#mark wigley

[noosphe-re]

Deconstructivist Architecture (Philip Johnson and Mark Wigley)

[garadinervi]

Paulo Tavares, (2018), En las ruinas del bosque, «t-e-e» 29, El Taller de Ediciones Económicas, Guadalajara, 2022 (pdf here) [Licencia de Producción entre Pares]

Originally published as In the Forest Ruins, in Superhumanity. Design of the Self, Edited by Nick Axel, Beatriz Colomina, Nikolaus Hirsch, Anton Vidokle, and Mark Wigley, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN, 2018

[deseopolis]

Bodies now last longer than the buildings they occupy. Buildings no longer hold memory. Their memorializing function has been displaced by images. Buildings are at best fragile images, props in heterogeneous publicity campaigns. Digital archives have taken over the role of storing memory from solid structures. Collective memory is diffused across an invisible electronic landscape rather than concentrated in singular monumental objects.

The Architectural cult of synchronization. Mark Wigley

[goreprofonde]

“Haunting is always the haunting of a house. And it is not just that some houses are haunted. A house is only a house inasmuch as it is haunted.”

- Mark Wigley, The Architecture of Deconstruction.

[ap-architecturememories]

‘Work, Body, Leisure’ exhibition - Dutch Pavilion - curated by Marina Otero Verzier - in collaboration with Simone C Niquille, Beatriz Colomina, Mark Wigley & Liam Young - Venice Architecture Biennale 2018 ____

Arthur and Puff are everywhere … Facebook  |  Stampsy  |  Tumblr  |  Soundcloud  |  Pinterest  |  Instagram

[poeticque]

“Ornament is friction.”

are we human? (Beatriz Colomina & Mark Wigley)

[nascentpropositions]

What if design is all about perversion? What if modern design is kind of kinky? Why not. Why believe some professor that says design is about solving problems. Maybe it is a very kinky thing. All these sort of shiny surfaces and slippery things. Maybe it’s sort of a sexy thing.

Mark Wigley in AA DUE, 2017 

[jarrettfuller]

Are We Human? Notes on an Archaeology of Design

“Design, the act of putting constructs in an order, seems to be human destiny.” —Richard Neutra

Are We Human?, the theme of the 2016 Istanbul Biennial curated by architecture theorists Mark Wigley and Beatriz Columina has perhaps had a larger influence on my own thinking in and around design than anything else over the last few years. As they shared their research — in interviews, in essays, and ultimately in the show itself late last year — I carried their ideas around with me like a Bible and recited quotations from the husband-wife duo like a fully-converted disciple to anyone who would listen. Sometimes I think I've mentioned something about it in every episode of my podcast.

Wigley and Columina have compiled this research and writing from the exhibition into a small book, Are We Human?: Notes on an Archaeology of Design, where they outline their point-of-view on the current state of design. "Design is what makes us human," they proclaim in the introduction, "but design's ultimate goal is to redesign the human." Throughout the book, the couple examine the far-reaching, ever-expanding tentacles of design — from the subatomic to the satellites that orbit our planet. "The entire planet has been encrusted with a geological layer of design," they continue, "There is no world outside of design anymore." As they explain:

Design has gone viral. The word design is everywhere. It pops up in every situation. It knows no limit. We are ambushed by wave upon wave of design biennials, weeks, fairs, festivals, neighborhoods, capitals, stores, magazines, books, websites, blogs, awards, programs, schools, centers, departments, museums, exhibitions, associations, councils, committees, and congresses. Along with “designer” hotels, drugs, bodies, and food we can have “happiness by design”, “diplomacy by design”, “social impact design”, or “design for social justice”. A new way of “designers” shape “experience”, “interfaces”, “software”, “brand”, and “interaction”. New university programs are devoted to “biological design” and “social innovation design.” “Design thinking” has become a dominant business model affecting everything from politics to education, personal relationships, research, communication, and philanthropy. At a time in which the largest company in the world has based all its success on design, business schools now have design programs and the position of Chief Design Officer has recently assumed the same status as Chief Financial Officer. Companies that had nothing to do with design now build design into every dimension of corporate life. Politicians believe their success is dependent on design thinking. Cities have design departments whose role goes far beyond the usual focus on transportation, buildings, parks, street furniture, and signage to brand themselves. Even experts in “design risk assessment” have appeared to evaluate the danger that the incorporation of design brings to any sense. Design has become dangerously successful.

But this is not, however, another book about how design can change the world. The couple is aware and in awe of design's power but never cross the line into blind-faith and are careful not to glorify it. They write of design's role in data collection and surveillance, it's complicity in capitalism and over-indexing on materialism. In an especially fascinating chapter on perversion, they deconstruct modernism's obsession with surface that relies on hiding everything unsavory, including a story of a nude Le Corbusier painting murals on his neighbor, Eileen Gray's, home.

We can't escape the affects of design — from the alarm that wakes us up to the clothes we put on, the roads we use to get to work to the computer I'm typing these words on — we're completely surrounded and influenced by design. But the ultimate goal is to redefine what it means to be human; to redesign the human. I'm reminded of Marshall McLuhan's classic and prescient The Medium is the Massage: "we shape our tools, and then our tools shape us." The same is true of design: we shape our world through design, and then this design shapes us — sometimes literally through prosthetics, DNA, and plastic surgery, and sometimes more abstractly through how we communicate and move through the world. Design, they ponder, has made it harder to find the line between the human and the manufactured.

What is the culmination of this total design? In the end, Wigley and Columina assert that we are all, in fact, designers. We have designer jeans and handbags, and can get designer faces and visit designer hotels. On social media, we are endless content creators, constantly cultivating an image, a perpetual exercise in self-branding. Wigley and Columina put forth a defining text that is both theoretical and critical of contemporary design, simultaneously in awe of and skeptical of. These are the questions designers should be asking themselves, this is the type of design criticism I'm after: one that comes from love but not blind-faith. As we design more and more of ourselves, as th line between nature and manufactured begins to blur, we must constantly ask ourself: are we human?