Contemporary Techniques in Architecture (Architectural Design) Review

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(More customer reviews)What I really appreciate about Rahim's volume is the nuts-and-bolts (or NURBS-and-splines) seriousness with which it approaches the real-world challenges of digital architecture. This means that it gives as much attention to the optimal design of some frankly squamous-lookin' load-bearing and stress-distributing structures as it does to the (largely post-Deleuzian) theory underlying this work.
Up until now, most of the reference materials commonly available on the topic have contented themselves with providing pretty pictures of next-generation architectural blobjects - all skin and no interior - so I'm grateful that someone is finally wrestling with (some of) the practicalities. (And if you just have to talk High Theory, there's no better guide than the brilliant, insightful, and reasonably accessible Manuel deLanda.)
I just wish Rahim could have done it without resorting to (or permitting the other authors in this volume to indulge in) the usual jargon-choked theoryspeak. I mean, come on: "dynamic structuration of mobile relations"? This material is sufficiently important that there shouldn't be any need to pump it up with jargon to make it impressive.
Worth buying, worth working with, but not for the faint of heart. (And damn, are some of these things pretty.)

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Contemporary Techniques in Architecture addresses the translation of techniques in design methodology to their architectural realisation, at the scale of space, material programme and construction. It challenges technique-driven experimental architects at the next intellectually rigorous level - that of exploring concepts and translating them into their material counterparts. How do you think through the building of avant-garde forms? The title includes the work of high-profile philosophers, architects and engineers, such as Manuel Delanda who wrote 1000 Years of Non-Linear History; Greg Lynn and Foreign Office Architects; and Cecil Balmond of Ove Arup, who worked with Daniel Libeskind on his proposal for the Spiral Building for the V&A Museum in London, as well as with Philip Johnson and Studio Baad on the Chavasse Park Project featured here.Intellectually stimulating and visually engaging, with its inclusion of spectacular writing, designs, manufactured prototypes and full-scale buildings, Contemporary Techniques in Architecture takes architectural publishing's treatment of the digital to a new level, looking at its potential in a realised form as well as a creative medium.Johan BettumScott CohenForeign Office ArchitectsKolatan MacDonald StudioGreg LynnObjectileOCEAN NorthAli RahimServo

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