Architectures of Information: Christopher Alexander, Cedric Price, and Nicholas Negroponte & MIT's Architecture Machine Group

Abstract

"Architectures of information" prioritize information processing and computation over formal representation in architecture. This dissertation centers on three case studies: Christopher Alexander, Cedric Price, and Nicholas Negroponte and MIT's Architecture Machine Group, who applied information processes and technologies to architecture, formatted design as an architectural problem, and visualized informational paradigms in architecture. Alexander, Price, and Negroponte all promoted the emergence of generative architecture--architecture that was itself a process, which served as a critique against traditional architectural practices, resisting the development of a specific form or representation as the end goal. They drew from computational paradigms including cybernetics, heuristics, artificial intelligence, set and graph theory, cognitive psychology, and computer science. Their work makes manifest the logics of the systems that generated it, challenging mainstream notions of architectural representation. Each declared himself at some point "anti-architect" or "anti-architectural." The oppositional stance they took gave them leeway to both push the boundaries of architecture and to exercise influence not only on their own fields but on different communities, from laypeople to technologists to the burgeoning field of digital media.