The automobile has reshaped our conceptions of space and our modes of accessing and penetrating the urban and non-urban territory in multiple ways, revolutionizing how architects perceive the city and contributing significantly to the transformation of the relationship between architecture and the city. Despite the fact that many architects and architectural critics and theorists have been attracted to automobile vision, in the field of history and theory of architecture and urban design, many questions concerning the impact of the automobile on (...) our perception of the city and its territory have not yet been explored in depth. This is surprising when one considers that no other single factor changed the city so drastically during the twentieth century as the pervasive presence of the automobile. The article examines three different cases of architects—John Lautner, Alison and Peter Smithson, and Aldo Rossi—who tried to construct new visual regimes in photography from the car. The main objective is to present how new visual regimes in photography from the car informed in various ways the visual attitudes in their designs of buildings. The interexchange between the ways of capturing the views from the car and the formation of new design methods can explain the necessity to establish a new theoretical framework offering the possibility to historians of architecture and urban design to address in a sharp and concrete way the reciprocal relation between automobile vision and design approaches. (shrink)

Increasing computational power and improving deep learning methods have made computer vision technologies pervasively common in urban environments. Their applications in policing, traffic management, and documenting public spaces are increasingly common (Ridgeway 2018, Coifman et al. 1998, Sun et al. 2020). Despite the often-discussed biases in the algorithms' training and unequally borne benefits (Khosla et al. 2012), almost all applications similarly reduce urban experiences to simplistic, reductive, and mechanistic measures. There is a lack of context, depth, and specificity in these (...) practices that enables semantic knowledge or analysis within urban contexts, especially within the context of using and occupying urban space. This paper will critique existing uses of artificial intelligence and computer vision in urban practices to propose a new framework for understanding people, action, and public space. This paper revisits Geertz's (1973) use of thick descriptions in generating interpretive theories of culture and activity and uses this lens to establish a framework to approach evaluating the varied uses of computer vision technologies that weigh meaning. By discussing cases of implemented examples of urban computer vision—from LinkNYC and Numina's urban measurements to the Detroit Police's use of DataWorks Plus's facial recognition technology—it proposes a framework for evaluating the thickness of the algorithm's conclusions against the computational method's complexity required to produce that outcome. Further, we discuss how the framework's positioning may differ (and conflict) between different users of the technology, from engineer to urban planner and policymaker, to citizen. This paper also discusses how the current use and training of deep learning algorithms and how this process limits semantic learning and proposes three potential methodologies toward gaining a more contextually specific, urban-semantic, description of urban space relevant to urbanists. This paper contributes to the critical conversations regarding the proliferation of artificial intelligence by challenging the current applications of these technologies in the urban environment by highlighting their failures within this context while also proposing an evolution of these algorithms that may ultimately make them sensitive and useful within this spatial and cultural milieu. (shrink)

Now that the usage and meaning of urban spaces have been dramatically challenged by the global pandemic, several debates and reflections are going on around the manner in which cities – both as concerns the public and the private spaces – have been designed. The article observes how “urban-human face” representations have served different models of urbanity across times and cultures. Using a framework deriving from semiotics of culture, according to which the city represents a model of the world, the (...) article attempts to interpret how portraits of faces have been modelling the city through different urban faciality mechanisms. The focus is on a sample of what we call ‘urban-human faces’, ranging from Soviet propaganda posters to the digital #selfiecity project. The expression refers to series of representations that bring together the city and the face. It can be argued that both the city and the face, produced at a specific historical and cultural moment, with their figurative and plastic elements, deploy the struggle for the city ownership and authorship. Nonetheless, the commensurability of the city and the face can be just based on the fact that both semiotic configurations represent an excess with the help of cartographic reproduction (the city) and the portrait (the face), respectively. A city can be represented by a face to the extent to which it is also multifaceted as a polylogue. On the basis of such instable commensurability, the article will ultimately attempt to bring together the semiotics of the face and the semiotics of the city. (shrink)

Contrary to the general belief that modernist art and architecture reflect the technological society, Jacques Ellul maintains in his L’empire du non-sens that they are justifications for the integration of humankind into what he called the technicist complex. Modernism in art and architecture meant that every product must be qualified by a technological character. This unassailable belief exerted some far-reaching influences on symbolic thought, on artistic expression, on architectural character. If imitation and invention were the two inseparable concepts through which (...) art and architecture were produced and symbolized, it is because they operate on a certain transparency between an exemplar and a work of art. By contrast, in the mentality of technique, artistic production operates based on a certain opacity to meanings outside of itself. Imitation and invention were separated. Thus, one of the principal beliefs in modernism, that art and architecture symbolize the technological society is actually one of its weakest. In considering technology as both the symbol and the product, the artistic idea and its representation collapsed into each other. (shrink)

This article examines the rise of meta-commentary in US media, and considers the consequences it has for the social construction and the performance of intellectual expertise. Media meta-commentary is defined as critical reflection about media practices and performances, in which the primary basis for criticism is the comparison of different media formats. Meta-commentary began to emerge with the differentiation of the aesthetic sphere and the development of a new kind of expert, the cultural critic. Cultural criticism led to a proliferation (...) of expert performance styles, including a type of counter-performance that rejects the somber and serious nature of traditional intellectual practices. By the 1980s, these new styles of intellectual performance were being reinforced by important institutional and regulatory changes within the media industry, and ultimately by the proliferation of new digital technologies and DIY culture. By the twenty-first century, media meta-commentary had become a distinctive and peculiar form of expert discourse, which legitimates the act of criticism while also relativizing it. The current environment suggests two possible outcomes: a hopeful one that encourages greater reflexivity, and a more ominous one that points toward populism. (shrink)

In this interview, Paul Virilio talks at length about his life and numerous published works ranging from Speed & Politics: An Essay on Dromology to the recently translated Polar Inertia. Considering important theoretical themes and questions relating to post- and 'hyper'- modernism, poststructuralism, modernity and postmodernity, Virilio discusses his often controversial views on the cultural writings of Foucault, Deleuze, Derrida and Baudrillard. In so doing, Virilio not only clarifies many of his architectural, political and cultural concepts such as 'military space', (...) 'dromology' and the 'integral accident' but also provides much food for thought for all those presently concerned with the social implications of the 'disappearance' of aesthetics, technoculture, information warfare, cloning and 'cyberfeminism'. (shrink)

The word «fake» and its several synonyms touch on a number of ontological and mimetic issues that since Plato have led directly to contemporary debates. In the present survey we will try to outline a «grammar of fake» through three points: a) the issue of pseudos in Plato and its impact on contemporaneity; b) the notion of hyperreality as absolute fake; c) the dimension of operative fake, grasped in its postmodern enucleation.

Central issues in philosophy of architecture include foundational matters regarding the nature of: (1) architecture as an artform, design medium, or other product or practice; (2) architectural objects—what sorts of things they are; how they differ from other sorts of objects; and how we define the range of such objects; (3) special architectural properties, like the standard trio of structural integrity (firmitas), beauty, and utility—or space, light, and form; and ways they might be special to architecture; (4) architectural types—how to (...) consider abstract groups of architectural objects and their instances; (5) meaning and other language-like phenomena in architecture and its objects; (6) formation of and warrant for our basic grasp, and considered judgment, of architectural objects; and (7) social and moral features of architectural objects and architectural practice. Yet other questions engage applied philosophical concerns regarding architecture, such as the character of architectural notation; intellectual property rights; and client-architect obligations. A far-reaching philosophy of architecture extends beyond even a broadly aesthetics-based assessment, to include considerations of ethics, social and political philosophy, and philosophical reflections on psychology and the behavioral sciences. The aesthetics of architecture, by itself, spans traditional issues mooted in philosophy of art, as well as aesthetics of the everyday, and environmental aesthetics. Such traditional issues include the nature of the work; the possibility of classes, kinds, or types in the domain; the character and roles of representation, intentionality, and expression; and the warranted foundations for criticism. The ethics of architecture also addresses traditional issues, including delineation of rights, responsibilities, the good, virtues, and justice in architectural milieus. Still other aspects of philosophy of architecture concern social and technological characteristics. (shrink)

Kevin Lynch's books are the classic underpinnings of modern urban planning and design, yet they are only a part of his rich legacy of ideas about human purposes and values in built form. City Sense and City Design brings together Lynch's remaining work, including professional design and planning projects that show how he translated many of his ideas and theories into practice. An invaluable sourcebook of design knowledge, City Sense and City Design completes the record of one of the foremost (...) environmental design theorists of our time and leads to a deeper understanding of his distinctively humanistic philosophy. The editors, both former students of Lynch, provide a cogent summary of his career and of the role he played in shaping and transforming the American urban design profession during the 1950s, the 1960s, and the 1970s. Each of the seven thematic groupings of writings and projects that follow begins with a short introduction explaining their content and their background. The essays in part I focus on the premises of Lynch's work: his novel reading of large-scale built environments and the notion that the design of an urban landscape should be as meaningful and intimate as the natural landscape. In part II, excerpts from Lynch's travel journals reveal his early ideas on how people perceive and interpret their surroundings—ideas that culminated in his seminal work, The Image of the City. This part of the book also presents Lynch's experiments with children and his assessment of environmental-perception research. The examples of both small-scale and large-scale analysis of visual form in part III are followed by three parts on city design. These include Lynch's more theoretical works on complex planning decisions involving both functional (spatial and structural organization) and normative (how the city works in human terms) approaches, articles discussing the principles that guided Lynch's teaching and practice of city design, and descriptions of Lynch's own projects in the Boston area and elsewhere. The book concludes with essays written late in Lynch's career, fantasy pieces describing utopias and offering new design freedoms and scenarios warning of horrifying "cacotopias.". (shrink)

At the beginning of the eighties of the last century, the issue of “patronage” began to arouse scholarly interest and gained importance. Galileo became a test case: his importance, and the importance of patronage – and that of the Medici in particular – go beyond the historical junction of the scientific revolution and have corollaries in the more general attitude to science and knowledge. This case furnished a new line of research for the historical sociology of science. As far as (...) Galileo is concerned, my claim is that the new trend belongs to post-modern historiography, rather than to post-Renaissance Medici patronage. (shrink)

Wagner is thought to be one of the first Modern Architects, yet a number of writers have argued that his most famous Modern building, the “Postsparkasse,” violates the most basic principles of Modern Architecture; principles that Wagner himself helped develop. This essay develops a new interpretation of this building by placing it in the context of fin de siècle Viennese culture. This interpretation shows that the “Postsparkasse” is a Modern building, but it also shows that the common understanding of “Modern (...) Architecture” needs to be revised. It also suggests a new role for architecture in the contemporary world. (shrink)

Strategy frames the contemporary epistemological space of urbanism: major cities across the globe such as New York, London and Sydney invest time, energy and resources to craft urban strategies. Extensive empirical research projects have proposed a shift towards a strategic framework to manage cities. This theoretical curiosity is reflected in the rising interest in urban strategy from practice. For instance, the World Bank regularly organizes an Urban Strategy Speaker Series, while the powerful network CEOs for Cities lobbies for a strategic (...) approach to urban development. Critical scholars such as Zukin diagnose not a shift in but a shift to strategic thinking in the contemporary city. This article poses the question: what makes strategy such an attractive ‘thought style’ in relation to imagining and managing cities? How can we understand the practice of urban strategy? And what are its intended and unintended consequences? The objective of this article is to analyse strategy as a socio-political practice that shapes cities, and by extension, society at large. (shrink)

This article takes the motorway seriously as a place where the society of traffic can be found and studied. While many kinds of activities are done by drivers and passengers in parallel with driving on the motorway, such as listening to the radio, eating lunch or caring for, or being, children, I focus here on office work. Empirical material from a video-ethnography of one driver doing paperwork and overtaking a slow-moving vehicle ahead is used to examine in detail some of (...) the practices of combining driving and office-duties in the car while in motion. Drawing on the work of Harvey Sacks, the article examines how this mobile society is naturally organized as an architectural configuration brought to life in the practices of driving in traffic. Overlooked phenomena that are orderly stable features of being mobile are analysed, such as ‘overtaking’, ‘tailgating’ and ‘cruising’. Where other writers have used ‘speed’ to theorize the contemporary period, a brief re-specification is offered in the light of the uses, moral and otherwise, of speed within, and as made apprehensible in relation to, traffic. (shrink)

Since the nineteenth and twentieth century, information has been pivotal both in the cultural tradition and then in the economic tradition. While the Fordism economic model and its specialisation requirements originated a simplistic zoning and single-use development approach to the design of a city. It, however, determined a fragmented growth of cities. Inevitably, the zoning as an urban strategy affected the architectural scale. Nevertheless, the idea of information, commercial goods and thereby people freely able to flow through the city allowed (...) architects and urban designer to conceive new types of urban infrastructures. For example, trains, which were designed on the model of urban “arteries and veins.” Over time, the persistence of urban and architectural segmentation has strengthened social and economic inequalities among urban society. In addition, information has played a more vital role in this strengthening process. The technological achievements of the twenty-first century such as information technologies have significantly affected cities. The new informational patterns have provided new ways of designing, and in turn how societies experience cities. These “quantified cities” consist of digital data that dynamically interacts with “quantified human beings.” Consequently, a renewed urban semiotics is established, which is built around an alternate sociological comprehension. Is this new urban semiotics able to heal an ill and divided urban body? The paper will investigate a new concept of “quantified city” based on the notion of “Hyper-Reality,” and its inhabitants who are entering in a “post-human” condition while living in a dynamic urban environment. In particular, the critical analysis will be used as a “tool” for redefining the perception of the city through inhabitants’ relational patterns which are technologically mediated. The more traditional notion of urbanisation is questioned with a focus on how the an urban society is embedded within the digital condition and the notion of a city. (shrink)

Arnold Berleant shares much in common with John Dewey. His notion of aesthetic engagement, which is central to his philosophy of art, is, like Dewey’s concept of “an experience,” an attack on dualistic notions of aesthetic experience. To the extent that Berleant and I are both Deweyans, we agree that we need to turn from the art object to art experience. Art is what it does in experience. Yet appreciative experience of art cannot happen without, at some point, focusing on (...) the art object as such, and this means bracketing context. Engagement is important, but so too are contemplation, disinterestedness and distance. Contemplation, for example, is a moment both in the creative process and in the process of appreciation. Moreover, following Brand and Gracyk, it will be argued in the present paper that only through toggling between contemplation and engagement can we obtain a full experience of art, nature, or of the everyday. (shrink)