Repositioning Architecture in the Digital

Seventh Annual Conference November 2020 in collaboration with the Jaap Bakema Study Centre

 

In the global history of digital culture, the 1970s are seen as a transitional period: between the dazzling rise and fall of cybernetics in the mid-20th century and before the popularisation of the personal computer and the early critical debates on artificial intelligence and surveillance in the late 1980s. The techno-utopian playfulness in architecture, art and philosophy of the 1960s was replaced by the application-driven technological thinking of the emerging post-industrial society. The focus was now on designing specific tools, digital standards, and automated services for the future data society. The miniaturisation of technology and in particular the development of microchips initiated far-reaching changes not only in natural science, industry and economy, but also impacted architecture and urban design.

Theory of Architecture and Digital Culture, together with Dirk van den Heuvel, Director of the Jaap Bakema Study Centre, looked at buildings, archives, networks, concepts and visual culture. The sessions brought together researchers from TU Delft and international scholars. The department of Heritage of Het Nieuwe Instituut contributed with a special session, "Behind the Screens" on digital archives, and the department of research hosted "Data Matters" in collaboration with the Royal Academy of the Arts in London.

Contributors were: Meera Badran, Emely Chooi, Teresa Fankhänel, Helena Francis, Flora van Gaalen, Eline de Graaf, Ludo Groen, Dirk van den Heuvel, Tanja Herdt, Evangelos Kotsioris, Marten Kuijpers, Ippolito Laparelli, Janno Martens, Soscha Monteiro de Jesus, Suzanne Mulder, Frans Neggers, Dennis Pohl, Víctor Muñoz Sanz, Marina Otero Verzier, and Georg Vrachliotis, with keynotes lectures by Alessandra Ponte and Armin Linke.

See the conference proceedings:

http://pure.tudelft.nl/ws/portalfiles/portal/85997639/JBSC_2020_proceedings_1.pdf