Non Essential Knowledge For New Architecture

de David Lyle

What is essential knowledge for architecture? This frequently posed question targets fundamental principles of design, those basic criteria and priorities through which disciplinary stability is ensured. Yet, insofar as relevance is a core value of architecture, in both theory and practice, the contingent nature of the future guarantees that some forms of knowledge not presently considered essential will eventually become indispensable. With that condition in mind, (Non- ) Essential Knowledge for (New) Architecture collects projects that envision possible futures for architecture through speculations about new disciplinary knowledge. Asking what specific methods, materials, or understandings - tools, ratios, formulas, properties, principles, guidelines, definitions, rules, practices, techniques, reference points, histories and more - not presently considered essential to architecture could, or should, define its future; this new volume of 306090 serves as both a gauge of contemporary concerns and a manual for emergent theory and practice.