WILLIAM J. MITCHELL

La red global digital, el internet, no es sólo un sistema de transporte para el correo electrónico, las páginas web y la televisión digital. Es una forma completamente nueva de infraestructura urbana que cambiara el aspecto de nuestras ciudades tan espectacularmente como lo hicieron en el pasado el ferrocarril, las autopistas, el suministro de energia electrica y las redes telefonicas. En este libro, William J. Mitchell analiza esta nueva infraestructura y sus implicaciones para la vida cotidiana futura. Propone estrategias para la creacion de ciudades que no solo sean sostenibles, sino que tengan sentido desde el punto de vista economico, social y cultural en un mundo electronicamente interconectado.

Este nuevo libro se centra en el diseño de viviendas polivalentes que cumplen simultaneamente funciones domésticas y profesionales. Los proyectos, diseñados por prestigiosos arquitectos internacionales, fueron seleccionados por ofrecer soluciones ingeniosas y practicas con el fin de poder albergar dos usos completamente distintos y, muchas veces, incompatibles. Encuadernacion: Rustica.

Reflections on architecture and the exchange of information in the spaces and places of the city, from the necessity of skyscrapers in an age of Web sites to cities as talent magnets, from architectural bling to the neo-minimalism of the new MoMA.The meaning of a message, says William Mitchell, depends on the context of its reception. "Shouting fire in a crowded theater produces a dramatically different effect from barking the same word to a squad of soldiers with guns," he observes. In Placing Words, Mitchell looks at the ways in which urban spaces and places provide settings for communication and at how they conduct complex flows of information through the twenty-first century city.Cities participate in the production of meaning by providing places populated with objects for words to refer to. Inscriptions on these objects (labels, billboards, newspapers, graffiti) provide another layer of meaning. And today, the flow of digital informationfrom one device to another in the urban scenecreates a digital network that also exists in physical space. Placing Words examines this emerging system of spaces, flows, and practices in a series of short essayssnapshots of the city in the twenty-first century.Mitchell questions the necessity of flashy downtown office towers in an age of corporate Web sites. He casts the shocked-and-awed Baghdad as a contemporary Guernica. He describes architectural makeovers throughout history, listing Le Corbusiers Fab Five Points of difference between new and old architecture, and he discusses the architecture of Manolo Blahniks. He pens an open letter to the Secretary of Defense recommending architectural features to include in torture chambers. He compares Baudelaire, the Parisian flaneur, to Spiderman, the Manhattan traceur. He describes the iPod-like galleries of the renovated MoMA and he recognizes the camera phone as the latest step in a process of image mobilization that began when artists stopped painting on walls and began making pictures on small pieces of wood, canvas, or paper. The endless flow of information, he makes clear, is not only more pervasive and efficient than ever, it is also generating new cultural complexities.

Function and meaning in architecture and elsewhere, from tongue-in-cheek instructions for creating a surveillance state to reflections on the architecture of the potato chip.Worlds Greatest Architect: Making, Meaning, and Network Culture Artifacts (including works of architecture) play dual roles; they simultaneously perform functions and carry meaning. Columns support roofs, but while the sturdy Tuscan and Doric types traditionally signify masculinity, the slim and elegant Ionic and Corinthian kinds read as feminine. Words are often inscribed on objects. (On a door: push or pull.) Today, information is digitally encoded (dematerialized) and displayed (rematerialized) to become part of many different objects, at one moment appearing on a laptop screen and at another, perhaps, on a building facade (as in Times Square). Well-designed artifacts succeed in being both useful and meaningful. In Worlds Greatest Architect, William Mitchell offers a series of snapshotsshort essays and analysesthat examine the systems of function and meaning currently operating in our buildings, cities, and global networks.In his writing, Mitchell makes connections that arent necessarily obvious but are always illuminating, moving in one essay from Bush-Cheneys abuse of language to Robert Venturis argument against rigid ideology and in favor of graceful pragmatism. He traces the evolution of Las Vegas from Sin/Sign City to family-friendly resort and residential real estate boomtown. A purchase of chips leads not only to a complementary purchase of beer but to thoughts of Eames chairs (like Pringles) and Gehry (fun to imitate with tortilla chips in refried beans). As for who the worlds greatest architect might be, heres a hint: hes also the oldest.