Virtual Machines: Culture, telematics, and the architecture of information at Centre Beaubourg, 1968-1977
This doctoral dissertation examines the way in which the architecture of the library and museum in the late 1960s was conceived as a technology for the organization and dissemination of cultural information. It considers the overall history of the Centre Pompidou in Paris, from its origins in the mid-1960s to its opening in 1977. In particular, it looks at ways in which the verbal, graphic, and built statements of the project’s creators, apologists, and critics engaged the discourses of the post-industrial information society. [More...]
Engineering Beaubourg’s information spaces
From the outset, the Centre Pompidou was to be a live center of information. This paper situated the challenges posed by that vision in the context of emerging models of technical expertise in architecture.
The Informational Built Environment
I taught this upper-division architectural history and theory seminar at UCLA in 2008. Focusing on case studies between the early 19th century and the postwar period, it examined ideas, models, and metaphors shared by the architectural culture of modernity and the information society. [More...]