Architecture

Peter Weibel

pp. 264-271

in: Georg Flachbart, Peter Weibel (eds), Disappearing architecture, Basel, Birkhäuser, 2005

Abstract

During the 20th century not only distances and scales have changed under the influence of telematic media and machines, but even more so the relation to the location itself: hic et nunc, here and now, here and there have become variable quantities. Location and space as the basic media of architecture are being questioned (refer to Deconstruction). Nonlocation, dislocation, dematerialisation are new radical architectural categories. Individual decision procedures that position the architect as a building artist in the proximity of a traditional understanding of art, based on sculpture and painting, are also being replaced by new planning methods that are based on the complex system theories of the media and machines. Therefore computer-based algorithms can replace data of individual signatures as proved by deconstructivism and primarily by its successor, the metamorphic or biomorphic school of architecture (blob-architecture).