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Eight Diagrams of the Future

Lebbeus Woods  EIGHT DIAGRAMS OF THE FUTURE

I am putting forward eight diagrams—the very best, most accurately constructed diagrams of the future I am capable of devising—in order to help us know what it might be. Such knowledge may serve us well. Or it may not. Knowledge always cuts both ways.

To some of you, this might seem a variation on the Rorschach test, that is, an essentially psychological exercise. To others, it might seem like the mystical reading of tea leaves, or the entrails of a ritually sacrificed goat. Fair enough, but I should note that in both of those situations, the material is created accidentally, or—if you prefer—randomly. The eight diagrams are the products of conscious design.

Another reference comes to mind, though it, too, may be only distantly related to the eight diagrams: The Glass Bead Game devised by writer Hermann Hesse. In Hesse’s novel, “the exact nature of the game (quoting Wikipedia) remains elusive and (its) devotees occupy a special school…. The rules of the game are only alluded to, and are so sophisticated that they are not easy to imagine. Playing the game well requires years of hard study of music, mathematics, and cultural history. Essentially the game is an abstract synthesis of all arts and scholarship. It proceeds by players making deep connections between seemingly unrelated topics.”

Diagram 3:

The Archigram Archival Project

Too cool:

The Archigram Archival Project makes the work of the seminal architectural group Archigram available free online for public viewing and academic study. The project was run by EXP, an architectural research group at the University of Westminster. Archigram Began Life as a Magazine produced at home by the members of the group, showing experimental work to a growing, global audience. Nine (and a half) seminal, individually designed, hugely influential, and now very rare magazines were produced between 1961 and 1974. The last ‘half’ was an update on the group’s office work rather than a ‘full’ Archigram magazine. The Six Members of Archigram are Peter Cook, David Greene, Mike Webb, Ron Herron, Warren Chalk and Dennis Crompton. Cook, Greene and Webb met in 1961, collaborated on the first Archigram magazine, later inviting Herron, Chalk and Crompton to join them, and the magazine name stuck to them as a group.

[via Interactive Architecture dot Org]

Visualizing Graffiti

Visualizing Graffiti 2.0 is an open source project that tracks graffiti writers’ motions and generates information visualizations.

[via Anne]

Surveillance

The NYT has a short piece on the use of video surveillance as marketing research. But rather than cast this initially as a privacy issue, the NYT disarms criticism by focusing on behaviors that anyone would have problems defending. Here’s one of a trio:

At a mall, a father emerged from a store dragging his unruly young son by the scruff of the neck, as if he were the family cat. The man had no idea his parenting skills were being immortalized.

Nice: What are you hiding, citizen?

Privacy is eventually raised, but waffled about and never supported with concrete examples. (You might have noticed, lurking in the margins with an ironic smile, the URL for the article explicitly labels the topic of the article: surveillance.)

Personalizable Signage

Nokia installed a very big arrow on a boom next to London Bridge. The arrow allows cellphone users to submit a request for directions to a location. The sign responds helpfully by rotating the arrow toward the destination and displaying the distance. An odd mixture of old and new wayfinding (and at the cusp of obsolescence: GPS tech in cellphones subordinates public signage to private consultation).

[ via Designboom]

Unhappy Hipsters

“In search of a less bleak playground, the toddler pedaled faster.”

Unhappy Hipsters captions Dwell magazine modernist architecture photos with depressing captions.

[via metafilter.com]

Church Machine

Architecture and/as communication

[via Super Colossal]

Wilco’s Loft

Loftlife magazine has an article on Wilco’s loft recording space. (Scroll to the bottom for a collection of pictures, including outtakes from the article proper.)

[via TapeOp message board]

Lebbeus Woods on Light & Dark

Lebbeus Woods posted a short piece about light (and dark) and architecture:

I had long thought that architecture measures light. Light flows everywhere in space but can only be perceived when it is reflected from an object—a mountain, a cloud, a building. A building is a special case because of its regular geometry. A rectangular wall shapes light and gives it a rational form, taking it out of a seeming chaos and making it comprehensible, thus useful. I think of architecture as an instrument—such as a ruler or a telescope—something we use to understand the world and create knowledge. I also believe that architecture is an instrument that enables our actions—such as a hammer, or a violin. Architecture is instrumental, active, and only incidentally symbolic or representational, that is, passively present.

Koolhaas Doc: A Kind of Architect

[via Archinect.com Feed]