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Pratt Institute School of Architecture, Undergraduate Architecture Program, Course Syllabus Arch 220P / 515PImpact / Philosophy of TechnologyCredits: 3 Type of Course: Elective Seminar Prerequisites: none Enrollment Cap: 25 Instructor: John Lobell voice: 212-679-1935 email: JohnLobellPratt@aol.com Course OverviewWe are in the midst of a great technological change to the electronic/communications age. This course explores the impact of new technologies on the individual, the home (where people will work as well as live), the community, and the city. We also explore the impact of computers, the Internet, and Web pages. Learning Objectives Understanding cultural dynamics. Course Requirements & Grading Criteria · Attendance at and participation in seminars · Doing required readings from excerpts · Regular quizzes on the required reading selections · Reading of one of the listed books, writing a 1,200 word paper on the book, and giving a 10 minute oral summary of your paper to the class · Taking of notes during class. Notes to be submitted at end of course · Final exam (in class essay) Course Format Seminars ARCH 220P: Impact of Technology on Culture Spring, 2001 Fridays, 4 PM - 7 PM John Lobell Thoughts on technology, architecture, and culture Mies writes: Architecture is the real battleground of the spirit. Architecture depends on its time. It is the crystallization of its inner structure, the slow unfolding of its form. He goes on: It [technology--meaning industrial technology] is a real historical movement--one of the great movements which shape and represent their epoch. It can be compared only with the Classic discovery of man as a person, the Roman will to power, and the religious movement of the Middle Ages. Mies was identifying the impact on architecture of industrial technology which had its roots in the science born with the Renaissance, and which came into focus in the late 1700s, and into full and awesome expression with World War II and the building boom and consumer boom that followed. But already at the birth of the industrial age were the seeds of its overthrow and replacement by its successor, the electronic/information age. In the early 1900s Frank Lloyd Wright recognized the impact of this industrial age (he used the term "the machine" in his seminal essay, "The Art and Craft of the Machine") on the spirit and on architecture, and gave it an aesthetic which we now call the Modern Movement. Before Wright crystallized the abstract rectilinear geometries of the Prairie style house which have been the vocabulary of modern architecture ever since, the forces of the time were at work and could be seen in such projects as Catherine Beacher's American Woman's Home (1869). Today we are in a moment like that in which Wright began his career. The outlines of the new electronic/information age are apparent in both their technological manifestations and their impact on the spirit, but we are still awaiting the creative architect who will crystallize its inner structure and unfold its form. The manifestations of the new electronic/information age are broad, its impact will be deep, our reactions to it are varied, and the architecture it will produce cannot be predicted, but must come from the creative response of the artist. Joseph Campbell writes: One cannot predict the next mythology any more than one can predict tonight's dream; for a mythology is not an ideology. Architecture, like mythology, is ultimately not ideology. But just as we can know a lot about the situation of the circumstances and the mind of the dreamer before sleep, so we can know a lot about our cultural circumstances that will spawn our next architecture. Besides to a new structure of the psyche (a structure in large part formed by our new technologies), our new architecture will have to respond to those technologies and the landscape they produce. Such responses already might be grouped into three approaches: · Massive large-scale development: A continuation of "business as usual, with continued development and confidence that environmental consequences will be minimal or manageable. · The neo-Neolithic: The belief that the planet and the human spirit cannot sustain technological development, and that we should return to the peaceful, environmentally sound and simple technologies of the Neolithic period. · Dematerialization: Faith the our newest technologies will allow us to fulfill our needs and desires with less and less material and energy, until the dominant technological forms moves from material, to energy, to information, and finally to human creativity. (As seen in the microchip, which uses less and less material, and less and less energy, while growing more and more powerful and complex until its main ingredient is human enterprise and creativity.) This course looks at: · The relationship between technology and culture · The role of industrial technology in the rise of the modern world · Our emerging post industrial electronic/information age · Some possible implications for architecture of our new electronic/information age
WEEKLY SCHEDULE
1. Introduction to the courseOverview of the course. Review of the course reading, assignments, and projects.
2. Possible FuturesRather than try to predict "the" future, it might make more sense to look at a range of "possible" futures, and to think about which are probable, which we might prefer, and how we might "choose" or at least influence the future. Three of the most discussed futures are: · Massive large-scale development: A continuation of "business as usual, with continued development and confidence that environmental consequences will be minimal or manageable. · The neo-Neolithic: The belief that the planet and the human spirit cannot sustain technological development, and that we should return to the peaceful, environmentally sound and simple technologies of the Neolithic period. · Dematerialization: Faith the our newest technologies will allow us to fulfill our needs and desires with less and less material and energy, until the dominant technological forms moves from material, to energy, to information, and finally to human creativity. (As seen in the microchip, which uses less and less material, and less and less energy, while growing more and more powerful and complex until its main ingredient is human enterprise and creativity.) Required Reading from: Clark, Arthur C.; Profiles of the Future Meadows; Limits to Growth Kahn, Herman; The Next Two Hundred Years
3. Technology as ExtensionWe usually think of technology as exterior to the human being. We see an automobile on the street, and we see its presence in and impact on the environment. We may go further and see its impact on the formation of urban patterns. But that automobile also changes use internally. In Understanding Media, McLuhan shows how technologies become extensions of our consciousness. This notion, taken in conjunction with Merleau Ponty's phenomenology, shows us how different technologies change our very existence. Required Reading from: McLuhan, Marshall; Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man Suggested Reading: Merleau Ponty, Maurice, The Phenomenology of Perception
4. The Gutenberg Galaxy: The birth of the "linear-logical" world of the Renaissance. Industrial culture and its criticsThe Renaissance and the birth of science, the roots of the Enlightenment. Perspective in painting and the concept of the individual and a point of view. Movable type and the printing press. Criticisms of the Renaissance: Cadmus and the sewing of the dragon's teeth. Hugo: "The book will destroy the edifice" and "The Renaissance was the setting of the sun that all of Europe mistook for dawn." Lewis Mumford on Leonardo's dream. Wright on the machine. The split inflicted by Industrial Culture in the self, society, and nature. Required Reading from: Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy Davis, Philip J. & Hersh, Reuben; Descartes' Dream
5. Industrial Culture and ArchitectureThe Modern Movement. Wright, Corbu, de Stijl, Gropius, and Mies. Catherine Beacher and the American Woman's Home (1869). Wright and the Prairie Style House. The movement from the small farm integrating production and consumption, to the separation of production and consumption in the factory and the suburban home. Implications for sex role sand gender identity Required Reading from: Wright, F.L., "The Art and Craft of the Machine" in FLW,W&B Le Corbusier; Towards A New Architecture Alvin Toffler, The Third Wave Conrads, ed., Programs and Manifestos on Modern Architecture Suggested Reading: Suzanna Torre, ed., Women and American Architecture
6. Electronic/Information SocietyThe movement from industrial to postindustrial culture. Information replaces material. Changes in employment from manufacturing to services. Changes in cities from the industrial city to the mercantile city. Changes in economics, education, etc. We use the term "the modern mind" to refer to structures of thought beginning in Western Europe in the late 1700s. If those modes of thought are ending, what is replacing them? Required Reading from: Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media Alvin Toffler, The Third Wave Fritjof Capra, The Turning Point Suggested Reading: Giles Delueze, A Thousand Plateaus Camile Paligia, Sex, Art and Culture
7. Post Modern Culture and Consciousness"Modernism" in culture grows of the Enlightenment. It is based on the flowing premises: The world is knowable through the faculties of the human being: observation through the senses , and rational analysis of those observations by the mind . This approach is called science when it is for the understanding of nature, and technology when it is for the harnessing, control, and improvement of nature. Eventually this scientific method is applied not only to nature (as in the work of Newton) but also to human affairs (as in the program of Francis Bacon.) The application to the study human affairs is seen in psychology, sociology, political science, economics, and anthropology when the goal is understanding. Applied to governing and improving human affairs is seen in progressive social policy, from the Declaration of Independence and Constitution of the United States. It reaches an extreme in Communism. Here the goal is harnessing, control, and improvement of human beings. The senses and the mind of human faculties, thus this approach is called humanism. Progress is possible, indeed the natural state of things. Progress is achieved through the application the application of the scientific approach to human affairs (see above). Post Modernism comes about to the extent that the above is no longer accepted. The results of this acceptance include nihilism and transcendentalism. Required Reading from: Pratt Journal of Architecture: Form Being Absence. Vol. 2. Campbell, Joseph; "Symbol Without Meaning," in Flight of the Wild Gander Suggested Reading: Hillman, James; The Soul's Code
8. Information Theory (toward a zero energy architecture)What is information? Shannon's information theory. The relationships between matter, energy, and information. Information and creativity (Gilder). The impact of the increase of information on culture. Required Reading from: Lobell, John, "Toward a Zero Energy Architecture," in On Site, On Energy Singh, Great Ideas in Information Theory, Language, and Cybernetics Suggested Reading: Scientific American issue on information
9. The Information Society, Hypertext, Virtual Reality, Cyberspace, Social Issues, and ArchitectureImagine a ten dimensional space. Imagine that you could move both forward and backward at the same in time in that space. Now imagine an architecture for the people living in that space-time. Such imaginings would be meaningless in our reality, but fully possible in the virtual world of the computer. The two dimensional intersection of that world could be represented on the computer screen. The latest super-string theories in physics suggest that ours is a ten dimensional universe, and we experience a three dimensional slice of that world. And perennial philosophy suggests that our Kantian notion of time is a function of our attachment to the embodied aspect of our selves. Detached from that embodies notion, we are freed from linearity. Thus the architecture created in the virtual world of the computer could eventually have a profound impact on what is actually built and lived in. Hypertext and the end of linearity. George Landaou's notion of hypertext as a convergence between technology and post structuralist critical theory. The Macintosh program, Story Space. Cyberspace. Virtual reality. Michael Benedict's notion that advanced architectural thinking will take place in cyberspace while work in "reality" will be nostalgic. Required Reading from: George Gilder, Microcosom Suggested Reading: Whole Earth Review, issue on virtual reality George Landaou, Hypertext Michael Benedict, Cyberspace and the Built Environment Mondo 2000, back issues and reader
10. The Community of The FutureIf the computer and the Internet mean that many people can work at home, what will the city of the future look like? Required Reading from: Toffler, Alvin; The Third Wave
11. The House of The FutureIf the computer and the Internet mean that many people can work at home, what will the home of the future look like? Required Reading from: Toffler, Alvin; The Third Wave
12. FINAL EXAM
Course project Due: April 13, both for submission of paper and verbal presentation. · The course project is to write a paper of about 1,200 words (3 pages), typed, on one of the following books · The paper must be submitted when you make your presentation. (Be sure to keep a copy for yourself.) · You should choose the book from those listed below. You must confirm your selection with me in advance. (You can do that by email to JohnLobellPratt@aol.com) Benedict, Michael; Cyberspace and the Built Environment Brower, Kenneth; The Starship and the Canoe Campbell, Joseph; Flight of the Wild Gander, "Symbol Without Meaning" Capra, Fritjof; The Turning Point Davis, Philip J. & Hersh, Reuben; Descartes' Dream Fuller, R. Buckminster; Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth Gilder, George; Microcosom Gilder, George; Telecosm Kennedy, Paul, Preparing for the Twenty-First Century Landaou, George; Hypertext McLuhan, Marshall; Understanding Media Negroponty , Being Digital Shklovskii and Sagan, Intelligent Life in the Universe Toffler, Alvin; The Third Wave
Or other book with instructor's approval |
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