When Is The Digital In Architecture?  --  Andrew Goodhouse (ed.)

Full Citation and Summary Goodhouse, Andrew, editor. When Is the Digital In
Architecture? Sternberg Press & The Canadian Centre for Architecture, 2017.

This book collects a series of disparate articles on the digital in
architecture. It grew from studies in architectural digitality pursued by the
Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) through exhibitions and conferences,
along with its expansion in digital archival holdings. It's main thrust is that
the digital in architecture, has deeper, more diachronic conceptual roots than
the historical moment of digital tool adoption. The editor, Andrew Goodhouse is
currently a content editor at M+ in Hong Kong, similar to the position he held
at the CCA at the time of this publication.

Chapter Notes

Eight Million Stories  --  Mirko Zardini
- The introduction for this collection, written by the (at the time) director
 of the CCA
- Makes a few main assertions which set up the publication's approach to
 architectural digitality
- That there IS a digital moment in architecture practice which is
 characterized by new tools, allowing architects to "realize ideas that they
 could not before" (pp. 9)
- "The digital" is a condition made possible by conceptual foundations for
 digital media, drawing the origins of digitality into question (pp. 10-11)
- The conceptual foundations of digital media articulate themselves before and
 sometimes after digital media go into usage (pp.
- The following chapters are 14 different views on the question of when the
 digital is in architecture [significance to chronological ordering] (pp. 11)
- "The digital" as far as the use of digital tools in practice goes, begins in
 the 80s [see CCA exhibition/publication on Greg Lynn] (pp. 9-10)
- The rest of the intro goes through each of the chapters

[1521] The Age of Paper  --  Marco Frascari
- Argues, overall, that architectural digitality loses the "anagogic" dimension
 of analog design; moreover, this began with the introduction of tracing paper
 and ink in the 16th century (pp. 23, 28)
- To make this argument, Frascari analyses architectural drawing on paper and
 architectural drafting/inking on trace paper (vellum?) through a medieval
 Christian hermeneutic framework (pp. 28)
- Fourfold meaning in drawing: literal, allegorical, moral, anagogic (pp. 28)
- Literal: descriptive level of the building as envelope
- Allegorical: descriptive conceptual level of building as organization
- Moral: drawing as legal document and component of regulation
- Anagogic: the inherent telos of the drawing; "the future is in front of the
 past" [the same as in the textual hermeneutics of the system; the
 representation is a stable system which already contains the end in it and all
 subsequent actions only work towards that end]
- Presents versions of drawing with anagogic level intact (chronologic):
 pegging-out on site, use of a tracing floor on site, direct drawing on
 paper/in a sand box/on dough (pp. 28, 30)
- All of these preserve the unity of the design process in the (big A)
 Architect who does the drawing and the sequential movement from architect as
 nexus of the future to labourers as nexus of the sequence of the past (pp. 28,
 30)
- Presents how trace paper and ink gets rid of the anagogic level, providing an
 underpinning for its nonexistence in the digital (pp. 30-31)
- The new sequence: the architect makes an "underdrawing" on paper which a
 drafter redraws in ink on vellum (pp. 30)
- The anagogic aspect is lost, to Frascari, since someone else is making a copy
 of an original; the unity of the (big A) architect's drawing is lost in the
 loss of singular author (pp. 31)

[1570] Building with Geometry, Drawing with Numbers  --  Mario Carpo
- Argues that printed images (the hallmark of analog architecture) marks a
 transition from classical/medieval relational geometry to modern calculating
 geometry; digital tools bring architects back to a the classical/medieval form
 of design through a non-numeric geometry (pp. 33, 44)
- Carpo stresses that the change is a difference in the "technologies of
 design" which produce identical forms (pp. 36)
- The change of tech. in the renaissance is more visible now as we move back to
 a state before "paradise was lost" since the period is coming to an end (pp.
 36)
- Describes the difference through the case study of how doric columns were
 described (pp. 36)
- Classical-medieval technique (Vitruvius Alberti):
- Textual instructions which present a serial algorithm (pp. 36)
- The process is based on geometric division; there is no need for numerical
 operations (pp. 39)
- Narrative process, recitation, "real-time" (pp. 39)
- This geometric process is simultaneously a tool for design and a tool for
 construction, processing happens on site rather than in an office (pp. 40)
- No formal limits since precision of measurement isn't an issue (pp. 41-42)
- Geometry is about continuity (pp. 42)
- Renaissance onwards (Vignola & Palladio):
- Printed image which presents the column paired with proportional annotations
 (pp. 39)
- The process is based on calculation: final dimensions are obtained by
 multiplying the proportions by numerical measurements (pp. 39)
- Calculation process is purely a tool for design and takes place somewhere
 entirely other from construction (pp. 40)
- Limits inherent in mathematical description become transferred to building
 due to the limits of measurement (pp. 41)
- Eg: curves are difficult since they are hard to measure/describe through
 measured dimensions (pp. 41)
- Discreteness of numbers resists describing continuity (pp. 42)
- Digital as a mode of geometry rather than calculation in architecture (pp.
 42)
- The ability to work geometrically by offloading calculation to the computer
 via calculus; the numbers are managed by the machine (pp. 43)
- Digital is a return of classical-medeival through: shared scale indifference,
 CAM/file-to-factory, working with a version of the object itself [the digital
 model as effectively a true simulation of the real thing] (pp. 43-44)

[1837] Toward a Museology of Algorithmic Architectures from Within  --
Wolfgang Ernst
- Main Argument: In order to understand the digital in architecture, one must
 flip the script and look at digital architecture, the actual structures of
 computing itself (it's archive) (pp. 49)
- Not how architecture becomes digital but how computation becomes
 architectural, how digitality took 3D form (pp. 51)
- Outlines a series of necessities for such an architectural examination
- Recapitulates that the archive of computing is `the material and logical
 conditions of possibility for any kind of technical operation," (pp. 49)
- Focus on both symbolic aspect (codes) and technical aspect (hardware) (pp.
 49)
- Approach from within which is media archaeological since it takes the
 non-human point of view, the view from within computing itself (pp. 50)
- Computer architecture (like any other media) as both structure and process
 (pp. 50)
- Bridging the link between tools (eg. CAD) and design regimens (eg.
 computational design) through the "missing links" of circuit design
 (hardware) and flow diagrams (codes, software) (pp. 55)
- A section on "museology" of digital computing as a mean of revealing the
 architecture of computing and showing how computing becomes architectural
- Assertion that computing has been architectural from the very beginning and
 is not just a design medium (pp. 55)
- Becoming architectural allows algorithm (code) to be active in the
 time-defined world (the ability to be a process) (pp. 55)
- This materiality sits behind the perceived immateriality (virtuality) of
 architectural computing and must be displayed alongside any other discussion
 of digital in architecture (pp. 56)
- A sort of "media theatre" antidote to continuity and dissimulation at the
 interface (pp. 56)
- "The challenge is to show how the digital, resulting from the mathematical
 theory of information, became architectural in its own medium, in terms of
 hardware and software."
- A section on the affinity between architectural theory and media archaeology
- For Ernst, the affinity is along the architecture-as-media route:
- Architecture as a temporal transmission channel (pp. 63)
- Architectural mode of thinking machines as operations/operative, physically
 implemented, and about knowledge (pp. 61-62)
- [Ernst does not trace the affinity through topology explicitly, ie. that both
 are interested in invariants within dynamic conditions, interested in
 statics]
- A section further stressing of the need to look at both software and hardware
 (pp. 68-69)
- The way software animates the hardware and how the hardware holds the
 structural conditions for the software's operations (pp. 69)
- Uses an example of archaeological reconstruction of ruins on pp. 61
- Stresses how these are two different kinds of institutions since reflexivity
 within each of them is impossible (ie. the software can't provide its own
 substrates and hardware cannot be active without a viable code) (pp. 69)
- A section on the double-layeredness of archiving digital artefacts (pp.
 70-75)
- This archive as an archive of an archive which has two levels of
 organizational logic: the ordering of artefacts {which are ordering and
 access apparatuses} and their access (pp. 75)
- This archive would be processual, the artefacts would be accessed in process
 and not as static nothing (pp. 70-72)
- "The archive here is not only the data set but also its organizational
 agency, "defined by constraining laws or by an algorithm," according to
 communication theorist Abraham Moles" (pp. 72)
- Section on the necessity to go beyond visual-artefactual representations of
 computational architectures (pp. 75-77)
- Auditory as the most appropriate way of engaging with computational
 "chronopoetics" (pp. 75)
- This is due to the way computers operate with signals which are more
 conducive to listening than reading (pp. 75-76)

[1884] Histories of the Digital: Information, Computer and Communication  --
Antoine Picon
- Main argument: that there is no single history of the digital in architecture
 but many narratives, histories (pp. 81)
- Defining "the digital"
- Digital =/= use of computers, but is a more pervasive condition of technology
 and culture, we cannot limit the study of the digital just to computation
 (pp. 82)
- Section which is a kind of summary historicization of the digital through the
 "information society" (pp. 82-87)
- Phase 1: The digital present is rooted (at least) in the late 19th cen during
 the "second industrial revolution" which was predicated on the management of
 information (pp. 82)
- For Picon, the emergence of the "society of information" made information
 manipulating technologies necessary (societal changes driving technological
 changes) (pp. 82)
- The tabulating machine  the computer; institutional changes requiring
 specific technologies to operate (pp. 82)
- Phase 2: The emergence of computing from the 40s to 60s
- Phase 3: is what we're in the middle of, beginning in the 70s with ARPANET
 and is marked by:
- Machine-machine communication w/o humans (pp. 83)
- Ubiquitous computing (pp. 83)
- Networked computing and digital ontological computing (Web 2.0 and social
 networks) (pp. 83)
- Picon relates this to a change from mass media to individually customized
 media (pp. 83)
- For Picon, the deepest influence computing has/is/will have is over our
 senses [media phenomenology] (pp. 84)
- With the ability to design-fabricate, we're in a "seamless technological
 environment" with a deep history to it that is social and cultural at its
 root (pp. 87)
- Section which covers the state of the historiography and possible future
 directions for research
- The issues of the uneven distribution of histories of the digital, they all
 cluster around the time from the 40s until the 70sish (pp. 87)
- The 80s and 90s to the present are not researched as often (pp. 89)
- Some issues Picon sees as important: the relation of POMO to computing, the
 recent histories of computing (pp. 90)
- Picon takes a position in relation to technology: anti-techno-determinism,
 asserts that technology mediates between architecture and the dynamic
 social-cultural background, takes the view that culture is shifting more than
 anything (pp. 90)
- [take not of how this view is consistent with the views of earlier
 architectural theories of the 90s/00s; architecture is invariant
 within/separate from a dynamic field context and interfaces locally with it via
 technology; topology (or a misreading of topology) provides the basis for
 thinking architecture as a discipline]
- Shifts in architecture [Picon follows some usual, normative
 architecture-theoretical questions inherited from Alberti through modernity
 through pomo]: thinking about "events" and actions, "crisis of tectonics" and
 return to ornament, relationship between memory and history (pp. 92-95)
- [Of interest is the assertion that cybernetics in architecture failed in the
 60s and 70s. The question of where it went once it "failed" (pp. 95)
- Picon's position that we can connect research on technology and architecture
 through sensory dimension (again, phenomenological approach of North American
 media theory) (pp. 97)
- Raises some usual historiographic questions: periodization, the role of the
 vanguard (pp. 97)
- Stresses the importance of the material condition! rather than histories of
 ideas (pp. 98)

[1895] Epistemic Machines: Image and Logic  --  Peter Galison
- Main argument: the history of science/tech. can be split into separate
 cultures which produce points of intense productivity when they overlap in
 "trading zones" where they communicate
- General approach along material culture (pp. 102)
- Outlines the views in history of science in regards to periodization and etc.
 (pp. 102)
- Splits science into three main subcultures w/ historical arcs: (pp. 101)
- History of theories -- history of ideas and their development, history from
 the POV of theoreticians
- History of experiments -- history of the experiments themselves, the way they
 deal with knowledge and the manipulation of material, from the POV of
 experimenters
- History of instruments -- development of the material instruments used in
 science, from the POV of instrument makers
- Two 20th cen traditions in science: logic of non-visual statistics and logic
 of images (pp. 102)
- The three subcultural histories are not always synchronic, but synchronize at
 specific points (pp. 102)
- The fact that they are out of sync is, to Galison, the strength of science;
 any local issues get balanced out by the unevenness [shares underlying
 framework with 90s-00s theorists of architecture; also shares view from
 capitalist economics, ie. science operates by a self-correcting market-like
 mechanism which is internal to science] (pp. 104)
- Zones of interaction/communication and the interlanguages that allow the
 communication to happen (semantic communication for Galison, he's interested
 in the meaningfulness of the content here) (pp. 104)
- Proposes three layers of tradition (handing down) in science:
- "Tradition of technology" which follows the arc of technological development
 which follows the base logic of image vs. data (pp. 105-106)
- "Tradition of pedagogy" which follows the handing down of research interests
 from teachers to students (pp. 106-107)
- "Tradition of demonstration" which follows an epistemic focus on verification
 (pp. 107)
- Uses the above framework to look at the history of particle physics from the
 side of the material culture (how charged particles are registered
 specifically) (pp. 107-119)
- Galison goes through a series of "trading zones" where there is overlap
 between subcultures, traditions, and modes of thinking data
- Trading zone = "an interlanguage that is materialized" in devices, apparatus,
 institutions, theories and organizations (pp. 112)
- Some egs: the development of the cloud chamber (pp. 112), the development of
 film emulsions for nuclear bomb physics (pp. 113-114), bubble chamber
 development (pp. 118-119), international research on particle accelerators (pp.
 119)

[1943] Architecture as Machine: The Smart City Deconstructed  --  Orit Halpern
- Main argument: showing how Negroponte's Architecture Machine Group (AMG)
 combined various elements of cybernetics, computing, and architecture to
 produce the "epistemology of the demo" and practice of contemporary smart
 cities (pp. 130)
- Sets up the current state of "smart environments" as big data performances
 for humans which do not require any human interaction (pp. 125-126)
- "smartness" = the autonomous management of threats through data processing
 (see also "resilience")
- Section on the sociological pre-history of AMG (pp. 130-136)
- US Military intellectuals moving into civilian roles in the mid-70s or so to
 take municipal security and planning roles (pp. 132)
- White flight to the suburbs and the discourse of "crisis" of urban centres
 (pp. 132)
- Governmental privatization (pp. 132)
- Jay Forrester's application of cybernetics to human habitation; development
 of dataflow programs for simulating urban processes based on demographic
 factors; cities as corporate systems which can be tuned to change; obsolescence
 as integral to that process [methodolatry, see Mattern 2013] (pp. 133-136)
- Section on AMG's turn from "buildings" to "systems," architectural practice
 of scales (pp. 136-142)
- Negroponte's The Architecture Machine [and the view that this book drove
 architectural computing in some way; MWS argues this position] (pp. 136)
- Assumption that large scale is too complex for humans to grasp, but can be
 dealt with "in symbiosis with machines" (pp. 137)
- Computation automates change [process management] and produces new practices
 which can jump scales (pp. 137)
- Section on the tech demo in the case of AMG (pp. 142-147)
- Human-machine interaction through text and representation interface (pp. 142)
- Move from simulation demos & discrete intelligence (URBAN 2 & URBAN 5) to
 make life & computing more interfaceable (pp. 146)
- Machine intelligence outside human intelligence, non-linear as goal (pp. 147)
- Racial politics as site of demoing human-machine interaction (pp. 146)
- the pilot project in South End Boston where three Black public housing
 tenants responded to questionnaires with no computers involved [if I
 remember, the computers were fake terminals] (pp. 147)
- the upshot was that if social structures cannot be changed, then
 technologically managed, hyper-individual, curated environments could manage
 the issues that arise from them (pp. 147)
- Section on machine intelligence in cybernetics (pp. 147-161)
- Exploration of the genealogy of AMG's approach
- Two components: machine learning and cybernetics  responsive enviros and CAD
- Machine intelligence as "behavioural, sensory, and decentralized; it is a
 smartness that is out in the world." (pp. 150)
- "ethical" as in "responding to changing conditions based on the past" (pp.
 150)
-  Discursive shifty from deduction to induction, suggestion over proposal,
  endless optimization is possible (pp. 150-151)
- Change in thinking about time: past is not history and the future cannot be
 extrapolated from that past (pp. 151)
- Change of orientation to make human action computable: focus on practices,
 actions, behaviours rather than memories, desires, motivations, and
 intentions (which do not have clear outcomes); turning people into OOP classes
 (pp. 151)
- Underlying communication of humans and machines through maths (pp. 151)
- Neural net prefigures contemporary "smartness"
- Each neuron is Boolean (pp. 153)
- Neural nets have a probabilistic and predictive temporality; future
 determinate, but past indeterminate; nets have no memory nor clear motivation
 for neuron firing; nets collapse all differentiation of location in space and
 time (pp. 153-156)
- Storage is non-indexical; connections are stored rather than specific pieces
 of data (pp. 157)
- Pandemonium computing also prefigures contemporary "smartness"
- Parallel computing framework used primarily for machine vision and pattern
 recognition (pp. 158)
- Deploys multiple separate feature-matching subsystems which operate
 autonomously, with no connection to each other, but all connected to a root
 controller node and with no direct user control (pp. 158)
- Goal is to be able to recognize patterns without specifying them beforehand;
 the ability for machines to deal with "wicked problems" that are not clearly
 defined (pp. 159-160)
- The ability to integrate all processes into its decentralized framework
 (Branden Hookway argues that it is a colonial process) (pp. 160)
- In general: process as a thing in the world that can be algorithmically
 manipulated, scalability as misreading boundaries (pp. 160-161
- Section with example of turn from human-machine to undifferentiated agents
 (161-167)
- Presents the SEEK exhibition at the NY Jewish Museum (pp. 161-167)
- The upshot is that animal-machine dialogue  undifferentiated networked
 agents; architecture as machine was (at the time) about the assimilation of
 difference and the assembly of networks (pp. 167)
- Section on Aspen Movie Map [see also Scott 2016] which sums everything up
 (167-175)
- Stressing the seemlessness of the environment (pp. 170)
- In the Aspen movie map the user is: simultaneously local and global, has a
 sense of control over space while simultaneously under control by the network
 (constrained to its capacities) (pp. 173)
- "The structural politics of militarism, race, war, and security are
 rechanneled into interactivity in a logic that integrates users as part of a
 circuit..." (pp. 173)
- The demo is
- Different from a simulation since it has no pretentions to correspondence
 with reality (pp. 174)
- Part of a process by which the enviro and user are calibrated to one another,
 which will then supersede the demo (pp. 174)
- Halpern argues that we live in a demo where media do not separate us from the
 world, but actively create the world and the future (pp. 174)
- Halpern argues against this "demo" epistemology, calling for new ways of
 imagining futures outside of it

[1963] Blank Screens: The Architect's Vision in the Digital Age  --  Mark
Wigley
- Main argument: that digital architectural drawing (the so-called black
 screen) is not a rupture with previous modes of architectural drawing but is
 rather a continuous with the history of photography in architecture
- Starts by setting up the situation: drawing and its substrates, the turn to
 digital drawing, the paperless office which isn't quite so paperless (pp.
 182)
- An abbreviated history of digital drawing (pp. 182)
- Throw-away sentence which contains Wigley's view of what architecture is:
 "This has always been the role of the architect: to provide some kind of
 coherent way of thinking about heterogeneous forces." [this is a back-reading
 of the 90s view of architecture to the past] (pp. 183)
- Draws out the print drawing aesthetic of white-on-black as a simulation of
 digital aesthetics  and provides some examples (pp. 183-187)
- The black-on-white drawing as photographic negative, which is then connected
 to the blueprint photographic process (pp. 187-188)
- Wigley finally gets to the argument concerning white-on-black aesthetic as
 extension of photography: it emerges from the white-on-blue of blueprints
 which is a major change to architectural office org. (pp. 188)
- "...by the end of the century, tracing done by hand, which was the single
 biggest activity of any architect or engineer's office, had become
 redundant." (pp. 188)
- Demonstrates photographic blueprint sensibility through non-professional
 design magazines (eg: House Beautiful) (pp. 188-191)
- Makes two points at the end about museum collecting of drawings: 1) defends
 traditional collection of print drawings 2) importance of software emulation
 (pp. 191-192)

[1964] Information Archaeologies  --  Molly Wright Steenson
- Main argument: presents three case studies in how architecture formats
 information and information used to format architecture
- An "other archaeology" (pp. 195)
- Interest in formatting information, Cornelia Vissman's "in-format-ion" (pp.
 194-195)
- Five main points: "formatting architectural problems, visualizing information
 paradigms in architecture, generating solutions, architecture as a mediating
 process, and spatializing data" (pp. 211)
- Case 1: Christopher Alexander (pp. 196-202)
- Specific interest in how his visualization of data structures influenced his
 techniques of design
- Data trees  lattices; trees become limited to him, so movement to full
 connectivity (pp. 201)
- How lattice data structures influence A Pattern Language; design as an
 interlocking lattice of patterns (pp. 201-202)
- Case 2: Cedric Price (pp. 202-206)
- Focus here on the interrelation between static diagramming and
 hyper-open-ended computation
- Uses the Generator project as an example of a program which "kicks back" and
 generates when no activity is happening (pp. 206)
- Non-form and open-endedness (pp. 206)
- [note the rest of this case study is informational, it presents some of
 price's work
- Case 3: Negroponte and the AMG (pp. 206-211)
- Focus on the relation between MIEC and embodied medial environments
- The "closed world" (Paul Edwards) funding flow: DoD   private military
 contractors   certain universities
- "However, schools of architecture are still trade schools by nature and not
 compatible at this moment with this process of research." From Negroponte's
 1966 thesis (pp. 207)
- More details on the Boston South End project (see Halpern in this volume and
 Scott 2016); it was conceived and executed by an Undergrad student [which
 changes the whole dynamic] (pp. 207)
- Presents a few more embodied mapping projects for the DoD which grew out of
 the Aspen Movie Map; what's important for MWS is the environment as interface
 and change in sensorium where virtual IS real (pp. 209-211)
- Some implications for MWS: (pp. 211)
- Virtual and real are inseparable, online == offline
- Relevance of "The New Aesthetic" (Matthew Battles) [this is an internet
 aesthetic of the interface, not the protocol]
- Takes a more sanguine view of the future than Halpern does in the framing

-[1970] The Machinic Animal: Autonomic Networks and Behavioural Computation  --
Andrew Witt
- Main argument: That a specific group of "digital designers" adopted
 computational machines as a tool for planning behaviours, using C. Shannon's
 transactional network model as an "epistemic armature" which led to a
 foregrounding of scripting in design transforming the tools used in
 architecture [this is in line with Carpo's historical view of digital
 architecture as a movement] (pp. 219)
- Two sections that set up the network theory that architects appropriate (pp.
 220-226)
- Theory preceded adoption of machines; network/information theory first, then
 executed computationally (pp. 220)
- "Quantificational turn" on an epistemological level (pp. 220)
- The network had primacy over other operationalized concepts; some aspects of
 networks in the following case studies: (pp. 221)
- Optimism about potential of computers (pp. 222)
- Networks as simulating forces; often physical forces or organizational forces
 endowed with a level of physicality (pp. 222)
- Networks as able to endow designed systems with a level of automatic
 behaviour (pp. 222)
- Network as analogy for human-machine symbiosis; the ability for the machine
 to become more living (pp. 222)
- Underpinned by neural bioelectrics, the living nervous systems as electrical
 + telegraphic electricity as signal = Weiner's computational cybernetics (pp.
 223-224)
- "Iconic cypher" of the drawing automaton (pp. 224)
- Where drawing can be delegated to a machine, a balance between
 computer-as-organism and computer-as-rational [human work as management and
 oversight; a kind of gesture towards what their ideal human life was and wat
 kind of labour is ideal] (pp. 226)
- Computer as more-than-technology which mirrors the human (pp. 226)
- Section on the year 1970 as culmination of network approach in architecture
 (pp. 226-236)
- Marks a year of heightened visibility for computation and networks (pp. 226);
 Expo '70 in Osaka et al (pp. 227-234)
- Move from calculation to behaviour (pp. 226)
- Scripting as a modality of architectural design (pp. 234)
- Any design op that could be represented procedurally could be encoded as a
 script; translation of designers' epistemic faculties and sensorium into code
 (pp. 234)
- "portability" of design operations, their potential to be copied and "run" in
 different places (pp. 234)
- Case study 1: Yona Friedman's Flatwriter (pp. 236-242)
- "Design by search" that simulated urban spaces through networks which
 produces then evaluates combinatorial spaces to manage an environment (pp.
 235)
- Started with the view that contemporary design must serve all users rather
 than just the client which increases the scale of design from building to
 environment (pp. 236)
- In response, thinking architecture as an information processing discipline
 (pp. 238)
- The Flatwriter was a "theoretical computer" which was as follows: (pp. 238)
- A computer program which combinatorically generates and evaluates various
 spatial plans of urban buildings, all in relation to each other
- Matrix method of combinatorics
- Evaluator produces a topomap of "isoefforts" for each user to show variations
 that are more or less suitable (pp. 239)
- A custom keyboard with spatial organizations shown as signs (you can type
 your ideal space as a text)
- A terminal display to see your space
- A surveillance environment which feeds the city's current configuration back
 into the program (pp. 239)
- Design epistemology = information theory for Friedman (pp. 239)
- Fields of forces shaping design are social forces made physical which the
 architect cannot control but can provide the infrastructure for them to play
 out smoothly (pp. 246)
- Comparative section on Luigi Moretti's parametric surfaces (pp. 242- 246)
- Presented as comparison with Friedman:
- Geometric optimization for ideal forms through parametric means (pp. 242);
 he's the first to actually use "parametric" as a term (pp. 245)
- Friedman and Moretti both treat architecture and urbanism as analogous
 problems (albeit in different ways, see above) (pp. 242)
- Methodology: define theme  define parameters of theme  define relationships
 between parameters (pp. 245)
- Executed his method through a taxonomy of buildings for specific kinds of
 spectatorship (pp. 245)
- Forces shaping design are tendencies toward physical "features" which can be
 harnessed by the architect for specific ends (pp. 246)
- Case study 2: Architect and Computer: A Man-Machine-System exhibition (pp.
 246-256)
- Exhibition in Berlin which displayed a broader range of design software tools
 (pp. 236)
- Central exhibition theme on human-machine symbiosis where each has behaviours
 which complement and enhance the other (pp. 248)
- Collection of designer-developed software tools which crossed scales from
 building components to landscapes (pp. 253) [where's the actual code?]
- Stress upon stochastic processes for combinatorial form/plan generation; a
 brute-force approach where the computer and designer are both "evaluators" of
 randomly generated design outputs (253-256)
- Intermediate section on the work done at the Hochschule Für Gestaltung Ulm
 (pp. 256-262)
- The above exhibition was an extension of the work done at Ulm, was curated by
 a former faculty member (pp. 256)
- School curriculum focus on scientific approach to design, an "objective
 design epistemology" [not really defined] (pp. 259)
- Curriculum as site of computational experimentation [this also appears in
 Carpo 2012]
- Coursework on mathematical geometry, set theory, stats, etc. plus on
 information theory and computational behaviour (pp. 269)
- Thinking computer-human interaction which puts the onus of understanding on
 the computer, humans should not need to learn machinic forms of communication
 (pp. 261)
- Design = planning here through tight definition of design [close to
 engineering definitions] (pp. 262)
- Case study 3: Frei Otto's Munich Stadium (pp. 263-270)
- Stadium roof is itself a network and required new forms of computation; a
 catalyst (for Witt) of design computation as a separate discipline (pp. 236)
- This case study is mainly to demonstrate how new approaches/software lead to
 change in professional practice (pp. 263)
- Demonstration of beginning of a "technically synthetic discipline" which
 integrates software development, mathematics, and engineering (pp. 263)
- Two issues with two responses:
- Precision of form finding (pp. 266)  iterative finite element analysis to
 pinpoint most stable form (pp. 269)
- [increase in spec. precision on site]
- Precision of acrylic panel dimensions (pp. 266)  photogrammetric cameras w/
 iterative least-squares-fit splines (pp. 270)
- [the factory becomes a part of the construction process; from professional
 trades (who may be self-employed) to workers]
- In all, a network form of construction with a building who's elements are
 networked (pp. 270)
- Section which sums everything up (pp. 270-277)
- 1970 as a point where architecture's preoccupation with science (appears in
 Modernism) is supplanted with a preoccupation with computing (pp. 271-272)
- Computing subsuming scientific knowledge and encapsulating scientific
 methods, turning them into software components that can be deployed (pp.
 272)]
- [this is yr classic view of architectural computing where software packages
 are individual and deployable or not for specific ends within a
 non-computational architectural process]
- The "computational designer" as a separate role within architecture (pp. 272)
- Witt projects a more intensive computational turn which moves from form
 generation to "searching, comprehending, creating, and responding to space,"
 though he is ambiguous in judging these future potentials (pp. 277)

[1987] Going Native: Notes on Selected Artifacts from Digital Architecture at
the End of the Twentieth Century  --  Greg Lynn
- Main argument: That we have to take a "archaeological" approach to the
 digital in architecture in order to provide a material basis for its critical
 historicization (pp. 333)
- Section which sets up Lynn's "archaeological" method and the Archaeology of
 the Digital series of exhibitions that executes it at the CCA (pp. 283-289)
- Presents the CCA's Archaeology of the Digital research program (pp. 284)
- Two main questions: when did digital tech start to transform architecture? &
 how can the necessary digital archives be studied, conserved, exhibited,
 published, etc.? (pp. 284)
- View to the period from late 80s to 2010s as a period in the past rather than
 thinking the future (pp. 287)
- Series of three exhibitions which documented material entering the archive,
 part of the process of archiving (pp. 287)
- They are chronological-thematic (already a first-historicization)
- Sets up his version of archaeology (what he calls a variant of media
 archaeology on pp 334) (pp. 284)
- Not history since it focuses on the "collection and organization of material
 artefacts" and not narrative (pp. 284)
- Lynn's assertion that "There is no continuous historical narrative
 structuring the Archaeology of the Digital program."
- Stresses the importance of constructing an archive before historical research
 can be undertaken (pp. 285)
- Also stresses the importance of practical knowledge which embeds the
 researcher in a period of interest through re-enactment (pp. 285)
- Also, also stresses that we should be sceptical of architects' own textual
 reflections on their practices since they often misrepresent their digital
 practices (ie. they are only thinking digital tools and not using them) (pp.
 286)
- Section on the first exhibition: Archaeology of the Digital (1987-circa 1990)
 (pp. 290-299)
- First stage of the research program: on first contact between arch. and
 digital tech. (pp. 289)
- Main thrust of this section is how already-established architects were
 already adopting digital tools toward very specific, self-defined ends; it
 was not a time of general experimentation by young architects (pp. 290)
- Purpose coded-software [through not purpose built hardware] rather than
 off-the-shelf software (pp. 290)
- Four directions: 1) optimization of form/structure through natural forces; 2)
 procedural formal operation execution; 3) gain authority over construction;
 4) automatic animation of responsive buildings (pp. 292)
- Presents a few examples: Peter Eisenman's Biozentrum, Ghery, Chuck Hoberman,
 Shoei Yoh
- Of interest is how software might be purpose-coded but the hardware is often
 not purpose designed (the Cray Supercomputer for example on pp. 294), when it
 is purpose designed, it is only the active armatures (the sensor systems in
 Hoberman's sphere thingy pp. 299)
- Of interest is the way design is interfacing with other media systems
 (Eisenman's project demonstrates this well: he is interfacing with
 fax-telephony, with MIEC through Ohio State University supercomputer [it's a
 $15 million USD machine] time, and private mail services (FedEx))
- Lynn himself stresses the importance of regaining control over projects (and
 prestige? and sense of professional expertise?) to the established architects
 in their move to using digital tools (pp. 295)
- Section on the second exhibition: Media and Machines (1990-circa 2003)
 (300-314)
- Second stage of research program: integration of interactive media and
 robotics (pp. 289)
- Main thrust of this section is how architects at this time pushed beyond the
 edges of the discipline through "immersion, interaction, and immateriality"
 [immateriality/virtuality as the watchword of 90s/00s media theory/cultural
 theory] (pp. 300)
- Presents a series of examples: NOX (Lars Spuybroek's) H2Oexpo, Asymptote's
 (Hani Rashid/ Lise Anne Couture) NYSE Virtual Trading Floor, ONL's NSA
 Muscle, Bernard Cache's Objectile
- Of interest is the turn toward digital experiences and atmospherics (pp.
 303-304)
- Of interest is how objects/spaces are programmed to seem independent, but
 actually have no "will of their own" [this relates to the demo] (pp. 307)
- Of interest is the level of abstraction any custom software is coded in; in
 the case of Hyposurface-AC/DC it is a compiled Java which is a very high
 level language (it has no direct access to memory, automatic trash collection,
 the platform does a lot of the work for the programmer in the backend) (pp.
 306-307)
- Lynn stresses again how digital tools and the above experiments in virtuality
 were all geared towards an expansion of the power of the architect over the
 project (pp. 308-309)
- The strangeness of this sentence: "But the discipline of architecture has
 delegated these concerns to what have become the larges and most profitable
 companies..."  (pp. 314)
- Section on the third exhibition: Complexity and Convention (1996-2012) (pp.
 314-332)
- Third stage of research program: thematic grouping of developments toward a
 history of the digital in arch. [in practice this will tend toward a focus on
 2000s -2010s, an "era" of full digital adoption] (pp. 289)
- Digital tools as compartmentalized, then deployed individually, in concert
 with others, each as an individual component (pp. 314)
- Five categories of  developments: 1) "high fidelity 3D"; 2) "topology and
 topography"; 3) "photorealism"; 4) "data"; 5) "structure and cladding" (pp.
 316)
- [combination of tools and components is a thing here; what does this mean for
 archival organization since that's really what Lynn intends the
 categorization to be for?]
- Some examples he presents: FOA Yokohama Terminal, Zaha and your man, PSC's
 Eyebeam thingy, Neil Denari, Van Berkel & Bos, etc. (all listed on pp. 315)
- Of interest, Lynn stresses again how digital tools allowed architects to gain
 more control of architectural production through reducing mediators in
 construction (pp. 316) and doing what engineers/construction managers
 previously had to do (pp. 322)
- Of interest, Lynn also stresses the reduced labour which allowed increased
 complexity of projects within a shorter time span; what goes unsaid is how
 this changes the speed of project turn-over and the intensity of work necessary
 (ie. there are changes that register on the level of architectural employees)
 (pp. 322)
- Of interest, we can ask how integrated high-computational-overhead processes
 such as finite-element-analyses are to architectural design since their
 visualization is not instantaneous; how are outputs potentially disregarded?
 Designers don't have to listen when a digital system presents an output (pp.
 330)
- Summary and directions for future research questions (pp. 333-334)
- The whole research program shows a couple things
- How increased complexity/innovation ran in line with increased speed,
 decreased cost, and functionality [this is a historical claim, which Lynn
 said above was not part of the archaeology] (pp. 333)
- Reveals transformation of architecture through digital tech. in material
 terms (pp. 333)
- Presents a few questions for historical investigation of digital in arch.
 (pp. 333)
- Here he makes an explicit gesture to media archaeology (pp. 334)
- "It is fundamentally a media archaeological project, an active listening to
 artifacts and fragments..." (pp. 334)

[1991] In the Midst of Things: Architecture's Encounter with Digital
Technology, Media Theory and Material Culture  --  Nathalie Bredella
- Main argument: the media art institutions that grew up up in the 90s allowed
 architecture to be come a "more prominent site for negotiating the spatial,
 political, and social implications of digital media..." (pp. 341), the article
 presents a few prominent projects and exhibitions to show how architecture
 participated in the cross-disciplinary context (pp. 348)
- Introduction section that sets up a bit of the context and discourses of
 media art institutions (pp. 339-348)
- General discussion in the 90s on expanded impact of new media technologies on
 perception, experience, communication, and rep. (pp. 339)
- Recognition of architecture as a medium and the processes of design as
 inter-medial (pp. 339)
- Institutions appearing as sites for trans-disciplinary interaction,
 technological dissemination (pp. 339)
- V2_ (Rotterdam), Stadelschule (Frankfurt), ZKM (Karlsruhe), Ars electronica
 (Linz) [the significance of where these institutions are clustered] (pp. 339)
- Theoretical importance of war to the discussions
- Paul Virilio's writings on militarization of life (perception, bodies,
 land-become-territory) (pp. 341, 345)
- The Gulf War and the direct interfacing of the public to war through new
 media; battlefield regulation and civilian regulation flatlining into each
 other (pp. 345)
- Architecture beginning to be understood as an interface where various media
 could be accesses (pp. 348)
- Sensory experiences for augmentation, the perception of tech. as
 democratizing and revealing, criticality towards governmental/corporate
 appropriation of tech. (pp. 348)
- Section on V2_ and architectural media environments (pp. 349-360)
- Presents a few of the V2_ publications/conferences
- Of interest is the potential for architectural action in relation to new
 communication networks (pp. 350-351)
- Of interest is Lebbeus Woods' presentation where buildings are subaltern
 network nodes that are invisible to the Powers That Be and provide a site of
 autonomous action [Hakim Bey's TAZ concept is already a thing and being
 appropriated by music subcultures at the time, this is within that discourse]
 (pp. 351)
- Of interest is the way architecture is being integrated into a new art
 sociality; the exhibition, publication, institution as a means of "making
 connections" [compare to the 80s where architecture is integrated into
 galleries] (pp. 355, 359)
- General point of the section is to demonstrate how art institutions provided
 a context where architecture could use relational information systems to
 probe its own visualization, design, and communication strategies (pp. 359)
- Section on the NOX H2Oexpo pavilion and inter-medial affectivity (pp.
 361-367)
- Argument in the 90s: If architecture is an interface tech. then architects
 should be designing information spaces and the nodes for accessing them (pp.
 361)
- Presents the NOX pavilion as an example [see Carpo 2012 for details]
- Information flow is reified into sensory phenomena (pp. 365)
- "ecologization," questions about control over media environments/the actual
 physical environment (pp. 364)
- The environment and its ecology as tied closely to media ecology through the
 politics of their control (pp. 367)
- Section on antecedents of inter-media in architecture; Frei Otto, Bucky, and
 their revisiting in the 90s (pp. 367-375)
- Covers Frei Otto's approach to design where the conditions are set up which
 allow structures to find their own forms (pp. 367)
- Mathematical  managerial "minimum path optimization" as the underlying form
 of self-designing structure & the process of architectural production; the
 project and its execution use the same method (pp. 370-371)
- Intermedial approach through cross-referencing various media (photos, models,
 drawings) within the same process (pp. 371)
- From this, Bucky's mediation between technocratic management and view of
 "global humanity" (pp. 373)
- This is brought back in ANY 17 where the authors all are thinking about media
 as ecology and ecologies (of power, of capital) as media which are
 self-organizing (pp. 373-375)
- Section on visualization as basal to the changing state of architecture
 theory at the time (pp. 375-381)
- Sets up with Bowker's assertion that the way information is presented relates
 to the construction of scientific knowledge [visualization, a view through
 the interface] (pp. 375)
- [here visualization = information infrastructure for some reason]
- Presents a series of exhibitions where architects are engaging with the
 spatiality of imperceptible relationship (pp. 376)
- Of interest: what is foregrounded are visual metaphors, raising problems,
 awareness, providing insight. Representation is operative here
- Of interest: how military/governmental tools (surveillance, mapping) are used
 (pp. 378)
- Of interest: critical approaches to connectivity (its not always good) which
 are raised on the representational level (pp. 378)
- General understanding of architecture (Keller Easterling & Saskia Sassen) as
 a "socio-technical infrastructure that operated within a relational
 framework." (pp. 381)
- Sum-up section (pp. 381-382)
- Architecture at the centre of uncovering the instability of so-called new
 media, crossing scales (pp. 381)
- Relationship between form and action, form as representational and
 interactive, sensorially disturbing or "upsetting" (pp. 382)

[1992] The Paperless Studios in Context  --  Stan Allen
- Main argument: Sets out the context for the Columbia Paperless Studios and
 provides a draft periodization
- A personal, anecdotal view (pp. 385)
- Terminological distinction (pp. 386)
- Digital = a "condition" or "state of being" that about discreteness & pixels,
 ie. rendering
- Computational = a process, the "specific use of the architectural or
 engineering capacities of the computer" associated with vector graphics
- Stages based on decade chronology
- 1980 (pp. 387)
- "Nobody actually had a computer..." [maybe amongst his friends...], no
 protocols just yet for how things should be done
- 1990
- Emerging aesthetics of smoothness which predated computer use (pp. 387-388)
- Repeats the whole thing about digital aesthetics as response to
 deconstructivism; Derrida  Deleuze; fragmentation  continuity; preserving the
 core tenets of architectural discipline and introducing difference (pp.
 388-390)
- The whole opposition between "burn it all down" (how SA's buds saw
 Deconstruction) and "different but not different enough to be dangerous" (pp.
 390)
- Paperless studio at Columbia in 1994  (pp. 394-395)
- Segregation of studio from rest of school (pp. 394), "cultish quality" (pp.
 395)
- "mystical" language, computation as "end in itself" and computation as
 "aesthetic" (pp. 395)
- Unix OS machines (Mac Classics and SGI workstations) (pp. 394)
- 2000
- Second generation of digital designers who focused on fabrication (pp. 398)
- The pavilion and typology of choice, but limiting due to lack of programmatic
 complexity (pp. 398)
- Infinitesimal approximation of continuous curves (pp. 398)
- Present
- "full integration of digital or computational design technology in all
 architectural offices, where the discussion is no longer about digital
 design; the discussion is about design..." (pp. 400)
- Hardware and software democratization, people who grew up with computers (pp.
 400)
- Also specialized research in digital tools, software dev. (pp. 402)

[1992] The Making of a Generation: How the Paperless Studios Came About  --
Bernard Tschumi
- Main Argument: a personal history of his time as dean at GSAPP where he
 introduced the Paperless Studios stressing his aim of making GSAPP the next
 AA as a locus of architectural avant garde (pp. 407)
- Stresses his goals in hiring "...young, talented adjuncts..." as a means of
 breaking the discursive power of the tenured faculty as a means of producing
 a new avant garde (pp. 407-408)
- Stresses that part of that project was nurturing personal design expression
 and identity-making (pp. 408)
- Uses his own exploration of notation as an example (pp, 408-409)
- "I was trying to give an identity to my own work or to the work of other
 people in my generation." [making identities and cultures from scratch; see
 Queneau on Acephale] (pp. 410)
- Section on how the new hires were pushed to develop their own architectural
 languages through the computer (pp.411, 415)
- The unevenness in who knew how to use the computers (the need for a student
 Digital Assistant [unnamed] to be hired for computer skills) (pp. 415)
- Mentions his lack of teaching die to admin work and design work (pp. 418)
- Ends with a few questions for thinking GSAPP's influence at the time (pp.
 418)

[2002] Sound Advice and Clear Drawings: Design and Computation in the Second
Machine Age --  Phil Bernstein
- [note: he used to be an upper-up at Autodesk]
- Main argument: A different kind of making has emerged from digital tools on
 the level of architectural process, ie. project delivery and that new tech.
 "remediate" the role of the architect by giving them more control and leverage
 over the process (pp. 424)
- Starts by defining technologies as instrumental (pp. 424)
- Presents two main turning points that made architecture a profession during
 "The Enlightenment": 1) the notion that all building expertise is collapsed
 in a single entity, "the master builder" (Brunelleschi) and 2) that designing,
 and building are different kinds of activity (Alberti) (pp. 424-425)
- Together this makes architecture a profession and therefore a legal entity
 with liabilities and responsibilities (pp. 425)
- Today, three strong roles in design process that must be reconciled (they are
 legally defined roles):
- The Architect  --  responsible for design but no responsibility over
 construction (pp. 425)
- The Client  --  the financial source, makes the project possible [the owner
 of the general MOP] (pp. 425)
- The Contractor  --  responsible for building only (pp. 425)
- Four period which regulate the relationship differently
- The Era of Drawing (pp. 426)
- The architect draws instructions and the contractor's crew builds from the
 instructions
- Subject to the "CPU problem" (Carpo) where you have to abstract since it
 would take too long to represent everything (pp. 426)
- The CAD Revolution (pp. 426-428)
- Same relationship btwn Architect and Contractor, but CPU problem is attacked
 by using computers as augmentation (pp. 426)
- Tells an anecdote about how it was faster for a while to FedEx hand drawings
 across the world than it was to make them in CAD, print them out, etc. (pp.
 428)
- The BIM Transition (pp. 429-430)
- Change in roles of each party in process now that all parts of a building can
 be interrogated w/o abstraction (pp. 430)
- Architect can have deeper understanding of project w/ mre effective
 communication with trades (pp. 430)
- Change in liability through BIM as designer and builder get closer together
 on the level of representations (pp. 430)
- Tells a bit of a story about "The Fall" from power of architects through the
 advent of The Devil (the construction manager) during the "liability crisis
 of 1980" (pp. 430-431)
- The Era of Cloud Computing (pp. 432-437)
- Breaking the CPU problem through infinite computation power provided off site
 (pp. 432)
- Ability to make your BIM models animated, to extract new insights from
 increasingly detailed models (pp. 432)
- Replacing labour with MOP, computation does what an employee or consultant
 used to do, office vertical integration (pp. 434)
- Stresses how algorithms don't totally do their own evaluation and that
 designers still have to take the outputs out of the computer and evaluate
 them (pp. 436)
- Stresses that this big-data situation can provide architects leverage for
 more control and better pay (pp. 437)

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