Cybernetic Dreams

„Computation and cybernetics began … with a flourish of romanticism. Rich in exciting ideas, they flourished quickly, unburdened by … excessive caution.“

(Minsky 6 Papert, Perceptron, 4)

Soon after 1945 scientists began to gather around the idea of an interdisciplinary science capable of explaining a wide variety of phenomena across diverse fields, architects too, started to imagine a new kind of architecture: one based on self-learning systems and feedback loops.

Scientific Aesthetics

The traces of early twentieth century ästhetics

At the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, the world saw a growing interest in scientific aesthetics—the study of beauty using empirical methods such as experiment and statistics.

Scientific aesthetics caught the interest of modernist architects. It infiltrated both academia and modernist manifestos, and played a special role within the unstable cultural and political milieu of Russia at the time.

Strawberry Hill: Proto Surrealism

Breton saw an affinity in Horace Walpole’s Gothic castle.

Wie Blumen, die an unerwarteten Orten blühen, entfaltet sich jede Geschichte mit Schönheit und Widerstandsfähigkeit

According to the Laws of Chance

Freedom, Creativity and the Coincidental in Art

The idea of chance became central for the Dadaists and Surrealists of the 1920s as a counterpoint to a controlled, even positivist modernity. Artists like Marcel Duchamp explored the creative principle of par hasard, letting threads fall freely to the floor in 1914, while the objet trouvé shaped art for decades. Chance was discovered as both an objective and subjective force, materialized in art and linked to the unconscious. It appeared liberating and revolutionary, defining the prototype of the avant-garde.

Notes on the History of a Profession

From Bauhütte to Academie, Ecole and Polytechnique,

The idea of chance became central for the Dadaists and Surrealists of the 1920s as a counterpoint to a controlled, even positivist modernity. Artists like Marcel Duchamp explored the creative principle of par hasard, letting threads fall freely to the floor in 1914, while the objet trouvé shaped art for decades. Chance was discovered as both an objective and subjective force, materialized in art and linked to the unconscious. It appeared liberating and revolutionary, defining the prototype of the avant-garde.

Boring, Bland, Berlin

The idea of chance became central for the Dadaists and Surrealists of the 1920s as a counterpoint to a controlled, even positivist modernity. Artists like Marcel Duchamp explored the creative principle of par hasard, letting threads fall freely to the floor in 1914, while the objet trouvé shaped art for decades. Chance was discovered as both an objective and subjective force, materialized in art and linked to the unconscious. It appeared liberating and revolutionary, defining the prototype of the avant-garde.