Modulations
MODULATIONS
Paul A Kennon Memorial Symposium
Rice University School of Architecture
“MODULATIONS, the fourth Kennon Symposium, gathers an international and multi-disciplinary roster of scientists, designers, theorists and engineers to reassess the history of the MODULE in mid-20th century architecture and examine the implications of its revitalization in current design practice. Rediscovering the world as modulations between atomized components whose interaction produce complexity is among the major intellectual and technological developments of the past fifty years. Such modulating orders are central to contemporary sciences of computation, robotics, artificial life, biomimetics, autopoiesis, nanotechnology and complexity, innovations in engineering and concepts of urban organization.
Post-war architecture depended on the modularization of expertise, construction systems, and business models. The Japanese Metabolists, Buckminster Fuller, Archigram, and the hi-tech movement, all placed modularization and repetitive component systems at the center of their work. Corporate practice privileged modularized knowledge and practice. These formal and material organizations were linked to economic and social systems based on mass-production and standardization.”
See also:
striated space versus refuge sites: out-of-body experiences: an interpretation of the modern architecture in the fifties and sixties by augustin ioan
Beyond the Biomorphic: From the “Emerging Complexities” symposium by Akira Asada
Maps by Marie-Ange Brayer
Postscript on the Societies of Control by Gilles Deleuze