Design Technics: Archaeologies of Architectural Practice

by Zeynep Çelik Alexander (Editor), John May (Editor)

Overview

Leading scholars historicize and theorize technology’s role in architectural design


Although the question of technics pervades the contemporary discipline of architecture, there are few critical analyses on the topic. Design Technics fills this gap, arguing that the technical dimension of design has often been flattened into the broader celebratory rhetoric of innovation. Bringing together leading scholars in architectural and design history, the volume’s contributors situate these tools on a broader epistemological and chronological canvas. The essays here construct histories—some panoramic and others unfolding around a specific episode—of seven techniques regularly used by the designer in the architectural studio today: rendering, modeling, scanning, equipping, specifying, positioning, and repeating.

Starting with observations about the epistemological changes that have unfolded in the discipline in recent decades but seeking to offer a more expansive meaning for technics, the volume casts new light on concepts such as form, experience, and image that have played central roles in historical architectural discourses. Among the questions addressed: How was the concept of form immanent in practices of scanning since the late nineteenth century? What was the historical relationship between rendering and experience in Enlightenment discourses? How did practices of specifying reconfigure the distinction between intellectual and manual labor? What kind of rationality is inherent in the designer’s constant clicking of the mouse in front of her screen? 

In addressing these and other questions, this engaging and timely collection thereby proposes technics as a site for historical and philosophical reflection not only for those engaged in architectural design but also for any scholar working in the humanities today.

Contributors: Lucia Allais, Edward Eigen, Orit Halpern, John Harwood, Matthew C. Hunter, and Michael Osman.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781517906856
Publisher:	University of Minnesota Press
Publication date:	01/21/2020
Edition description:	1
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 9.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Zeynep Çelik Alexander is associate professor in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University and author of Kinaesthetic Knowing: Aesthetics, Epistemology, Modern Design. 

John May is assistant professor of architecture at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and author of Signal. Image. Architecture. He is founding partner of MILLIØNS, a Los Angeles-based architectural practice. 

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii

Introduction: Architecture and Technics Zeynep Çelik Alexander ix

1 Rendering: On Experience and Experiments Lucia Allais 1

2 Modeling: A Secret History of Following Matthew C. Hunter 45

3 Scanning: A Technical History of Form Zeynep Çelik Alexander 71

4 Equipping: Domestic Sleights of Hand Edward A. Eigen 103

5 Specifying: The Generality of Clerical Labor Michael Osman 129

6 Positioning: Architecture of Logistics John Harwood 163

7 Repeating: Cybernetic Intelligence Orit Halpern 191

Afterword: Architecture in Real Time John May 219

Contributors 245

Index 247

Editorial Reviews

"Weaving together material instruments and mental habits, professional organization and artistic imagination, Design Technics brilliantly demonstrates that design techniques such as modeling, scanning, and specifying enable us to write a different history of architecture. Instead of focusing on authors and buildings, Zeynep Çelik Alexander and John May focus on the concrete operations of the discipline—operations that are nevertheless inseparable from larger perspectives, for techniques contribute to the construction of the human."—Antoine Picon, author of Smart Cities: A Spatialised Intelligence

"The historical range of the essays is broad, allowing the reader to see the development of these different practices starting in the 19th century and continuing though the 20th century."—CHOICE

"The essays gathered in Design Technics: Archaeologies of Architectural Practice propose a welcome departure from historiographical entrapments."—Critical Inquiry 

"Questioning and engaging with the mantra of the digital, this collection unearths the old relationship of architecture with techne, the ancient Greek word that best uncovers the root of this ongoing problem."—Technology and Culture

"This deeply researched kaleidoscopic investigation of architecture’s technics operates on several levels: as histories of tools, as media archaeologies of their matter and handling, as genealogies of architectural processes, and, not least, as stories told of the historization of the discipline of architecture."—Isis: A Journal of the History of Science Society

"The editors redefine architectural practice as a plural field of activities entangled with technics—a key term they use to signify both artifacts and processes."—Journal of Architectural Education 

From the Publisher