Architectural Principles in the Age of Cybernetics

by Christopher Hight

A theoretical history of anthropomorphism and proportion in modern architecture, this volume brings into focus the discourse around proportion with current problems of post-humanism in architecture alongside the new possibilities made available through digital technologies. The book examines how the body and its ordering has served as a central site of architectural discourse in recent decades, especially in attempts to reformulate architecture’s relationship to humanism, modernism and technology. Challenging some concepts and categories of architectural history and situates current debates within a broader cultural and technological context, Hight makes complex ideas easily accessible. Extensively illustrated and written without academic jargon for an informed but non-specialized architectural audience, this book elucidates the often obscure debates of avant-garde architectural discourse and design, while demonstrating how these debates have affected everyday places and concepts of architecture. As a result, it will appeal to professional architects, academics and students, combining as it does an insightful introduction to the fundamental issues of architectural history and theory over the past fifty years with entirely new formulations of what that history is and means.

Genres: Architecture

248 pages, Hardcover

First published June 30, 2007

Reviews

[Sean Billy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book addresses the use of proportion in modern architecture and the history that has influenced it, including Wittkowers Arch Principles in the Age of Humanism, Rowe's Collage City, the golden section, and Corb's Modular. Although rather dense with references and unfamiliar philosophy in the first couple chapters, it became a more enjoyable reading after. I really liked the analysis of Wittkower and Rowe, but wished there was more development in further chapters. It became very in depth in terms of Le Corbusier's modular, but I was hoping for more formal analysis and present applications. The conclusion left a large door open for further investigation into principles of form in architecture without dependence on a chronological/ historical development.

[Borith Heng · Rating 1 out of 5]

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