Annotated Bibliography

Emergent Bibliography
Red = No longer operative
Pink = Added entry

Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. University of Michigan Press, 1981.
Added by Anna
Baudrillard argues that contemporary, postmodern culture is a world full of signs, which are a simulation of a model of the real, but have no real connection to “reality”. Thus, the boundary between the simulation and the real and the simulation, in effect, becomes reality. The world of this blurred boundary is a hyper reality. The problem with this world according to Baudrillard is that without the distinctions between the real and the simulation, there is no stability to ground theory. This instability leads to a society in flux between images of the real and reality.
I found this idea interesting and valid for our project because in a sense we are arguing that architecture has manifested itself as a simulation of complexity. This image, or simulacrum of complexity has been confused for the reality of complexity and this confusion can lead to some of the problems that we have with architecture theories in general.


Bridges, D. S. Computability, New York: Springer-Verlag, 1994.

Brookshear, J. G. Theory of Computation: Formal Languages, Automata, and Complexity, Redwood City, CA: Benjamin/Cummings, 1989.

Babloyantz, A. Nato Advanced stydy Resecarh Workship on Self-Organization, Emerging Properties, and Learning. 1990.

Castle, Hellen, Pawley, Martin, Fashion and Architecture, John Willey and Sons, Limited, London, UK, 2000.
Annotation by Matt:
I recalled this book from whomever has it checked out of the Penn library. Hopefully it isn't someone else in our group. I don't think it is. Anyway, I will post my impressions in approximately 10 days. Hopefully that won't be too late.

Cooper, S. B.; Slaman, T. A.; and Wainer, S. S. (Eds.). Computability, Enumerability, Unsolvability: Directions in Recursion Theory. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Davis, M. Computability and Unsolvability. New York: Dover, 1982.

De Landa, Manuel. A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History. Zone Books, New York. 1997
Annotation (by Matt): In this book, DeLanda aggues for a new way of thinking about history and, as a consequence, the world that surrounds us. He believes that there is an interconnectedness that binds us all together - flows of matter and energy are the basis not only for biological life or physical manifestations of things (for instance, the forces that create land masses on the globe) but also social phenomena such as economics, politics, and language.
As far as I can tell, this book does not deal directly with the subject of architecture, so any references to it in architectural theory are interpretive.

Du, D.-Z. and Ko, K.-I. Theory of Computational Complexity. New York; Wiley, 2000.

Garey, M. R. and Johnson, D. S. Computers and Intractability: A Guide to the Theory of NP-Completeness. New York: W. H. Freeman, 1983.

Griffor, E. R. (Ed.). Handbook of Computability Theory. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Elsevier, 1999.

Kelly, Kevin. Out of Control.
Kevin Kelly’s basic premise is that amazing creative and regulatory powers spring from simple objects in multitudes. In human history, the power of the “swarm” has previously been underutilized. Kelly surmises that we are fast approaching a time where mechanical and biological systems will converge to produce an accelerating pace of change and productivity. His ten laws governing this new power:Distribute being Control from the bottom up Cultivate increasing returns Grow by chunking Maximize the fringes Honor your errors Pursue no optima; have multiple goals Seek persistent disequilibrium Change changes itself.

Kwinter, Sanford. Architectures of Time. 2002
Warning: Highly unreadable
Jacket description: A critical guide to the modern history of time and to the interplay between the physical sciences and the arts. Tracing the transformation of twentieth-century epistemology to the rise of thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, Kwinter explains how the demise of the concept of absolute time, and of the classical notion of space as a fixed background against which things occur, led to field theory and a physics of the "event." He suggests that the closed, controlled, and mechanical world of physics gave way to the approximate, active, and qualitative world of biology as a model of both scientific and metaphysical explanation.


Johnson, Steven. Emergence. Scribner Books, New York. 2001
(by todd) A populist account of the history of our understanding of self-organization and emergence. He goes a little overboard in the everything-in-the-universe-is-awesome-because-it's-emergent department, but otherwise the book is useful for the layman to understand the basics.


Lewis, H. R. and Papadimitriou, C. H. Elements of the Theory of Computation, 2nd ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1997.

Mishra, R.K. On self-organiaztion. An interdisciplinary search for a unifying principle. 1994.
annoteted by your beloved jonathan:
A great read from the engineering library! Proceedings from an interdisciplinary 1994 conference about self organization and emergence as underlying phenomena in natural and cultural sciences. Describes the coming about of out understanding of the subject through advancements in thermodynamics, and similarities in the process of the development of homo-sapiens-sapiens. Specifically fascinating is the discussion that human communication is digital (phonemes combined as words and sentences) as opposed to analog – the only thing that really sets us apart from other animals. The digitizing of communication makes it legible even with 50% mistakes and drop-outs, over long distances, noise, bad weather, and generations. This ability to communicate and accumulate information developed as an emergent condition… really quite cool.

Patton, Phil, Postrel, Virginia, Steele, Valery, Rossa, Joeseph Glamour: Fasion, Industrial Design, Architecture, Yale University Press, New Haven, Ct, 2004.
Annotation by Matt:
This book is interesting. It is a companion to an exhibition held at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art that examines the presence of glamour in architecture, industrial design, and fashion. Glamour, as defined for the purposes of this exhibition, is a gaudy form of elegance, often more grotesque and vulgar, but always a source of (occasionally guilty) pleasure. Pimp cups, Karl Lagerfeld’s fashion designs, Morris Lapidus’s hotels, and Bentley’s automotive designs comprise this realm. The most interesting facet of this book’s analysis of contemporary architecture is the fact that it does this purely in terms of aesthetics. The underlying justifications for these designs that would probably arise during an academic lecture about architecture never appear in the text of this book. It could be that the audience is assumed to be less educated on these subjects, or the authors could simply be uninterested in this facet of design for the purposes of the exhibition. Contemporary architects noted in the exhibition include Herzog & de Meuron, dECOi, E. D. Stone, OMA, servo with Smart Studio/Interactive Institute, Greg Lynn, Hernan Diaz Alonso, among others.

Quinn, Bradley, Fasion of Architecture, Berg Publishers, London, UK 2003
Annotation by Matt:
I hate to report this, but I'm not so sure this book is helpful for our purposes. In fact, I think it kind of argues the opposite of what we are interested in. This book seems to be largely interested in infusing the fashion industry with importance and relevance by finding parallels between contemporary fashion and architecture. I won't quite return it yet, though, since I do this that this thesis may prove helpful. As we are attempting to investigate whether parallels between fashion and contemporary architecture undermine the justifications architects employ for their designs, Quinn argues that these parallels increase fashion's importance through its connections to architecture. Hummph. Did that make any sense? It's late, and I'm not totally thinking straight. I don't think I can articulate complexity of this magnitude at this hour.

Rudofsky, Bernard. Architecture without Architects. 1964
(by todd) A mostly photographic survey of vernacular ("non-pedigreed" as he calls it) architecture throughout human history. The text is limited to a short preface and captions with each photo. The captions do a bit more than provide descriptions of the photos by delivering short commentary and discussion. This book is useful for our project because it serves as a catalog of architectures which actually are emergent phenomena (not to mention performative).

Skiena, S. Implementing Discrete Mathematics: Combinatorics and Graph Theory with Mathematica. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1990.

Sudkamp, T. A.Language and Machines: An Introduction to the Theory of Computer Science, 2nd ed. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1996.

Taylor, C. The Moment of Complexity
“CLIFF NOTES” FOR
THE MOMENT OF COMPLEXITY by jonathan
Taylor begins his book with the statement “we are living in a moment of unprecedented complexity”. Funny how so many people like saying that. Mies for example, referred more than once to “the desperate confusion of our time”. I guess every generation would like to think it is unique, and perhaps the best way to stand out is to survive the troubles of this world. So ok Taylor, sure, unprecedented complexity…

The unique standing of this moment is not the change of the world around us, and not even the speed of change, but the ongoing increase in the rate of change. To the point where acceleration is a mean in its own right - speed feeds itself to become faster (autocatalytic? – maybe add to glossary later).

Taylor relates the coming about of complexity theory as related to 20^th century history. Many scientific and technological developments are related to work done by governments during WWII and the Cold War (such as many media oriented technological advancements and the World Wide Web). These were soon appropriated by the private realm and utilized by people regardless of their geographic location or political standing, breaking down the fabricated distinction between the Soviet Block (the bad guys, the communists, etc) and the Western World (the good guys, the capitalists, and so on). This synthetic division of the world was necessary for many to better understand the complexity of the post war period by oversimplification so typical of the Newtonian logic, and often related to Modernist Architecture. When the Berlin Wall fell, it was a result of the free flow of information, not ballistic missiles, across what was supposedly a border; emphasizing the fact that physical harsh distinctions were an inaccurate way by which to look at the world.

Then Taylor dives into discussing art vs. non-art as a topic brought to the forefront by Warhol. I fail to make a logical connection between the former point and this one in my poor writing. Sorry.

A distinction is drawn between Complexity Theory, and Catastrophe and Chaos theories:
Thom, the catastrophic originator, describes Newtonian thought and Euclidian geometry as unsuitable for understanding nature. He looks at abrupt and irregular qualitative changes, and seems to fail due to his obsession with organizing the information in a hierarchal fashion (taxonomy). Chaos Theory deals with deterministic dynamic systems. These may have a beginning point and a set of rules defining their development. But as the original condition is so complex and difficult to define, it is impossible to truly calculate or simulate the systems behavior. Systems which react disproportionately to a cause seem to interest chaotic theoreticians most. Complexity Theory has the catastrophic interest in abrupt change, and the chaotic fascination with dynamic systems. (Thank you Todd for helping me out with this one).

The next chapter compares Mies, Venturi, and Gerry. Or modernism, post-modernism, and whatever title one may give to contemporary architecture (WLITTB - “what London is trying to become” perhaps?)

Mies, Modernism, Mega-government, Mucho-simplified etc. Do I really need to elaborate?
Now it gets interesting: Venturi realizes the world can’t stand on the clear and simple monumental grid, and begins to focus on the image of society and culture. To the point of focusing so much on the billboard affect of architecture, that the form and technology never had to further develop. As Matt Morong so eloquently explained: his images are complex, but spatially he is modernist. Garry, Taylor states, starts dealing with complex form and not only image, as well as being a part of a development in technology (computer software and construction methods). That is what begins to set him apart from others that came after modernism. I personally would like to add that boatbuilding technology has been around for many years now, and that arguably (and yes, I am doing this also to get comments to the opposite) building a metal boat that stands up is not that different than building a wooden boat that floats horizontally. If anything, it’s less “preformative” and “emergent”.

Venturi, Robert, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture,New York, NY Museum of Modern Art; 2nd edition (July 15, 2002)
Annotation (by Matt, of course):
This book covers a lot of ground, and it has been influential in both good and bad ways. In short, it argues that the style of Modernism, particularly that which came to dominate American "academic" architecture of the 50s and 60s, is flawed and empty. It looks to alter Modern architecture's direction slightly in order to bring it greater interest and relevance. It does this through an analysis of historical precedents, and argues that these precedents can find an application in the vocabulary of Modern architecture. Complexity, as I believe Venturi would define it, must be considered in relation to the architecture he was arguing against. In the opening pages, for instance, he cites two Philip Johnson houses as examples of structures that simplify their program for purposes of expression, and in doing so, do not reflect the realities of the ways people live. Venturi’s complexity would acknowledge the difficult tensions that pervade everyday life. It is an argument that is not only aesthetic but social. By acknowledging the ways that people build and live, architects can regain their relevance.
There’s a lot more to this book, and I’m open to other interpretations, but this seems to jump out at me as the point that is most important for our project right now. But I’m open for discussion.

Welsh, D. J. A. Complexity: Knots, Colourings and Counting, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Wolfram, Stephen, A New Kind of Science, Champaign, Il: Wolfram Media (May, 2002).
Wolfram’s seminal work intends to prove that complex behavior does not need complex components to manifest itself. In fact, Wolfram outlines types of behavior and components that shows how complex natural patterns, such as leaves and animal stripes may actually work.