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    - Recent Articles

    Escape From the Future: Architecture, Language, and the Computational Turn

    Figure 4.pngThe creators of this online journal and forum controversially argue that computation will engender the final stage of development in the relationship between architecture and computers by ...

    Process/Drawing

    ReasThumb.jpgWriting software is at the core of Casey Reas’s artistic practice. The digital is his medium of choice rather than a means of manipulation. He reflects on ...

    Metaphysics of Genetic Architecture and Computation

    Thumb copy.jpgWith the dissolution of the last utopian project of Man in the name of Communism, the great spectre that once haunted Europe and the rest of the ...

    Nothing Is Random: Automason Ver 2.0

    Figure 1.jpg While computers have dramatically changed the way architects design, construction in the US and around the world is still dependent on ...

    Dazzle Topologies

    EVAN copy.jpg One of the great lessons of the 20th Century that our particular generation of architects has inherited is our appreciation of the infra-thin scale: the primal ...

    Transmitting Iconography

    GRAND2cropb copy.jpg Contemporary telecommunication and computer technologies have fundamentally changed the relationship between sign and space, iconography and matter. While Venturi’s model for the decorated shed grew out ...

    Tectonics, Economics and the Reconfiguration of Practice: The Case for Process Change by Digital Means

    sheldon-thumb.jpgThe current programming culture in architecture could all too easily be written off as a youthful, geeky obsession with the algorithmic and the parametric among nascent practitioners, who ...

    Bodies Unfolding

    Bill and Lila Thumb copy.jpgAfter seeing Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion World Map, a map projected on a flattened isohedron, we began working on the idea of using computer ...

    Cultural Concerns in Computational Architecture

    perkins G. Holmes Perkins, 1904-2004 In September of 2004 I attended two events that reflect on each other. One was the Non-Standard Praxis conference held at MIT. The ...

    Genetic Architecture

    Genetic Architecture With the dissolution of the last utopian project of Man in the name of Communism, thegreat specter that once haunted Europe and the rest of the world has all but ...

    Automason Version 1.0

    Contemporary architects are judged as much by their buildings as they are by the sophistication of the techniques used in design and construction. A certain fascination with technology is natural ...

    Genomic Architecture

    genomic1.gifGenomic architecture is based on the manipulation of the architectural genome. Like its biological counterpart, this genome is universal and encompasses all architecture — past, present and future. ...
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Self-Assembling Viral Battery

Monday, September 26th, 2005

Dr. Angela Belcher and her group at MIT are developing an organic-inorganic hybrid method of growing batteries. By forcing viruses to interact with materials like metals, Dr. Belcher is exploring new materials that are self assembling with a high degree of control based on the chosen DNA sequence. Imagine selecting DNA for any type of material you want the virus to grow. [Discover Article]

via Medgadget | ScienCentral

‘Smart Concrete’ for Levees

Monday, September 26th, 2005

Deborah D. L. Chung’s mixture of carbon fibers and conventional concrete, is an electrically conductive “smart concrete” (developed at the Composite Materials Research Laboratory) that can be continuously monitored for changes in electrical resistance as the material goes under stress. Levees and other critical structures can benefit from “smart concrete” and other early warning systems that sense subtle changes which occur prior to its failure.

via Physorg

Dermal Nanotech Display

Monday, September 26th, 2005

Robert A. Freitasdermal display concept functions as a medical nanorobot control center to keep one’s health in check. His book, Nanomedicine, Volume I: Basic Capabilities, is the first technical design study of nanotechnology in medicine and medical nanorobotics. Watch Gina Miller’s animation of the dermal display concept. [video (qt)]

via Medgadget