This year’s Jaap Bakema Study Centre conference aims to critically explore the interplay between architecture and digital culture since the 1970s. How has the emergent data society materialised in architecture? What new typologies have been developed? And what role did architecture play in the emerging discussion about artificial intelligence?

In the global history of digital culture, the 1970s are seen as a transitional period: between the dazzling rise and fall of cybernetics in the mid-20th century, and the popularisation of the personal computer and early critical debates on artificial intelligence and surveillance in the late 1980s. The techno-utopian playfulness of the architecture, art and philosophy of the 1960s was replaced by the application-driven, technological thinking of the emerging post-industrial society. The focus was now on designing specific tools, digital standards and automated services for the future data society. The miniaturisation of technology and in particular the development of microchips initiated far-reaching changes not only in the natural sciences, industry and economy, but also impacted architecture and urban design.

We will look at buildings, archives, networks, concepts and visual culture. Long before the famous, formal explorations of Greg Lynn, Kas Oosterhuis, Lars Spuybroek and Maurice Nio, the digital was already firmly inscribed in the discipline. How to assess the various shifts and impacts of the digital in architecture while applying just such a historical and cultural perspective?

Registration via Event brite closes on 24 November at 20.00. Please check the website for more information and online access.