Network Practices

Book excerpt: The twin revolutions of the global economy and omnipresent Internet connectivity have had a profound impact on architectural design. Geographical gaps and, in many cases, architecture's tie to the built world itself have evaporated in the face of our new networked society. Form is now conceptualized by architects, engineers, and artists as reflexive, contingent, and distributed. The collected essays in Network Practices capture this unique moment in the evolution of design, where crossing disciplines, spatial interactions, and design practices are all poised to be reimagined. With contributions by architects, artists, computer programmers, and theorists and texts by Reinhold Martin, Dagmar Richter, Michael Speaks, and others, Network Practices offers an interdisciplinary analysis of how art, science, and architecture are responding to rapidly changing mobile, wireless, and information embedded environments