Rethinking the intimate relationship between humans and design, from
primitive tools and ornamentation to the constant buzz of modern social
media
The question "are we human?" is both urgent and ancient. Beatriz
Colomina and Mark Wigley offer a multilayered exploration of the
intimate relationship between human and design and rethink the
philosophy of design in a multidimensional exploration from the very
first tools and ornaments to the constant buzz of social media.
The average day involves the experience of thousands of layers of design
that reach to outside space but also reach deep into our bodies and
brains. Even the planet itself has been completely encrusted by design
as a geological layer. There is no longer an outside to the world of
design.
Colomina's and Wigley's field notes offer an archaeology of the way
design has gone viral and is now bigger than the world. They range
across the last few hundred thousand years and the last few seconds to
scrutinize the uniquely plastic relation between brain and artifact. A
vivid portrait emerges. Design is what makes the human. It becomes the
way humans ask questions and thereby continuously redesign themselves.
Beatriz Colomina is an architectural historian and theorist who has
written extensively on questions of architecture, art, technology,
sexuality and media. She is Founding Director of the interdisciplinary
Media and Modernity Program at Princeton University and Professor and
Director of Graduate Studies in the School of Architecture. Her work has
been published in more than 25 languages and her books include
Manifesto Architecture: The Ghost of Mies, Clip/Stamp/Fold: The
Radical Architecture of Little Magazines, Domesticity at War,
Privacy and Publicity: Modern Architecture as Mass Media and
Sexuality and Space.
Mark Wigley is professor of architecture at Columbia University. A
historian and theorist, he explores the intersection of architecture,
art, philosophy, culture and technology. His books include: Derrida's
Haunt: The Architecture of Deconstruction; White Walls, Designer
Dresses: The Fashioning of Modern Architecture; Constant's New
Babylon: The Hyper-Architecture of Desire; and Buckminster Fuller
Inc.: Architecture in the Age of Radio. He is the co-author of Are We
Human: Notes on an Archaeology of Design with Beatriz Colomina, in
association with their curation of the 3rd Istanbul Design Biennial. He
has also curated exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art and the Drawing
Center in New York; the Witte de With and Het Nieuwe Instituut in
Rotterdam, and the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal. His
latest book is Cutting Matta-Clark: The Anarchitecture Investigation
(Lars Müller, 2018). He was born in New Zealand, trained there as an
architect, then as a scholar, and is based in New York.
