The Alphabet and the Algorithm

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Mario Carpo (Professor, The Bartlett School of Architecture) Cynthia Davidson (ANYOne Corporation / Log)

The Alphabet and the Algorithm

Mario Carpo (Professor, The Bartlett School of Architecture), Cynthia Davidson (ANYOne Corporation / Log)

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English

MIT Press
04 February 2011

Architectural structure & design

Series: Writing Architecture

"The rise and fall of identical copies- digital technologies and form-making from mass customization to mass collaboration.

Digital technologies have changed architecture-the way it is taught, practiced, managed, and regulated. But if the digital has created a ""paradigm shift"" for architecture, which paradigm is shifting? In The Alphabet and the Algorithm, Mario Carpo points to one key practice of modernity- the making of identical copies. Carpo highlights two examples of identicality crucial to the shaping of architectural modernity- in the fifteenth century, Leon Battista Alberti's invention of architectural design, according to which a building is an identical copy of the architect's design; and, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the mass production of identical copies from mechanical master models, matrixes, imprints, or molds. The modern power of the identical, Carpo argues, came to an end with the rise of digital technologies. Everything digital is variable. In architecture, this means the end of notational limitations, of mechanical standardization, and of the Albertian, authorial way of building by design. Charting the rise and fall of the paradigm of identicality, Carpo compares new forms of postindustrial digital craftsmanship to hand-making and the cultures and technologies of variations that existed before the coming of machine-made, identical copies. Carpo reviews the unfolding of digitally based design and construction from the early 1990s to the present, and suggests a new agenda for architecture in an age of variable objects and of generic and participatory authorship."

By: Mario Carpo (Professor The Bartlett School of Architecture)
Series edited by: Cynthia Davidson (ANYOne Corporation / Log)
Imprint: MIT Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 203mm, Width: 137mm, Spine: 10mm
Weight: 295g
ISBN: 9780262515801
ISBN 10: 0262515806
Series: Writing Architecture
Pages: 184
Publication Date: 04 February 2011
Recommended Age: From 18 years
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Mario Carpo is Reyner Banham Professor of Architectural History and Theory, the Bartlett, University College London. He is the author of Architecture in the Age of Printing- Orality, Writing, Typography, and Printed Images in the History of Architectural Theory and The Alphabet and the Algorithm (both published by the MIT Press) and other books.

Reviews for The Alphabet and the Algorithm

Ever wondered what became of architecture in its digital reincarnation? Mario Carpo vaults from Renaissance aspirations to current conditions at the pace of a breathless fable. Where will it lead us? Kurt W. Forster , Yale School of Architecture