Abstract | Who is in control?

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“… In my student days, Le Corbusier was found everywhere. However, there is no single book today on the table of architects that serves as a bible.”

“…The problem today with us Architects is that we think in analogue and produce algorithmically, the day we think algorithmically we will stop playing with all the magic tricks and tools that we have and start using them…And if I knew what that meant, I’d be doing it and not talking about it.”

– Peter Eisenmann, excerpt from the Lecture at RIBA, London, December 08.

Who is in Control image. @Abhishek Bij
The urbanGround: DesignPlus’s SPA Urban Design Proposal. @Design Plus

The Lecture instigated the thought for this text. The paper borrows the proverbial search for the definition of ‘new architecture or planning’. With reference to a range of projects from Zaha Hadid’s One North in Singapore, MVRDV’s function mixer and iSpots (MIT project) to the existence of smart/flash mobs and the Groningen town project by AA Diploma II under John Frazer the paper is critical (not sceptic) of the influx of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) within the architectural studios.

There is a search for identification of the role of the architect amidst the Data-driven AND Democratic Processes of design as an urban planning paradigm, identifying the marriage between Centralised, Distributed and Automated control.

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