Anticipatory architecture | extrapolative design

Abstract

The instrumental and aesthetic implications of architecture's engagement with science and technology has a long history, part of which includes the period following the Second World War when the rapid technological advances of the Industrial Revolution merged with a general cultural mindset characterized by themes of progress and futurism. For postwar thinkers like Reyner Banham, this interest in a futurist architecture suggested an approach to design rooted less in architectural precedent than technological extrapolation. While a precedent based approach might be viewed as more disciplinary in nature, technological extrapolation suggests an inclination towards interdisciplinarity. Thus, Banham's concept of extrapolation encouraged architects to look beyond the limits of their own discipline as a means of discovering new forms of knowledge and expertise. Indeed Banham was engaged in taking stock of the technological advances particular to his time while simultaneously anticipating the implication of these advancements for the future. To this extent, the postwar period and its inherent futurism provides a useful and poignant lens through which to take stock of our own technological climate. Given the equally revolutionary advances in computer technology in the last twenty years, our contemporary moment can be seen as having many parallels with the postwar period, and not unlike the postwar generation of architects and thinkers, contemporary designers are inevitably faced with the challenge of engaging new technological advances and their implications for architecture. In our current age of digital and biological technologies, these advances are both rapid and widespread, and include LED and fiber-optic lighting systems, motion sensing, interface design, solar tracking photovoltaic skins and wind harnessing technologies, magnetic levitation, and robotics. This paper begins with an examination of design work and criticism from the postwar period and proceeds to utilize that examination as an historical framework for addressing issues of contemporary design and 21st Century technological advancement.