Instructor: Omar Khan

ARC 625

Fall 2018

DESCRIPTION:

This seminar is the first in a two-semester sequence that introduces theoretical and historical topics relevant for research in the design of “Situated Technologies”. It introduces students to the significant ideas that define the information environment and how they concern architecture and urbanism. Taking a broad interdisciplinary approach the course draws texts from science, engineering, information theory, aesthetics, philosophy, sociology, media, art, architecture and urbanism. It includes primary texts as well as their interpretations, providing a critical examination of the ideas and their influence on technology and society.

The information environment refers to the ideas and artifacts produced by information and computing technologies (ICT) and their influence on social and cultural production. This critical reading seminar, roughly organized in historical progression, will explore a series of themes that intersect ICT development, architecture and urbanism. We will study some of the important concepts that have influenced the technological imagination
and how they continue to frame the debate on technological progress. We will also explore what it means to situate technologies and how the architectural imagination can provide us with the resources to address technological determinism.