovative and forward-thinking design narratives by leading international practitioners and researchers who investigate novel associations between architecture, nature and humanity for a future, alive architecture. Structured around the three closely cross-linked core themes “bioinspiration”, “materiability”, and “intelligence” the book engages with the starting point of an emerging new design field, where the symbiosis of physics, biology, computing and design promises the redefinition of what we call architecture today.
With her inversion of McLuhan’s famous dictum that the medium be the message, the author attempts to sketch a concept of mediality that is capable of hosting and accommodating the self-referential agility of medialized instrumentality within an element of communicability. Mediality is conceived as virtual dis-positivity, and its core predication is to receive and index the totality of what can be a formally-symbolic, and hence a communicable, object. So conceived, mediality foils purely logical, as well as purely fictional notions of order and is capable of opening up the possibility of a civic architectonics, one capable of articulating its assemblages with polyvalent and discretely variable elements, and in a multitude of competing manners. In this book, the author traces the possibility of such an architectonics from a diagnostic and cultural-historical point of view.
This book shifts the frame of reference for today’s network- and structure oriented discussions from the applied computational tools of the 20th century back to the abstractness of 19th century mathematics. It re-reads George Boole, Richard Dedekind, Hermann Grassmann and Bernhard Riemann in a surprising manner. EigenArchitecture argues for a literacy of the digital, displacing the role of geometrical craftsmanship. Thus, architecture can be liberated from today’s economical, technocratic and bureaucratic straight jackets: from physicalistic optimization, sociological balancing, and ideological naturalizations. The book comprises a programmatic text on the role of technology in architecture, a philosophical text on the generic and on algebraic articulation, and six exemplary projects by postgraduate students in 2012 at the Chair for Computer Aided Architectural Design at ETH Zurich, Switzerland.
“SHEAVES” will not describe anything. It will not judge. It will inspire. There are no continuous texts, but a wide range of topics. How to read this book? Take the notions seriously. Search the Internet and they will lose their generalness. They will begin to speak to you vividly. Bundle these riches with the riches of other notions and they will activate each other. Also take the pictures seriously. Photograph or scan them. Use them as an index, while searching the Internet. Again, you will find rich stories. Bundle those riches, concentrate them into new identities that are interesting to you. Let yourself be inspired by the intellectual wealth of our world. You can expand it. It is an exciting adventure, demanding and optimistic.
Recent developments in computer science, particularly ”data-driven procedures“ have opened a new level of design and engineering. This has also affected architecture. The publication collects contributions on Coding as Literacy by computer scientists, mathematicians, philosophers, cultural theorists, and architects.
The main focus in the book is the observation of computer-based methods that go beyond strictly case-based or problem-solution-oriented paradigms. This invites readers to understand Computational Procedures as being embedded in an overarching ”media literacy“ that can be revealed through, and acquired by, ”computational literacy“, and to consider the data processed in the above-mentioned methods as being beneficial in terms of quantum physics. ”Self-Organizing Maps“ (SOM), which were first introduced over 30 years ago, will serve as the concrete reference point for all further discussions.
Symbolizing Existence deals with the current rapidly happening “deterritorialization” of everything which was once regarded stable and binding. What we today regard as statistically encoded information is capable to explicate and index the entire realm of what can be expressed and represented through a cascade of geometrical, functional, or finally logified schemes. We are currently experiencing a rapid loss of “grounding” of that which we once considered binding in our cultural and intellectual history. How can we obtain an articulate, cultivate way of thinking about “instances” that does not fall back into a schematic model Platonism (thereby falling behind Plato), and that does not remain enmeshed in an Aristotelian realization dynamics with a naturalism organized by original genus, kinds, and specific marks of distinction?
The central phenomenon considered was the technological process of doping material: At the quantum level, a particle or its representation, the point, is no longer “that which has no parts” (Euclid).
In The Digital, a Continent?, the author argues in favor of a way of thinking about digital technology that draws on the new materialism. She uses photosynthesis and nuclear fission as examples of processes that are as artificial as they are natural to explain how digital technology can be viewed within the paradigm of a "communicative physics" in which poetics interacts with mathematical thinking. The author concludes that we can better understand ourselves and digital technology by developing notions of the multifaceted ways energy, form, and intellect interact in global architectonics.
- Theoretical consideration of digital technology
- Visual language and science
- New volume in the Applied Virtuality Book Series
In his 1979 essay The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge philosopher Jean-François Lyotard noted that the advent of the computer opened up a stage of progress in which knowledge has become a commodity. Modernity and postmodernity appear as two stages of a process resulting from the conflict of science and narrative. As science attempts to distance itself from narrative, it must create its own legitimacy. This paper takes up this challenge with a focus on the question of imagery. The image is precisely what modern science seeks to free itself from in its quest for absolute transparency. This transparency is examined from the perspective of architecture, drawing on arguments from philosophy, quantum mechanics, theology and information theory.
- Natural science in the context of postmodernism
- Quantum mechanics and information theory
- New volume in the Applied Virtuality Book Series
