《Architectural Principles in the Age of Cybernetics》

A theoretical history of anthropomorphism and proportion in modern architecture, bringing into focus the discourse around proportion with current problems of post-humanism in architecture alongside the new possibilities made available through digital technologies. The book firstly examines how the body and its ordering has served as a central site of architectural discourse in recent decades, especially in attempts to reformulate architecture's relationship to humanism, modernism and technology. The second section turns its attention to the often-overlooked Anglo-American discourse about the body, proportion, form and scale that took place between 1947 and the early 1960s, linked to the rise of digital and cybernetics. Extensively illustrated and written for an informed but non-specialized architectural audience, this book elucidates the often obscure debates of avant-garde architectural discourse and design, while demonstrating how these debates have affected everyday places and concepts of architecture. As a result, it will appeal to professional architects, academics and students, combining as it does an insightful introduction to the fundamental issues of architectural history and theory over the past fifty years with entirely new formulations of what that history is and means.