CS Arch, Computation and Globalizat (CS 2549)
Term: 2015-2016 Academic Year Fall
Description
This course develops a theory and program for design in the age of planetary-scale computation. It maps the forces that drive, curtail and delineate the possibility of architectural form, and locates design within a complex and contradictory global economy of computation.
For this digital design is considered at multiple scales, spanning physical and informational systems, mobile and urban technologies, and political and machine aesthetics. Instead of presenting each of these as a separate site for intervention, this course borrows the structure of the software/hardware network ?stack? for which different technologies operate within an interdependent system. It uses the platform logic of stacks to build up, layer by layer, a general model for digital design. Each course module will examine a layer in a sequence from bottom to top: Earth, Cloud, City, Address, Interface, User.
The course draws from architectural theory, software studies, interaction design and philosophy. It tr