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KATARXIS has launched its third
issue Katarxis N°3, dedicated to New Science, as relevant to a refreshed and updated understanding of Architecture
and Urbanism..., and engaging the definition of a "New Architecture" and a "New Urbanism"...
Scientific inquiry, scholarship, research and
coherent discourse as well as precise and rigorous process thinking, have since long been replaced by sterile deterministic
engineering, or playful metaphors referring to approximate scientific imagery and concepts, or alltogether evacuated from
theory and practice of contemporary architecture and urbanism.
New National Art Museum in Luxembourg City , Luxembourg
(Photo by Lucien Steil)
Built inmidst the "Unesco World Heritage" Historic Center
of Luxembourg,
this building is alien to its architectural and urban
context, as much as it lacks the scientific criterias of life, wholeness
and quality, despite its elegant illusion of geometrical rationality!
"Any effort to quantify the degree of pattern in a structure
or design leads one to consider its information content. There are two separate variables here: 1) the actual information
and its presentation, and 2) how this information is organized. Blank walls convey no information other than their outline."
"Architecture, Patterns and Mathematics"
Nikos A. Salingaros
Rather than to engage into "the most contemporarily updated
and relevant knowledge about Man and the Universe", as requested by the Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy from the"contemporary"
architect, most of the time, architects have preferred to indulge into, -- esoteric art-philosophical speculations,
or, -- labyrinthic parodies of deconstructivism, or else, -- pragmatic strategies of revivalism!
They have often been less attracted by the search of objective truth and empirical and scientific evidence,
than by the highly polemicized, and fashionable opinions and uncomprehensible intellectual speculations of dubious
star philosophers!
South Facade of Wexner Center
by Peter Eisenman
(Photo by Mary Ann Sullivan)
Digital Imaging Project
"Charles Jencks and the New Paradigm in Architecture"
by Nikos A. Salingaros
Vontz Center for Molecular Studies (1997-1999)
by Frank Gehry
(Photo by Mary Ann Sullivan)
Digital Imaging Project
Nikos A. Salingaros, associate editor of KATARXIS N°3,
a renowned mathematician at the University of San Antonio of Texas, architectural and urbanistic theorician, and an articulate
exponent of New Science, discusses thouroughly the abusive and manipulative reference to new scientific knowledge,as brilliantly exposed
in the recent writings of Post-Modernism guru Charles Jencks:
New Paradigm in Architecture?
Nikos A. Salingaros disproves Charles Jencks's assertion
that the works of Peter Eisenman, Frank Gehry and Daniel Libeskind, etc. stand for a "New Paradigm in Architecture", imbedded
in principles and concepts from New Science, such as, complexity, fractals, emergence, self-organization and self-similarity.
Salingaros shows that they are rather drawn from misunderstandings
of new scientific knowledge, and that New Science encompasses more likely the innovative, humane architecture of Cristopher
Alexander, and the traditional, humane architecture of Léon Krier, and much, much more, but
not the productions of deconstructivism and modernism!
Demir Holiday Village, Bodrum, Turkey
by Turgut Canserver
(Photo by Cemal Emden)
The Aga Khan Award for Architecture
KATARXIS N°3 is proposing that, according
to Christopher Alexander's advice, "Going the other way, in search of a viable, scientific way of life, which can become a
basis for our architectural practice, is more moral than what we do now, more just, more beautiful. It goes more to the service
of life. And all those who practice such a revised form of architecture, will probably feel more wholesome in themselves."
Harper's Courtyard, Pasadena, California
by Moule & Polyzoides, Architects and Urbanists
(Photo by Jean-Maurice Demoulène)
"We assert that the recent work in mathematics
and science shows that the principles underlying good, or great architecture and urbanism, are discoverable, discussable,
and newly applicable to the architecture and urbanism of our own day."
Courtyard View, San Julian Street Homeless Shelter, California
by Christopher Alexander and Associates
(Patternlanguage.com / Center for Environmental Structure)
KATARXIS N°3, to be released by the beginning
of 2003, will present a variety of arguments, of evidence, and of richly illustrated debate, providing
from the most actualized knowledge of New Science, supportive both of Antique intuitions of Harmony and Order, of
contemporary practice of New Traditional Architecture and Urbanism, as well as requalifying the complexity of Architecture
and Urbanism within the empiric realm of Nature and of Life and refreshing its theoretical and operational framework.
KATARXIS N°3 is edited by Lucien Steil, Brian Hanson, Michael Mehaffy and Nikos Salingaros.
Besides significant contributions by the editors, it will present a comprehensive review of Christopher
Alexander's design and built and theoretical work over the last thirty years, and include contributions by leading New
Scientists: Philip Ball, Ian Stewart, Brian Goodwin, etc., relevant to issues of architecture and urbanism.
Housing Ensemble in California
by Christopher Alexander and Associates
(Patternlanguage.com / Center for Environmental Structure)
in Conjucture with Users and Families
"In the shadow of current science it is possible to
see the components of a science of qualities which would restore qualitative evaluation to the place it occupies in our everyday
lives, where judgements depend on quality as well as quantity.
This restoration, together with the recognition that
feelings belong not to us but also to the rest of nature, in whatever form, presents us with a dramatically transformed set
of possibilities for scientific knowledge, technology, and corporate and political action."
"In the Shadow of Culture"
Brian Goodwin
Published in "The Next Fifty Years"
(Edited by John Brockman, Vintage Books, New York)
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