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=== Author ===


Architectural Intelligence
By Molly Wright Steenson, born 1971, American design professor and historian of architecture and technology.<ref name="wikipedia">[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molly_Wright_Steenson Molly Wright Steenson], Wikipedia.</ref> She holds a PhD in architecture from Princeton, a Master's in Environmental Design from the Yale School of Architecture, and a BA in German from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.<ref name="wikipedia" />
How Designers and Architects Created the Digital Landscape
by Molly Wright Steenson


Paperback
She was K&L Gates Associate Professor of Ethics and Computational Technologies at Carnegie Mellon, where she also served as Senior Associate Dean for Research in the College of Fine Arts and later as Vice Provost for Faculty.<ref name="wikipedia" /> She is now president and CEO of the American Swedish Institute.<ref name="wikipedia" /> Earlier posts include resident professor at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea, where she led the Connected Communities research group from early 2003 to late 2004, adjunct faculty at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, and assistant professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.<ref name="cmu">[https://www-design-d01.andrew.cmu.edu/people/faculty/molly-steenson Molly Steenson], Carnegie Mellon School of Design.</ref> She has worked on the web since 1994, at design studios, consultancies, and Fortune 500 companies.<ref name="conveyux">[https://conveyux.com/speakers/molly-wright-steenson/ Molly Wright Steenson], ConveyUX.</ref>
ISBN: 9780262546782


Pub date: November 1, 2022
MIT Press, hardcover 2017, ISBN 9780262037068. Paperback November 1, 2022, ISBN 9780262546782.<ref name="mit">[https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262546782/architectural-intelligence/ Architectural Intelligence], MIT Press.</ref> Research for the book was supported by a Graham Foundation grant.<ref name="graham">[http://www.grahamfoundation.org/grantees/5610-architectural-intelligence-how-designers-and-architects-created-the-digital-landscape Molly Wright Steenson], Graham Foundation.</ref>
Publisher: The MIT Press


==Description==
=== Description ===
Architects who engaged with cybernetics, artificial intelligence, and other technologies poured the foundation for digital interactivity.


In Architectural Intelligence, Molly Wright Steenson explores the work of four architects in the 1960s and 1970s who incorporated elements of interactivity into their work. Christopher Alexander, Richard Saul Wurman, Cedric Price, and Nicholas Negroponte and the MIT Architecture Machine Group all incorporated technologies—including cybernetics and artificial intelligence—into their work and influenced digital design practices from the late 1980s to the present day.
Steenson examines four architects working in the 1960s and 1970s who built interactivity into their practice, and argues that their experiments laid the foundation for contemporary digital design.<ref name="mit" /> The subjects are Christopher Alexander, Richard Saul Wurman, Cedric Price, and Nicholas Negroponte with the MIT Architecture Machine Group.<ref name="mit" />


Alexander, long before his famous 1977 book A Pattern Language, used computation and structure to visualize design problems; Wurman popularized the notion of “information architecture”; Price designed some of the first intelligent buildings; and Negroponte experimented with the ways people experience artificial intelligence, even at architectural scale. Steenson investigates how these architects pushed the boundaries of architecture—and how their technological experiments pushed the boundaries of technology. What did computational, cybernetic, and artificial intelligence researchers have to gain by engaging with architects and architectural problems? And what was this new space that emerged within these collaborations? At times, Steenson writes, the architects in this book characterized themselves as anti-architects and their work as anti-architecture. The projects Steenson examines mostly did not result in constructed buildings, but rather in design processes and tools, computer programs, interfaces, digital environments. Alexander, Wurman, Price, and Negroponte laid the foundation for many of our contemporary interactive practices, from information architecture to interaction design, from machine learning to smart cities.
Alexander used computation and structure to visualize design problems, more than a decade before ''A Pattern Language'' appeared in 1977.<ref name="mit" /> Wurman popularized the term information architecture.<ref name="mit" /> Price designed some of the earliest intelligent buildings.<ref name="mit" /> Negroponte experimented with how people experience artificial intelligence at architectural scale.<ref name="mit" />


Link: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262546782/architectural-intelligence/  
Steenson runs the question in both directions. She asks what these architects did to the boundaries of architecture, and equally what computation, cybernetics, and artificial intelligence researchers had to gain from engaging with architects and architectural problems.<ref name="mit" />
 
The projects mostly produced no buildings. What they produced instead were design processes and tools, computer programs, interfaces, and digital environments. Several of the architects described themselves as anti-architects and their work as anti-architecture. The line Steenson draws runs from these unbuilt projects to information architecture, interaction design, machine learning, and smart cities.
 
=== Relevance ===
 
The book supplies a lineage for interface work that predates the discipline that now claims it. Terms and practices treated as native to software, information architecture among them, arrive from architecture proper, and the transfer happened through people who were trying to make buildings respond to their occupants.
 
Cedric Price's Generator project is the case that matters most for the wiki. A building designed to be rearranged, with a computer program that would register when the configuration had gone unchanged too long and propose a new one. The building was to become bored on its own account. That is an early and unusually explicit instance of a structure treated as an entity with a state rather than as a container.
 
Negroponte's Architecture Machine Group is the other thread. It became the MIT Media Lab in 1985, which means the research agenda Steenson traces here runs directly into the institution that produced much of the work this wiki covers.
 
=== Related Reading ===
 
* [[Digital Ground: Architecture, Pervasive Computing, and Environment]]
* [[Equipotential Space: Freedom in Architecture]]
* [[Architecture or Techno-Utopia: Politics after Modernism]]
* [[Place: The Networking of Public Space]]
* [[The Allure of Machinic Life: Cybernetics, Artificial Life, and the New AI]]
* [[The Human Use Of Human Beings: Cybernetics And Society]]
* [[Computers as Theatre]]
* [[Designing Interactions]]
* [[Information Architecture for the World Wide Web: Designing Large-Scale Web Sites]]
* [[Metapolis Dictionary of Advanced Architecture: City, Technology and Society]]
* [[The Idea Factory: Learning to Think at MIT]]
* [[Mirror Worlds: or the Day Software Puts the Universe in a Shoebox...How It Will Happen and What It Will Mean]]
 
=== Other works by the author ===
 
* Steenson, Molly Wright, Laura Forlano, and Mike Ananny, eds. ''Bauhaus Futures''. MIT Press, 2019. An edited volume on the Bauhaus at its centenary.<ref name="cmu" />
* Steenson, Molly Wright. "Beyond the Personal and Private: Modes of Mobile Phone Sharing in India." In ''The Reconstruction of Space and Time: Mobile Communication Practices'', 2008.<ref name="wikipedia" />
 
=== External Links ===
 
* [https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262546782/architectural-intelligence/ Publisher page], MIT Press
 
== References ==
 
<references />


[[Category:Books]]
[[Category:Books]]
[[Category:Architecture]]

Latest revision as of 20:17, 24 August 2026

Author

By Molly Wright Steenson, born 1971, American design professor and historian of architecture and technology.[1] She holds a PhD in architecture from Princeton, a Master's in Environmental Design from the Yale School of Architecture, and a BA in German from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.[1]

She was K&L Gates Associate Professor of Ethics and Computational Technologies at Carnegie Mellon, where she also served as Senior Associate Dean for Research in the College of Fine Arts and later as Vice Provost for Faculty.[1] She is now president and CEO of the American Swedish Institute.[1] Earlier posts include resident professor at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea, where she led the Connected Communities research group from early 2003 to late 2004, adjunct faculty at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, and assistant professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.[2] She has worked on the web since 1994, at design studios, consultancies, and Fortune 500 companies.[3]

MIT Press, hardcover 2017, ISBN 9780262037068. Paperback November 1, 2022, ISBN 9780262546782.[4] Research for the book was supported by a Graham Foundation grant.[5]

Description

Steenson examines four architects working in the 1960s and 1970s who built interactivity into their practice, and argues that their experiments laid the foundation for contemporary digital design.[4] The subjects are Christopher Alexander, Richard Saul Wurman, Cedric Price, and Nicholas Negroponte with the MIT Architecture Machine Group.[4]

Alexander used computation and structure to visualize design problems, more than a decade before A Pattern Language appeared in 1977.[4] Wurman popularized the term information architecture.[4] Price designed some of the earliest intelligent buildings.[4] Negroponte experimented with how people experience artificial intelligence at architectural scale.[4]

Steenson runs the question in both directions. She asks what these architects did to the boundaries of architecture, and equally what computation, cybernetics, and artificial intelligence researchers had to gain from engaging with architects and architectural problems.[4]

The projects mostly produced no buildings. What they produced instead were design processes and tools, computer programs, interfaces, and digital environments. Several of the architects described themselves as anti-architects and their work as anti-architecture. The line Steenson draws runs from these unbuilt projects to information architecture, interaction design, machine learning, and smart cities.

Relevance

The book supplies a lineage for interface work that predates the discipline that now claims it. Terms and practices treated as native to software, information architecture among them, arrive from architecture proper, and the transfer happened through people who were trying to make buildings respond to their occupants.

Cedric Price's Generator project is the case that matters most for the wiki. A building designed to be rearranged, with a computer program that would register when the configuration had gone unchanged too long and propose a new one. The building was to become bored on its own account. That is an early and unusually explicit instance of a structure treated as an entity with a state rather than as a container.

Negroponte's Architecture Machine Group is the other thread. It became the MIT Media Lab in 1985, which means the research agenda Steenson traces here runs directly into the institution that produced much of the work this wiki covers.

Other works by the author

  • Steenson, Molly Wright, Laura Forlano, and Mike Ananny, eds. Bauhaus Futures. MIT Press, 2019. An edited volume on the Bauhaus at its centenary.[2]
  • Steenson, Molly Wright. "Beyond the Personal and Private: Modes of Mobile Phone Sharing in India." In The Reconstruction of Space and Time: Mobile Communication Practices, 2008.[1]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Molly Wright Steenson, Wikipedia.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Molly Steenson, Carnegie Mellon School of Design.
  3. ↑ Molly Wright Steenson, ConveyUX.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 Architectural Intelligence, MIT Press.
  5. ↑ Molly Wright Steenson, Graham Foundation.
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