Space Reader: Heterogeneous Space in Architecture

Edited by three leading figures in cutting–edge design, this reader brings space firmly back on to the agenda of contemporary architecture. Whereas space was one of the central tenets of 20th–century Modernism, in the last two decades the overriding preoccupation with digital technologies has shifted the focus to parametric geometries and complex surfaces. This emphasis on form and image has not been accompanied by similar advancements in the understandings of architectural space.

The Space Reader provides a highly pertinent and current understanding of space for a new generation of students and architects. It espouses an understanding of space that is heterogeneous, ordered through differential relationships between diverse systems leading to a multiplicity of atmospheres. As a generation of social geographers has argued, this type of complex space is characteristic of the metropolis, where multiple social and technological conditions are organically overlaid. The Space Reader attempts to lay the ground work for a similarly robust articulation of spatial complexity within architecture, and its relationship today s built environment. With its emphasis on differentiation, heterogeneous space is pliant, flexible and highly relevant to the contemporary condition.

The Space Reader features:

A comprehensive introduction by the editors foregrounding spatial issues and the potential of heterogeneous space Seminal essays by Stan Allen, Reyner Banham, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Robin Evans, Jeff Kipnis and Bernard Tschumi. New, revised and recent texts by architects and theorists, such as Albert Pope, Charles Rice, Peter Sloterdijk and Jakob von Uexküll.

Foreword (Michael Hensel, Christopher Hight and Achim Menges).

En Route: Towards a Discourse on Heterogeneous Space beyond Modernist Space–Time and Post–Modernist Social Geography (Christopher Hight, Michael Hensel and Achim Menges).

Questions of Space (Bernard Tschumi).

The Smooth and the Striated The Mathematical Model (Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari).

Mass Absence (Albert Pope).

Figures, Doors and Passages (Robin Evans).

Towards A New Architecture (Jeffrey Kipinis).

From Object to Field: Field Conditions in Architecture and Urbanism (Stan Allen).

An Introduction to Unwelt (Jakob von Uexküll).

Environmental Management (Reyner Banham).

Putting Out the Fire with Gasoline: Parables of Entropy and Homeostasis from the Second Machine Age to the Information Age (Christopher Hight).

Atmospheric Politics (Peter Sloterdijk).

The Inside of Space: Some Issues Concerning Heterogeneity, the Interior and the Weather (Charles Rice).

The Heterogeneous Space of Morpho–Ecologies (Michael Hensel and Achim Menges).

Biographies.

Select Biography.

Index.

Michael Hensel is Director of the EmTech Master Program at the Architectural Association and Professor for Research by Design at AHO the Oslo School of Architecture and Design. He is a member of the OCEAN Research and Design Network and board member of BIONIS the Biomimetics Network for Industrial Sustainability.

Christopher Hight is Assistant Professor at Rice University, School of Architecture, Houston.

Achim Menges is Professor for Computational Design and Director of the Institute for Computational Design at the Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning, Stuttgart University and Studio Master of the EmTech Master Program at the Architectural Association in London. He is a member of the OCEAN Research and Design Network.