Product Description

The illusive and uncertain world of translating ideas into matter is a negotiation between the ideal and the real and a central preoccupation of architectural production. By invading the toolbox of digital fabrication, design has transgressed into protocols of manufacturing previously the domain of other disciplines and skills sets. Craft, assembly and installation, once the realm of trades, are qualities that are now dependent upon design information and its status as an instruction to make. The ensuing loop between the physical and tactile, the imaginary and speculative, has defined a new expectation in making architecture as a construct that is part real, part ideal.

With contributions from Lebbeus Woods, Evan Douglis, Theo Jansen, Shin Egashira and many more, Protoarchitecture presents an explicitly diverse collection of works from leading and emerging practitioners, educators, researchers and visionaries from all corners of this innovative field.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #35630 in Books
• Published on: 2008-07-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 136 pages

From the Back Cover
The illusive and uncertain world of translating ideas into matter is a negotiation between the ideal and the real and a central preoccupation of architectural production. By invading the toolbox of digital fabrication, design has transgressed into protocols of manufacturing previously the domain of other disciplines and skills sets. Craft, assembly and installation, once the realm of trades, are qualities that are now dependent upon design information and its status as an instruction to make. The ensuing loop between the physical and tactile, the imaginary and speculative, has defined a new expectation in making architecture as a construct that is part real, part ideal.

With contributions from Lebbeus Woods, Evan Douglis, Theo Jansen, Shin Egashira and many more, Protoarchitecture presents an explicitly diverse collection of works from leading and emerging practitioners, educators, researchers and visionaries from all corners of this innovative field.

About the Author
Bob Sheil is an architect and a senior lecturer at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. He has worked as a designer and maker in architecture, furniture, exhibition and web design. Following 10 years in practice, his teaching career began in the Bartlett workshop in 1995 where his key interest in, and curiosity about, the relationship between architecture and making evolved from practice to research. He is a founder member of the workshop–based practice sixteen∗(makers) with Nick Callicott, Phil Ayres and Chris Leung. Since 2004 he has been programme director of the Bartlett’s Graduate Diploma in Architecture, and in 2005 he guest–edited AD Design through Making.

Customer Reviews

Inspirational
This issue of AD is very well put together, a thoughtful assortment of sometimes bizarre machines. As Picasso said : "Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working." These works are clearly by people who work their way through problems and pick up inspiration as they make. While not all AD's satisfy, this one is made up of those at the cutting edge of architectural design using new tools to open up whole new areas to explore.

Constructed Hybrids
Protoarchitecture is a special AD issue. Sheil puts together a variety of texts, projects, prototypes and installations that are highly experimental and which strengthen the importance of innovative and new creative design processes. A lot of the selected work adopts hybrid modes of analogue and digital design, even employing old techniques that seemed outdated by today's obsession with advanced computational systems. This is what makes this publication so pertinent. Being aware that in our post-digital era architecture is being threatened by the emergence of a new digital modernism (intellectually rather orthodox and dogmatic and in terms of design increasingly undifferentiated), Sheil professes a plural and varied approach that favours the quirky, eccentric, exuberant and unpredictable side of architecture; work that does not conform and is by definition exceptional, as he points out in his introduction. This beautiful and in detail illustrated publication is highly recommendable.