About the Book
This book proposes a new critical relationship between computation and architecture, developing a history and theory of representation in architecture to understand and unleash potential means to open up creativity in the field.
Historically, architecture has led to spatial representation. Today, computation has established new representational paradigms that can be compared to spatial representations, such as the revolution of perspective in the Renaissance. Architects now use software, robotics, and fabrication tools with very little understanding and participation in how these tools influence, revolutionize, and determine both architecture and its construction today. Why does the discipline of architecture not have a higher degree of authorship in the conception and development of computational technologies that define spatial representation? This book critically explores the relationship between history, theory, and cultural criticism. Lorenzo-Eiroa positions new understandings through parallel historical sections and theories of many revolutionary representational architecture canons displaced by conventional spatial projection. He identifies the architects, artists, mathematicians, and philosophers that were able to revolutionize their disciplines through the development of new technologies, new systems of representation, and new lenses to understand reality. This book frames the discussion by addressing new means to understand and expand architecture authorship in relation to the survey, information, representation, higher dimensional space, Big Data, and Artificial Intelligence – in the pursuit of activating an architecture of information.
This will be important reading for upper-level students and researchers of architecture and architectural theory, especially those with a keen interest in computational design and robotic fabrication.
Table of Contents:
Introduction 1.SYSTEMS OF MEASUREMENT IDEALIZING AND DISPLACING HUMAN PROPORTIONS 2. BRUNELLESCHI’S PARAMETRIC ANALOG COMPUTATIONAL INTERFACE: FROM A NEW MEDIA NORMALIZING VISUALIZATION TO INDEXING, DISPLACING, AND INNOVATING IN REPRESENTATIO 3. PALLADIO’S PARAMETRIC UNDECIDABILITY AS A CRITICAL TOPOLOGICAL MODEL 4. BORROMINI'S TOPOLOGICAL MODEL DISPLACED BY RAINALDI’s AHISTORICAL SYNTHESIS: ARCHITECTS INDEXING, DISPLACING, AND INNOVATING IN SPATIAL REPRESENTATION 5. LINGUISTIC AND VISUAL SEMIOTICS SIGNS AS SIGNIFIERS ANTICIPATING AUTHORSHIP IN ARCHITECTURE 6. COMPUTATIONAL LINGUISTIC SEMIOTICS: FROM MATHEMATICS, TO COMPUTATIONAL LANGUAGES GRAMMAR, TO MACHINE LEARNING, TO SIGNIFIEDS IN NATURAL LANGUAGE PROCESSING (NLP), TO EMERGENT PROGRAMMING 7. COMPUTATIONAL VISUAL SEMIOTICS: GRAMMATOLOGY DISPLACING SIGNALS, SIGNS AND DIGITAL SIGNIFIERS FROM PIXELS TO POINT CLOUDS AND PARTICLES ACTIVATING EMERGENT PROGRAMMING 8. DISPLACING ARTIFICIAL ORIGINATION BY DIGITAL SIGNIFIERS FROM COMPUTATION TO AI 9. EXPANDING DIMENSIONS IN SPATIAL REFERENCE AND REPRESENTATIONAL SYSTEMS TOWARDS A MULTIDIMENSIONAL ARCHITECTURE OF INFORMATION: FROM TOPOLOGY, TO ARTIFICIAL NEURAL NETWORKS, TO QUANTUM COMPUTING 10. COMPUTATIONAL INFORMATIONAL SEMIOTICS: SIGNS AND SIGNALS IN MACHINES TO "DRAW" AND "BUILD" THROUGH DOUBLE BIND ADVERSARIAL ROBOTIC FEEDBACK ACTUALIZATION 11. GAUDI’S ANALOG COMPUTATIONAL MODEL AS BACKPROPAGATION: FROM MATHEMATICAL MODELLING, TO BIG DATA SURVEY, TO SIMULATION, TO AI 12. AI EMERGENT STRUCTURE THROUGH ROBOTIC SIGNALS AS INFORMATION ACTUALIZATION 13. AI SYNTHETIC ENVIRONMENTS AS SIMULATION-BASED INFORMATION ACTUALIZATION 14. POST-HUMAN PROJECT-SPECIFIC AND SITE-SPECIFIC ROBOTIC SYSTEM 15. DECONSTRUCTING THE CITY THROUGH NEW SIGNIFIERS: SIMULATION-BASED EMERGENT SPACE-ENVIRONMENTS 16. BIG DATA POLITICS IN EMERGENT SPACE-ENVIRONMENTS: REZONING NEW YORK CITY THROUGH BIG DATA, AI, and SIMULATION 17. THERMODYNAMIC BLOCKCHAIN ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINE: TOWARDS POST-CAPITALIST UNIVERSAL SPACE-ENVIRONMENTS 18. BIG DATA REALISM AND AI ABSTRACTION: POST-COLONIAL EMERGENT HISTORIES IN AUGMENTED SYNTHETIC UNREAL ENVIRONMENTS 19. BIG DATA AI SIMULACRA WITHIN A REPRESENTATION RESTRICTED REALITY (RRR): FROM PIRANESI’S AHISTORIC ARCHEOLOGY, TO AN URBANISM OF INFORMATION, TO A QUANTUM "AI" SIMULACRA 20. CONCLUSION: EXPANDING AUTHORSHIP THROUGH an AHISTORIC CRITICAL ARCHITECTURE OF INFORMATION AI
About the Author :
Pablo Lorenzo-Eiroa is the Founder of e-Architects.net, Director of the AI Lab, and Associate Professor at the New York Institute of Technology School of Architecture and Design. He co-edited Architecture In:Formation, Routledge, 2013.
Review :
"This theoretical and experimental approach proposes in the book the definition of a new architectural signifier, a "digital signifier". Summoning Derrida's economy of language, the author intends to reform the tools of architecture to develop "an architecture of architectures". In addition to the historical panorama, the work contributes to modeling the logical laws which, from Aristotle to Leibniz's Characteristica Universalis, determine the ontological conditions of the relationship between what appears and what one can know and what one can express. From then on, we understand the continual critical rapprochement between data and signifiers, and between information and representation.''
Alexis A. Meier, Phd, Professor. INSA Strasbourg
''This book approaches the culture, history, and future of computational architecture unlike no proceeding formulation of the theoretical basis of an architecture of information. Situating a range of recent technological disruptions, including the accelerating availability of Big Data, robotics and automation, and the increasing presence of artificial intelligence applications within the discipline of architecture, within a history of the discipline of architecture. In addition, this book articulates the disciplinary relation of architecture with respect to linguistics, philosophy, mathematics, computer science, and art. Pablo Lorenzo-Eiroa’s expertise and insights in this rapidly moving technological arena brings depth and significance to an understanding of computational technologies and their spatial representation.''
Tom Verebes, PhD, Professor, School of Architecture and Design, New York Institute of Technology
Director, OCEAN CN
“The book “Digital Signifiers in an Architecture of Information” by Pablo Lorenzo-Eiroa proposes a new critical relationship between computation and architecture by constructing a history and theory of representation in architecture in order to comprehend and liberate potential means of fostering creativity in the field.”
PA - Parametric Architecture Editorial Team, Books, October 25, 2023
“He is interested in the aesthetic expression of architecture and the creation of a single computational language. [...] But, above all, he finds it essential to create his own, independent databases and new, consistent structures.”
Esmeralda R. Vaquero, English translation of Spanish citation in “DEBEMOS REDEFINIR QUÉ ES HABITABILIDAD, NO PODEMOS SEGUIR VIVIENDO COMO LO HACEMOS”, Innovacion, Ethic Magazine, Sept 11, 2023
“Pablo Lorenzo-Eiroa, an expert architect in artificial intelligence, compares its emergence with the discovery of perspective in the Renaissance and warns of “digital feudalism”[..]
The work, titled Digital Signifiers in an Architecture of Information, proposes a critical relationship between computation and architecture with the aim of developing new media and opening up creativity in the field.”
Adrián G. Seoane, English translation of Spanish citation in ‘Between Computation and Architecture’, La Opinión A Coruna, 7 July, 2023
'Digital Signifiers in an Architecture of Information: From Big Data and Simulation to Artificial Intelligence represents an essential reading to understand the “relationship” between architecture and technology, highlighting its deeply problematic nature that must be faced with awareness. To reach this awareness it is important to reason in a transdisciplinary way, recognizing social biases and studying all the philosophical, historical, artistic, scientific and socio-cultural aspects that revolve both around computation and the contemporary idea of architectural space, undermining today’s certainties and offering a new stratified point of view on what exists, how it can be represented and described.'
Giuseppe Fallacara, PhD, Professor, Politecnico di Bari, Department of Civil Engineering and Architecture
