architectures of information: christopher alexander, cedric price

306 Pages·2014·1.31 MB·English

by  Molly Steenson

ARCHITECTURES OF INFORMATION:
CHRISTOPHER ALEXANDER, CEDRIC PRICE, AND
NICHOLAS NEGROPONTE & MIT’S ARCHITECTURE MACHINE GROUP

Volume 1

Molly Wright Steenson

A DISSERTATION
PRESENTED TO THE FACULTY
OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE
OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

RECOMMENDED FOR ACCEPTANCE
BY THE SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE

Adviser: M. Christine Boyer

April 2014
© Copyright by Molly Wright Steenson, 2014. All rights reserved.
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Table of Contents
Table of Contents ....................................................................................................... iii

Abstract ........................................................................................................................ v

Acknowledgements ................................................................................................... vi

Introduction ................................................................................................................. 1

Dissecting “Architectures of Information” .......................................................... 5

Cybernetics, Heuristics, and Artificial Intelligence ............................................ 8

Precedent Use of “Architectures of Information” ............................................ 12

Anti-Architects and Anti-Architecture ............................................................... 16

Organization of the Dissertation ........................................................................ 27

Chapter 1 Christopher Alexander: Trees, Semilattices, and Networks ............ 31

Trees ....................................................................................................................... 36

Notes on the Synthesis of Form .............................................................. 41

Diagrams .................................................................................................. 49

Semilattices ........................................................................................................... 56

“A City Is Not a Tree” .............................................................................. 57

Atoms of Environmental Structure .......................................................... 63

Networks ................................................................................................................ 76

Generating Systems ................................................................................. 90

Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 95

Chapter 2 Cedric Price: “Storage of Information Becomes Activity” ............... 98

Games, Intelligence, and Play ................................................................ 101

The Oxford Corner House Feasibility Study .................................................. 105

Information Processing ..................................................................................... 122

Information Storage ............................................................................... 124

Network Analysis and Probability Charts .............................................. 130

Generator ........................................................................................................... 137

Generator Genesis ................................................................................. 138

Modeling Generator .............................................................................. 143

Generator’s Computer Programs, or: Generator Gets Bored .............. 148

Conclusion .......................................................................................................... 156

Chapter 3 “To the First Machine That Can Appreciate The Gesture”: Nicholas
Negroponte & the Architecture Machine Group .............................................. 160

Teaching and Research .......................................................................... 173

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Attributes of Architecture Machines ..................................................... 177

Interfaces ................................................................................................ 183

Microworlds and Blocks Worlds ..................................................................... 188

URBAN 2 and URBAN 5 ......................................................................... 191

SEEK ....................................................................................................... 204

HUNCH .................................................................................................. 212

Shortcomings in Artificial Intelligence Paradigms ................................. 218

Command and Control ..................................................................................... 222

NSF Rejection ......................................................................................... 224

“In the Interface” ................................................................................... 228

Aspen Movie Map, SDMS, and Dataland .............................................. 236

Put That There ........................................................................................ 244

“Being There” ........................................................................................ 246

Mapping by Yourself .............................................................................. 250

Conclusion: Media ............................................................................................ 259

The Wiesner Building ............................................................................. 264

Appreciating the Gesture ...................................................................... 272

Conclusion ............................................................................................................... 274

Selected Bibliography ........................................................................................... 285
Images………………………………………………………………………………….………295–426

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Abstract
“Architectures of information” prioritize information processing and computation over
formal representation in architecture. This dissertation centers on three case studies: Christopher
Alexander, Cedric Price, and Nicholas Negroponte and MIT’s Architecture Machine Group,
who applied information processes and technologies to architecture, formatted design as an
architectural problem, and visualized informational paradigms in architecture. Alexander, Price,
and Negroponte all promoted the emergence of generative architecture—architecture that was
itself a process, which served as a critique against traditional architectural practices, resisting the
development of a specific form or representation as the end goal. They drew from computational
paradigms including cybernetics, heuristics, artificial intelligence, set and graph theory, cognitive
psychology, and computer science. Their work makes manifest the logics of the systems that
generated it, challenging mainstream notions of architectural representation. Each declared
himself at some point “anti-architect” or “anti-architectural.” The oppositional stance they took
gave them leeway to both push the boundaries of architecture and to exercise influence not only
on their own fields but on different communities, from laypeople to technologists to the
burgeoning field of digital media.
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Acknowledgements
The eight years I’ve spent immersed in graduate school have changed my brain and who I
am as a person. Going back to school in my thirties meant leaving behind my technology and
design career for an architectural, academic one, and this dissertation is the culmination of that
sometimes-difficult and always-exciting journey. I have many people to thank.
First, this project would not exist without the patient ear and expert guidance of my
adviser, M. Christine Boyer. I greatly appreciate your willingness to listen (sometimes for hours!)
as I tested hypotheses and hashed out arguments. Your expertise in the very worlds I examined
shaped this dissertation, and I am deeply grateful. Axel Kilian, my reader, offered another layer
of expertise in computation, modeling, and artificial intelligence, as well as firsthand knowledge
of the MIT milieu. Ed Eigen helped to shape the dissertation in its early phases. Further, my
project could not have come to fruition without the influence of other members of the faculty.
Mario Gandelsonas generously provided many opportunities to examine contemporary digital
issues through the Princeton Center for Architecture, Urbanism and Infrastructure. I took some
of my favorite classes from Jean-Louis Cohen, Anson Rabinbach, Brigid Doherty, Tom Levin,
and Devin Fore. I also wish to thank Beatriz Colomina, Lucia Allais, John Harwood, Spyros
Papapetros, former Dean Stan Allen, and current Dean Alejandro Zaera-Polo. And my gratitude
to the people who make Princeton go, who include: Hannah Butler, Daniel Claro, Rena Rigos,
Jennifer Bauer, Camn Castens, Cynthia Nelson, Fran Corcione, and Rascal.
This project benefited from insightful interviews: John Frazer, Barbara Jakobson, Tom
Moran, Michael Naimark, Paul Pangaro, Terry Winograd, and especially Nicholas Negroponte,
whom I interviewed twice. Nicholas generously gave me access to his personal papers, which
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made it possible to write about the Architecture Machine Group at all. I have also exchanged
email with Dick Bowdler and with Phil Tabor, and am particularly thankful for Phil’s great
insights over the last decade.
Portions of this work were shared at conferences at MIT, the Canadian Centre for
Architecture, Umeå University, The New School, and Princeton. I published an interview with
Nicholas Negroponte in A Second Modernism: MIT and Architecture in the PostWar, Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 2013, edited by Arindam Dutta; a dictionary entry in Architecture School: 300
Years of Educating Architects in North America, edited by Joan Ockman, Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press, 2012; an essay titled “Urban Software: The Long View,” in Habitar, edited by José Luis de
Vicente and Fabien Girardin, 2010; a brief article, “Cedric Price’s Generator,” in Crit, 2010; and
“Problems before Patterns: A Different Look at Christopher Alexander and Pattern Languages,”
in interactions, 2009.
In 2010 and 2013, I spent parts of my summer at the Canadian Centre for Architecture.
First, I used the Cedric Price Archive, a major source for Chapter Two. In 2013, I was the tutor
for Toolkit on Digital, a two-week doctoral seminar that was vital for framing this dissertation. I
want to thank Phyllis Lambert, Mirko Zardini, Maristella Casciato, Mariana Siracusa, Howard
Schubert, Alexis Sornin, Albert Ferré, Colin MacWhirter, Renata Guttman, Tim Abrahams,
Fabrizio Gallanti, Natasha Leeman, and all of the students. Special thanks to Antoine Picon,
with whom I taught.
My colleagues got me through my time at Princeton. I have very much enjoyed trading
ideas, food, drink and kvetch with Anthony Acciavati, Alexis Cohen, Rohit De, Gina Greene,
Urtzi Grau, Romy Hecht, Evangelos Kotsioris, Anna-Maria Meister, Margo Handweårker,
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Nick Risteen, Bryony Roberts, Irene Sunwoo, Diana Kurkovsky West and Grant Wythoff. Pep
Avilès was not just a colleague but also my cohort-brother. There was a whole host of Green
Room denizens: Cristóbal Amunátegui, José Araguez, Joseph Bedford, Marc Britz, Craig
Buckley, Esther Choi, Anthony Fontenot, Justin Fowler, Ignacio González Galan, Vanessa
Grossman, Matthew Mullane, Clelia Pozzi, Daria Ricci, Federica Soletta, and Meredith
TenHoor. I’m deeply grateful for growing up with the colleagues I had who followed on to
Princeton after our master’s degrees at Yale: they are family. Britt Eversole, thanks for the 2006
argument that assured we’d be forever friends and for all the conversations since. Federica
Vannucchi, you’re my graduate school sister. I spent meals, holidays and celebrations with Sara
Stevens and Joy Knoblauch. The Writing Center was a godsend. Two of my professors from the
past deserve special mention: Keller Easterling, for introducing me to Cedric Price, and Claire
Zimmerman for her mentorship and friendship since my first class at Yale in 2005. How would
we all have turned out without you?
Thank you, Magdalen Powers, for your editorial prowess, penchant for Glühwein, and
many years of friendship; Daniela Fabricius for sharing Butler, Berlin, Brooklyn, and beyond,
and for imparting wisdom at the right moments; my fellow residents of the Camp Butler Home
for Wayward Boys and Girls: Alicia Imperiale, Yetunde Olaiya, and Mareike Stoll; Janet Vertesi
told me the day we met that we would be good friends and later saved me with a glass of rosé
and truffle fries, and she and her husband, Craig Sylvester, shared many meals and conversations
with me; and Paul Dourish, thank you for the conversations, support, and connections to ideas
and people. Enrique Ramirez, you receive the most special mention. I would not have been here
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if not for you and could not have completed this without you. You’re the most brilliant person I
know.
There are a few people who planted the idea to go back to school. Greg Veen, Anne
Galloway, Mocha Jean Herrup, and Bryan Boyer offered me the early twinkling of an idea that I
might want do a PhD in architecture more than a decade ago—Greg on a walk in the desert at
Burning Man, Anne at South by Southwest, Mocha as we drove around San Francisco, and
Bryan in conversations overlooking the Bay and as my architecture grandparent, albeit a decade
younger than me.
Outside of school, many friends cheered me on. I’m deeply grateful for the support from
friends near and far: Angela Allen, Boris Anthony, Jason Aronen and Jana Sackmeister, Marit
Appeldoorn, Jennifer Bove, Tom Carden, Steve Champeon, Tom Coates, Elizabeth Churchill,
Cletus Dalglish-Schommer, Andy Davidson, Nick and Heather Donohue; Jeff Drewitz,
Schuyler Erle, Heather Hesketh, Dan Hill, Joe Hobaica, Robin Hunicke, Kani Ilangovan,
Pableaux Johnson, Matt Jones, Tara Kriese, Lulu Lamer, Tom Meyer, Andrea Moed, Paul
Mison, Martin Nachbar, Paul Houseman, Liz Lawley, Ali Muney, George Oates, Lucy
O’Dwyer, Ross O’ Dyer, Simon Philips, William Pietri, John Poisson, Alicia Pollak, Jen and
Jeff Robbins, Celia Romaniuk, Shauna Sampson, Michael Sippey, Stephanie Corinna Smith,
Tristam Sparks, Victor Szilagyi, Nick Sweeney, Kristen Taylor, Vicky Tiegelkamp, Leslie Veen,
Anita Wilhelm, Allison Yates, Brian Yeung, Judith Zissman, Brian Zumhaugen, and many
others I’ve surely neglected to list here. Thank you to Ray Koltys for building me an Arch Mac
database so I could parse thousands of pages of material. And sadly, I also wish to acknowledge
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some friends who are no longer with us: Lee Dirks, Jeffrey McManus, Spiro Pina, and Laura
Tatum.
One of the most fun parts of the last years has been developing a network of co-
conspirators who rise to all kinds of intellectual mischief: Ken Anderson, Mouna Andraos,
Marguerite Avery, Karen Barbarossa, Daniel Barber, Genevieve Bell, Rachel Binx, Catherine
Bonier, Benjamin Bratton, Jennifer Brook, Stuart Candy, Ben Cerveny, Aaron Straup Cope,
Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino, Carl di Salvo, Aliki Economides, Jordan Ellenberg, Jeff
Ferzoco, Adam Flynn, Brady Forrest, Hugh Forrest, Gioia Guerzoni, Marian Glebes, Garnet
Hertz, Sha Hwang, Erin Kissane, Peter Krapp, Michael Kubo, Jesse Le Cavalier, Stephanie Lee,
Ana Maria Léon, Golan Levin, Jen Lowe, Joanne McNeill, Wendy MacNaughton, Annette
Markham, Alice Marwick, Heather Mathews, Peter Merholz, Stefano Mirti, Rudolf Müller,
Ginger Nolan, Andrew Otwell, Véronique Patteuw, Nicola Pezolet, Aram Price, Howard
Rheingold, Erica Robles-Anderson, Frida Rosenberg, Fred Scharmen (bok!), Doug Sery, Ben
Shapiro, Jeremi Szaniawski, Bruce Sterling, Jer Thorp, Anthony Townsend, Rebecca Uchill,
Jasmina Tesanovic, Kazys Varnelis, Jessica Varner, Theodora Vardouli, Rob Wiesenberger,
Rowan Wilken, Janice Wong, Liam Young, and Mimi Zeiger. And on top of those instigators,
some of my favorite and most sustaining connections have been virtual and often secret: thank
you to HC, chix, #lgnlgn, and Eyeo.
Several wonderful communities around the world, in Umeå, Sweden, San Francisco, and
Los Angeles, hosted me while I was writing this dissertation. My friends in San Francisco gave
me workspace and apartments with dogs and cats to watch. I’m indebted to Jenifer Hope and
Steve Simitzis for your suggestion that I spend the summer of 2011 in San Francisco, and to
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