Surreal technology?

ARCHITECTURE'S NEW MEDIA: PRINCIPLES, THEORIES, AND METHODS OF COMPUTER-AIDED DESIGN 

By Yehuda E. Kalay. London: MIT Press. 2004. [pounds sterling]35.95

This is a very ambitious book and it delivers a lot of what it promises. The premise of the book is that the design and construction of buildings has long been a computational process. Modern computers can be used to efficiently augment the protocols, communication and constructional ideas on which the architecture profession is founded. This computational aided optimization is posited in the hope that a full synthesis between algorithmic design and intuitive creativity is reached. We are on the cusp of a radical perturbation, a new Renaissance. This is all reasonable and in line with the technological imperatives of the construction industry but something is niggling me. This book delivers a lot of very palatable information and is ideal for the interested undergraduate or slow starting graduate student but it is a tad turgid. This schoolmasterly approach is not contrasted by a creative graphic designer, nor particularly up-to date or off the beaten track references. This all serves to somewhat dull the senses to some very useful knowledge.

My worry is that an amazing, interesting, crucial and, it must be said, funky and surreal technology, that might just have the power to save the world from ecological disaster and Modernist architectural dullards, has been presented in such a workman-like way that its very bright young audience might never read its lessons. It suffers from the same way that physical and demographic geographers and sociologists might treat the wonderful happenstance of four pints of lager and a chicken tikka masala on a Friday night in Euston (there is always more than meets the scientific and analytical eye). Persevere, it's good, buy it, read it, think on and apply it to the rich, unpredictable, uncontrollable city but question the implicit capitalist imperative that lurks behind books and cities alike.