Recent Publications
Publications
Codes, as systematic forms of regulation and organization, are not the innocuous or neutral documents they are often considered to be. Operating with or without legal sanction, they are formulated to ensure specific and predictable outcomes and are laden with authorial and authoritative intent. Nevertheless, while codes have come to be an increasingly pervasive force in contemporary architecture, they are still frequently dismissed as onerous and quotidian. This volume of Perspecta investigates the historical and ongoing evolution of the relationship between codes and architecture, from Vitruvian systems of mathematical proportion through current strategies in building legislation.
Although regulations created to establish restrictive power over building have existed throughout history, architecture today is more than ever bounded, shaped, and directed by codes. Codes simultaneously manage the complexity of architectural practice and establish the terms of its interaction with a widening range of internal and external forces. While codes impose the particular interests of their authors on both the architectural profession and the inhabitants of the built environment, they are seldom the focus of critical inquiry. Approaching the topic from a variety of backgrounds and positions, the authors contributing to Perspecta 35 examine the impact of codes on architecture in contexts ranging from contemporary technology to the foundational traditions of the discipline. Collectively they reveal the breadth and impact of codes affecting architecture and speculate on how the relationships between the two will continue to unfold.
Antoine Picon—"The Ghost of Architecture: The Project and Its Codification"
Jerold S. Kayden—"Understanding the ‘Code’ of Codes"
Daniel Sherer—"Le Corbusier’s Discovery of Palladio in 1922 and the Modernist Transformation of the Classical Code"
Andrés Duany—"Notes Towards a Reason to Code"
Peter Eisenman—"Digital Scrambler: From Index to Codex"
Michael Sorkin—"Entering the Building"
Edward Eigen—"The Housing of Entropy: On Schrödinger’s Code-Script"
Alexander Garvin—"Regulating in the Public Interest"
Karl Chu—"Metaphysics of Genetic Architecture and Computation"
William McDonough—"Principles, Practices and Sustainable Design—Toward a New Context for Building Codes"
Sylvia Lavin—"What Color is it Now?“
Rob Imrie—"The Corporealization of Codes, Rules, and the Conduct of Architects”
Jonathan Massey—"New Necessities: Modernist Aesthetic Discipline"
Bruce J. Spiewak—"Current Developments for Building Codes: Perspectives of a Code-Consulting Architect"
Phillip G. Bernstein—"Digital Representation and Process Change in the Building Industry"
Felicity Scott—"When Systems Fail: Arthur Drexler and the Postmodern Turn"
Edward Mitchell—"Fear Factors"
