The Alphabet and the Algorithm (Writing Architecture)

182 Pages·2011·1.97 MB·English

by  Mario Carpo

The AlphAbeT And The
AlgoriThm
Writing Architecture series
A project of the Anyone Corporation; Cynthia Davidson, editor
Earth Moves: The Furnishing of Territories
Bernard Cache, 1995
Architecture as Metaphor: Language, Number, Money
Kojin Karatani, 1995
Differences: Topographies of Contemporary Architecture
Ignasi de Solà-Morales, 1996
Constructions
John Rajchman, 1997
Such Places as Memory
John Hejduk, 1998
Welcome to The Hotel Architecture
Roger Connah, 1998
Fire and Memory: On Architecture and Energy
Luis Fernández-Galiano, 2000
A Landscape of Events
Paul Virilio, 2000
Architecture from the Outside: Essays on Virtual and Real Space
Elizabeth Grosz, 2001
Public Intimacy: Architecture and the Visul Arts
Giuliana Bruno, 2007
Strange Details
Michael Cadwell, 2007
Histories of the Immediate Present: Inventing Architectural Modernism
Anthony Vidler, 2008
Drawing for Architecture
Leon Krier, 2009
Architecture’s Desire: Reading the Late Avant-Garde
K. Michael Hays, 2010
The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture
Pier Vittorio Aureli, 2011
The Alphabet and the Algorithm
Mario Carp0, 2o11
The AlphAbeT And The
AlgoriThm
Mario Carpo
The MIT Press
CaMbrIdge, MassaChuseTTs
London, engLand
© 2011 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Carpo, Mario.
  The alphabet and the algorithm / Mario Carpo.
     p. cm. — (Writing architecture)
 Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-262-51580-1 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Architectural
design. 2. Architectural design—Technological innovations.
3. Repetition (Aesthetics) 4. Design and technology. I. Title.
NA2750.C375 2011
720.1—dc22
2010031062
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
PrefaCe iX
1 VAriAble, idenTicAl, differenTiAl 1
1.1 Architecture and the Identical Copy: Timelines 12
1.2 Allography and Notations 15
1.3 Authorship 20
1.4 The Early Modern Pursuit of Identical Reproduction 26
1.5 Geometry, Algorism, and the Notational Bottleneck 28
1.6 The Fall of the Identicals 35
1.7 The Reversal of the Albertian Paradigm 44
2 The rise 51
2.1 Alberti and Identical Copies 53
2.2 Going Digital 54
2.3 Windows 58
2.4 ID Pictures and the Power of Facsimiles 62
2.5 Alberti’s Imitation Game and Its 68
Technological Failure
2.6 The Invention of the Albertian Paradigm 71

3 The fAll 81
3.1 Form 83
3.2 Standard 93
3.3 Agency 106
4 epilogue: spliT Agency 123
notes 129
indeX 165

Preface
Not long ago, in the nineties, no one doubted that a “digital
revolution” was in the making—in architecture as in all aspects
of life, science, and art. Today (early 2010) the very expression
“digital revolution” has fallen into disuse, if not into disrepute;
it sounds passé and archaic, at best the reminder of an age gone
by. Yet digital technologies, now ubiquitous, have already signifi-
cantly changed the way architecture is designed and made. They
are changing how architecture is taught in schools, practiced,
managed, even regulated. Etymologically, as well as politically,
the notion of a revolution implies that something is or has been
turned upside down. It may be too soon to tell if the digital is a
revolution in architecture, but it is not too soon to ask what may
be upended if it is. If the digital is a “paradigm shift,” which para-
digm is shifting? If architecture has seen a “digital turn,” what
course has turned?
This work will trace the rise of some aspects of modernity that
have marked the history of Western architecture. They all relate
to one key practice of modernity: the making of identical cop-
ies—of nature, art, objects, and media objects of all sorts. From
the beginning of the Early Modern Age, and until very recently,
the cultural demand and the technical supply of identical copies
rose in sync. Identical copies inspired a new visual culture, and
prompted new social and legal practices aimed at the protec-
tion of the original and its owner or creator. At the same time,
new cultural technologies and new machines emerged and were
developed to produce and mass-produce identical replications:
from printed images and text set with moveable type to the