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...]