Product Description

Investigating the current groundswell of experiments and creative work that utilises design as a method to explore and manipulate actual biological material, Neoplasmatic Design presents the impact of emerging and progressive biological advances upon architectural and design practice. The rapid development of innovative design approaches in the realms of biology, microbiology, biotechnology, medicine and surgery have immense significance for architecture, being as important for their cultural and aesthetic impact as for their technical implications.

• Featured architects include Peter Cook, Tobias Klein, Kol/Mac, MAKE, R&Sie, Neil Spiller and VenhoevenCS. 
• Longer contributions from medical practitioners, architects and artists: Rachel Armstrong, Marcos Cruz, Anthony Dunne, Nicola Haines, Steve Pike, Yukihiko Sugawara, and Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr/SymbioticA. 
• Features international research projects undertaken at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, the Royal College of Art in London, the University of Western Australia and the Nagaoka Institute of Design in Japan.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #24700 in Books
• Published on: 2008-10-24
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 136 pages

From the Back Cover
Investigating the current groundswell of experiments and creative work that utilises design as a method to explore and manipulate actual biological material, Neoplasmatic Design presents the impact of emerging and progressive biological advances upon architectural and design practice. The rapid development of innovative design approaches in the realms of biology, microbiology, biotechnology, medicine and surgery has immense significance for architecture, being as important for their cultural and aesthetic impact as for their technical implications.

• Featured architects include Peter Cook, Tobias Klein, Kol/Mac, Make, R&Sie(n), Neil Spiller and VenhoevenCS.

• Longer contributions from medical practitioners, architects and artists: Rachel Armstrong, Marcos Cruz, Anthony Dunne, Nicola Haines, Steve Pike, Yukihiko Sugawara, and Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr/SymbioticA.

• Features international research projects undertaken at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, the Royal College of Art in London, the University of Western Australia and the Nagaoka Institute of Design in Japan.

About the Author
Marcos Cruz is a lecturer and tutor of Unit 20 at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, and a visiting lecturer and tutor of DS10 at the University of Westminster. He is also a co–director of marcosandmarjan, a London–based office that combines practice and teaching of architecture with experimental design research. He gained his diploma from the ESAP Porto, and a masters and PhD degree from the Bartlett. His research and office work has been published and exhibited widely, including at the São Paulo Biennial in 2003, the Venice Biennale in 2004 and the iCP 2005. In 2000 he was part of the design team for the Kunsthaus Graz competition with Peter Cook and Colin Fournier (first prize). He is co–editor of the publication Unit 20 (University of Valencia/ACTAR, 2002) and co–author of Interfaces/Intrafaces, a monographic documentation of the work of marcosandmarjan (iCP/SpringerWienNewYork, 2005).

Steve Pike spent a number of years as a designer before he studied at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, receiving a masters degree in 2003. He continues to pursue his research, founding arColony (www.arcolony.com), a forum for experimental architecture. His work has been included in a number of publications and international exhibitions. He is currently practising with Acanthus LW Architects in London.

Customer Reviews

remarkable issue
It is refreshing to have a sight of Design beyond the trend, especially when it reveals to be this meaningful towards the understanding of inhabitation, from and for the human body.
We have been sustaining and ruling design over a technological paradigm on parametrics and programming, when actually this issue of AD exposes a far deeper architectural/technological symbiosis, based on an interdisciplinary and shared range of knowledge.
It is impressive how fast it questions one's own understanding on architecture, while crossing through Pike's and Cruz researches...

Great Topic
I'm writing my dissertation on the neoplasmatic architecture and so this is a blessing! There is a variety of imagery supplied from architectural students, practitioners and artists alike. This is in fact an edition on stirring debate within architecture as to why architects cannot use the technological advances of bio technology to further their designs and developments. Ultimately forever changing culture and the modern city as we know it. Truly ground breaking stuff and a good read.

Birth of Flesh
Rather like the first time one witnesses the gore and wonder of birth, opening this extraordinary issue of AD for the first time is a moment never to be forgotten. It's sticky and gruesome. Shocking and revealing. Repulsive and beautiful. Instantly it recalibrates ones prior understanding of architectures frontier, and jettisons its readers into a gooey, sinewous, and bloody marshland of biotechnical hybrid organisms. On turning its pages, there is an overwhelming sensation that Cruz and Pike are inviting us to follow their quantum path, don our latex gloves, cut and part the wrinkly skin of architecture's resistence and sink our fingers into its oozing succulent flesh.