Design Technics: Archaeologies of Architectural Practice

(Paperback, 1)

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Leading scholars historicise and theorise 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.

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. n addressing these and surrounding 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.

Reviews

"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 architectures 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 technicsa key term they use to signify both artifacts and processes."Journal of Architectural Education

Author Bio

Zeynep elik 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 MILLINS, a Los Angelesbased architectural practice.