Meier Alexis

(ENSA Paris-Malaquais - University of Paris VIII - CNRS)

“Computation” and Alienation-The retrurn of logocentrism in architecture?

The purpose of this paper is to make apparent a critical and theoretical aspects of the instrumentation of new technologies inside architectural processes. After twenty years of “Choral Work” between architecture and post-structuralist philosophy superimposed together inside architectural processes, we now face a new technological era which seems to provide a new figure of authority by replacing logocentrism to logicocentrism. Averywhere, the “insemination” of computer by biogenetic algorithms and codification processes transform matter into a zoocentric paradigmatic system supposed, by its internal modulation, expended the mediation in social space.

The goal of our demonstration will be to examine new technical and theoretical strategies, in a way that the positivistic structure of computation can avoid a totalizing effect (that leading architecture under technological domination), but open up to an un-programmable (emergent) future.

Meier Alexis

(ENSA Paris-Malaquais - University of Paris VIII - CNRS)

Graduate in Architecture since 1998 (D.p.l.g), he holds a Master of Philosophy of Art and architectural Theory, he is currently preparing a PH.D in Aesthetics at the University of Paris VIII.

He is associated professor in the Malaquais School of Architecture of Paris and part-time lecturer in town and regional planning the University of Paris X Nanterre. A members of GERPHAU – UMR CNRS 7145 state research lab. Carrying out research in the field of theory and practice of architectural design , it also had collaborated with several architectural agencies in France and abroad, among them, Peter Eisenman in New York and Renzo Piano in Paris.

He has also published in specialized reviews in theory of Architecture and participate to numerous international conferences. Alexis Meier develops a reflexion on design into the framework of his teaching like in his professional practice a reflexion on the process of design. Using as a starting point the architectural "deconstruction" influenced by the work of Eisenman, he tries to circumscribe a definition of what could be an architecture known as "post-diagrammatic".