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constructed technology. The technologies Blurconstructed made no promises of a utopian future,

they simply serviced an immediate experience.Visitors filed down fiberglass bridges, disappearedinto the fog, climbed the first flight of steps to the

media platform, ascended a second flight of stairs tothe “angel bar,” maybe paused for a few minutes to

enjoy the sun or sample various waters for sale at thebar, and then returned to dry land. Even with nothing

to do, more than one million visitors made thejourney into the fog.

While Blur’s “habitable medium” was the productof extensive technologies, the material itself — fog —

was merely a fleeting transformation of theexisting lake. Shortly after being transformed into

mist, the water particles dissipated back intothe lake; the project was constantly in a state of

being made. Although Blur reconfigured both theform and experience of the water, nothing was

actually produced — the material was simply recycled.The water pumps, filtration systems, misting nozzles,

and software — designed by nuclear power plantengineers — all constructed a (non)experience, an

evanescent effect. Its ephemerality was made all themore evident each night; when the fair closed and

the pumps were shut off, Blur shrunk to half its size,the exposed structure appearing as an unfinished

building awaiting its skin.

Hovering over Switzerland’s Lake Neuchâtel fromMay to October 2002, a hybrid system of complextechnologies — a 60-by-100-by-20-meter tensegritystructure1, a “smart weather system” controllingeighty-eight high-pressure pumps, a water treatmentfacility, and 31,500 fog nozzles2 — generated what itsdesigners, the architects Diller + Scofidio, called“nothing.”3 For the five months of Swiss EXPO2002 — a once-a-generation National Exhibition —their Blur Building transformed the lake’s water intoan inhabitable cloud of fog. Inside the skinless,facadeless structure, the mist produced a visualexperience that was based on the absence of a visualimage. “Featureless, depthless, scaleless, spaceless,massless, surfaceless, and contextless,” as describedby its creators, it was a “nonspectacle.”4 One Swissjournalist noted, “[It is] so un-Swiss. We don’t needthe cloud. It doesn’t water our fields, nor does itregulate our climate. It is just simply beautiful….The cloud enchants visitors straightaway. What acrazy idiosyncratic thing! How deliciously withoutpurpose!”5

As a critique of the optimistic exhibits that are thehallmark of world’s fairs, the architects designed apavilion without purpose, with nothing to see andnothing to do. Although Blur employed state-of-the-art technology, distinctly absent were Futurama-style6 visions of a world made better through such

designing

ashley schafer

inefficiencies

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Blur’s extreme mutability — changing with the houras well as the slightest shift in wind — called intoquestion what, exactly, it was. Swiss buildingauthorities, the most official arbiters of suchdesignations, questioned the pavilion’s status as abuilding, struggling to determine which provisionsof the fire code applied. In the final resolution,regulators specified that the platform could onlybe occupied while the fog system was operating.Officially, Blur existed only as long as technologygenerated its atmosphere.

Blur’s environmental controls define the limits ofthe project’s domain, recalling Reyner Banham andFrançois Dallegret’s Environmental Bubble of 1965,a domed house inflated by air-conditioning.However, rather than complying with Banham’smandate for a “well-tempered environment,” Blurcreated an ill-tempered one. Adjacent to the entrystation, where visitors could obtain plastic rainponchos, a sign cautioned visitors that “Peoplesuffering from vertigo or wearing glasses will risksome inconveniences during the visit. Waterproofclothing recommended.” Inconvenient it was.In mid-June, visiting “Miss Switzerland” contestantswere visibly displeased with the fog’s ruinouseffects on their hair and makeup.

World’s fairs and expositions have long heralded thepromises of technology, but the 1939 New YorkWorld’s Fair, themed “The World of Tomorrow,”represents the pinnacle of American technologicaloptimism. From Norman Bel Geddes’s Futuramaexhibit to Borden’s automatic cow-milking carousel,the Fair featured visions of a utopia made possiblevia electric and machine innovation. Today, ourresolute confidence in technology even after the dot-com bust testifies to Americans’ steadfast faith in itsability to engender a better future through theefficiencies it provides. The complex relation oftechnology to culture in the twentieth and thebeginning of the twenty-first century has unfolded inarchitecture, where mechanical, electrical, andinformation technologies intersect with socialspaces.7 Architects have addressed the issue oftechnology in theory, design, and production inmeans as varied as the technologies themselves. Inthe first decades of the last century, modernistarchitects appropriated the engineered forms ofautomobiles, ocean liners, and airplanes asmetaphors for functionalist design. Le Corbusieradvocated the use of machine technologies,specifically industrial mass production and modularfabrication techniques, “to solve the problem ofthe house.”8 In several issues of the journal L’Esprit

Nouveau (1918 – 23), he published images of housesfabricated in the Voisin aircraft factory, which served

to corroborate the claim that machine technologiescould realize affordable housing through efficient

manufacturing. In the 1960s, Reyner Banham,reacting against the modernist aestheticization of

machine technology, explored instead a more activeengagement with mechanical technology. He

developed a series of experimental pneumatichouses, variations on the Environmental Bubble, that

embraced mechanical systems as an integralcomponent of their design. These houses’ forms were

more a result of the mechanical system than of atechnological aesthetic; the same air-conditioning

system that liberated inhabitants from theconstraints of clothing also provided the structure

for the membrane.

Many architects still maintain that technologycan solve social, economic, and design problems.

Greg Lynn’s fluid, biology-inspired and computer-generated forms, for example, are realized using

structural shell concepts borrowed from theautomobile and airplane industries. Echoing the

rhetoric of the early modernists, his EmbryologicalHouses employ production efficiencies afforded

though computer technology to provideeconomically viable, mass-customized housing.9

Despite their radically different approaches, each ofthese architects retains affinities with modernist

conceptions of technology: it is productive; it solvesproblems; it affords temporal, economic, and

production (manufacturing) efficiencies; and it willfoster a socially enlightened future. Given this

complex legacy, the multidisciplinary firmDiller + Scofidio has initiated a distinctly different

relationship to technology. They dare to ask,“Can technology be generative without conventions

of productivity and efficiency?”10

By no means does this question imply any Luddismon their part. Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidioare neither technophobic nor technophilic; rather,

they are simultaneously proficient in and critical oftechnology. Indeed, their evolving use of

technologies embodies a consistent critique ofmodernism’s rhetoric of efficiency and productivity.

They avoid the modernist correlation of form withhardware (technology as product) and the

postmodernist correlation of form with software(technology as process) by using technologies

generatively rather than representing them formally.Their reformulation of technologies into what they

have termed “technological sublime,” “technological

Brasserie stairway to dining room, 2000Photograph by Michael Moran

c l o c k w i s e f r o m t o p l e f t

Brasserie, 2000

Brasserie bar with Bar Beam, 2000

Brasserie, 2000Photographs by Michael Moran

brasserie, 2000

Diller + Scofidio designed thisrenovation of the Brasserierestaurant in Mies van der Rohe’sSeagram Building (1958) in NewYork. While the building itselfis a modernist glass tower, therestaurant is lodged in its stonebase and is without glass or view.This irony prompted a series ofresponses by Diller + Scofidio tothe relation between glass andvision. A video snapshot is taken

of each entering individual,whose image is then added to thecontinually changing video displayover the bar (Bar Beam). A glassstairway of unusually gradualproportions leads into the mainspace, half a level below thestreet, and theatricalizes arrival byprolonging descent and depositingthe patron into the center of thedining room.

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unpredictability,” and “technological parasite”11

indicate an appropriation of technologies not forproducts and results, but for active, open-endedbehaviors and functions.

The structure of Diller + Scofidio, the firm — as aninterdisciplinary practice — intentionally subvertstraditional distinctions between architect, artist,and engineer, and thus facilitates a more fluidrelationship with technology. Typically, thisrelationship is one of accommodation; mechanical,electrical, plumbing, and information systems areperceived as equipment to be designed by others andhandled expediently in interstitial building spaces.Diller + Scofidio, however, invert this relationship,using technologies as agents for design rather thanconstraints: technological systems, like traditionalmaterials such as concrete, steel, or glass, areavailable for their architectural intervention, andas a result, become tangible, evident, and integralaspects of a project’s design.

Making a distinction between technology in generaland specific technologies is useful in understandingDiller + Scofidio’s process. Technology consideredas a singular, homogeneous category or conditionsuggests a generalized consistency across a highlyvaried field and implies a strategic approachunderlaid by an overarching theoretical position orprinciple. Their interest lies rather in the practiceof implementing particular technologies in specificapplications for explicit consequences and effects.12

Technologies are not design or fabrication tools, butinstead are treated as design materials to bedeployed within a project. For Diller + Scofidio, then,technologies afford a means to an end, a material tomanipulate, a tool in service of their needs: to informdesign, to realize intention, and to create effects.“Technology is fabricated, and it’s an instrument,”Diller has noted. “It presents new opportunities.It’s pervasive, it’s undeniable, and it’s welcome.”13

For Diller + Scofidio, technologies offer neithercontrol, predictability, productivity, efficiency, norpromise for the future; they neither respond to aproblem nor yield a solution. Rather, inefficienttechnologies provide an opportunity to generateeffects and conditions that are excessive, robust,spontaneous, and performative.

While Blur’s ephemeral status and lack of programrepresent an extreme condition, even Diller +Scofidio’s “permanent” projects incorporatetechnologies to perform rather than produce.In the Slow House, the unrealized 1991 design of aLong Island vacation house, they used a video camera

and monitor to transform the site’s prized ocean vistainto a “technologized view.” Two 100-foot curving

walls held an entry door on the east side and, onthe west side, a 40-foot picture window framed the

ocean view. A television centered on this windowwas to play live or prerecorded images of the view

as captured by a camera mounted on a stacktowering 40 feet above the ground. As in Blur, theSlow House’s technologies produce nothing, or at

least nothing that does not already exist; rather, theysimply reframe the existing view by visually and

temporally displacing it.

Diller + Scofidio deployed similar media technologyten years later in the redesign of Brasserie, the

restaurant located a half-story below street level inMies van der Rohe’s iconic 1958 Seagram Building.

Brasserie’s new entry is defined not spatially, butelectronically. A camera positioned above the

revolving door photographs each visitor as he or sheenters. After a split-second delay, the image appears

on the first of fifteen monitors hovering in a rackover the bar. With each new arrival, a new image

appears and previous images shuttle down the line.What would be a single view is transformed into

fifteen views, dislocated in time and space from theactual event. The prosaic act of moving through an

unassuming door becomes a mini-media eventtransposed from the periphery of the space to its

center. In the same way that Blur’s fog nozzlesreconstituted Lake Neuchâtel’s water into fog, here

the extant entry is reconfigured and relocated. Diller+ Scofidio’s interest lies not in the design of a

discrete and clearly defined threshold to solve the“problem of entry,” but rather in re-creating entry as

an attenuated, ambiguous event. The surveillancetechnologies they employ also serve to re-create

transparency as an electronic rather than materialcondition in the windowless plinth of Mies’s glasstower.14 The fifteen snapshots in the “media bar”

capture an image not only of the entering patron, butalso of the street and sidewalk, so that the monitorsfunction as a ribbon of displaced windows, relaying

exterior weather conditions to the otherwisehermetic space. The camera’s slow shutter renders a

slightly blurred image of the person, while thebackground is depicted in crisp detail, often

revealing the idling limousines more clearly than theface of the “subject.” The effect of this electronictransparency is heightened when the cameras fire

belatedly; occasionally the delayed shutter capturesan empty turnstile, leaving only a framed view of the

street beyond.

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From a modernist perspective, efficient technologieswere valued as much for their productivity as fortheir employment of strategies of optimization thatwould eliminate what Frederick Winslow Taylor,the first efficiency proselytizer, called “inefficiencyin almost all of our daily acts” and would achieveexpediency by eliminating repetition andredundancy.15 Diller + Scofidio instead use tacticsof proliferation to generate productive overlaps andreduce the significance of single components infavor of fostering relations between components.The Slow House capitalizes on the value of its site’sview by reduplicating it. The house itself functionsas a device for framing the picture window thatdisplays both the prized ocean view and thetelevision monitor that, in turn, holds another,electronically manipulated, technologicallyduplicated version of the view.16 While the camerais oriented toward the same view as the window,its location 40 feet above the ground slightly shiftsthe perspective, dis-aligning the horizon on thescreen with the one in the window. Even when theplayback is “live,” the electronic transfer producesa slight delay in reception. The camera constructs adisplacement in framing, point of view, scale, andtime to constitute a tempo-spatial parallax. Whilethe view is rendered two-dimensional through the

process of being framed in the window and themonitor, its duplication and the relations established

between the two “flattened” images re-create anelectronic depth, a mediated third dimension.

In a similar application of technologically remasteredand duplicated reality, Blur’s media installation

played back the indigenous sounds of the project,augmented and transformed to foster a sense of

perceptual confusion. While limited in size and scopedue to budget reductions, the media component’s

final version provided a simple but unambiguousmanifestation of embedded redundancy. Dripping

water, squeaking steel, and hissing nozzles form thebasis of sound artist Christian Marclay’s installation,

Nebula. Marclay digitally enhanced and altered thesounds and recorded ten different CDs that looped

and played in random order, broadcast from speakerson the second level of Blur. The piece’s undeniable

subtlety — the intentional ambiguity introducedbetween what was live and recorded, what was

actual and manipulated — resulted in its remaining, tosome visitors, imperceptible. At moments, the odd

conjunction of sounds, emanating from no apparentsource, slightly oversized, slightly improbable,reinforced the sense of disorientation already

palpable in the fog.

Rendering, split production andpresentation programs and theirconstituents, Eyebeam Museum of Art& Technology, 2001

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In contrast to the Slow House’s and Blur’stechnological replications of sensory experience,in their competition-winning project forEyebeam’s new museum of art and technologyin Manhattan Diller + Scofidio employ materialreiterations as technological intervention. Whileall of the competition entries addressed theproject’s requirement to include flexible spacesand to accommodate the constant upgrading oftechnologies, Diller + Scofidio were alone inembracing the project’s dual programs — exhibitionand atelier — as a generator for spatial, technological,and material innovation. The 90,000-square-footproject has been designed as two essentiallyinterlocking buildings whose party wall is a folding,two-ply slab. Like the programs they contain, thetwo nested buildings maintain a symbioticrelationship — spatially, technologically, andstructurally. Vierendeel trusses within theproduction spaces span from cores at the ends ofthe building to carry vertical loads, concentratingthe primary structure in these areas while freeingthe exhibition spaces from columns. Reciprocally,the exhibition spaces’ concrete floors and ceilingsaccommodate horizontal loads, allowing the ateliersurfaces to be lined with a continuous system ofremovable panels for unlimited access to thebuilding’s technologies. At certain points, theribbon splits to align with the floor above or below,linking the two “different” buildings and aligningproduction and presentation spaces to providemoments of exchange between artist and visitor.

A two-ply material — fiberglass panels layered withsmooth concrete — comprises a “smart ribbon” thatseparates and services the two spaces and programs.Undulating back and forth to form walls, floors, andceilings, dissociating production from presentationand defining auditoriums, labs, and galleries, thislayered membrane composes an open infrastructurethat permits periodic total replacement of thebuilding’s technologies. Modular fiberglass panelson the atelier side allow unrestricted access to thisinterstitial service sandwich. By concentrating allaccess on one face of the slab, the concrete surfaceon the gallery side remains completely smoothexcept for porelike “smartjacks,” allowing its entirearea — walls, floors and ceilings — to be appropriatedfor exhibition. Flexibility is achieved throughfunction rather than form. Inverting the modernistparadigm of free plans serviced by rigidlydetermined core spaces, Diller + Scofidio havedefined discrete spaces and left systems open-ended; Miesian “universal space” has given wayto universal technology.

In Out of Control (1994), techno-cultural critic KevinKelly questioned modernist associations of efficiencywith technology, contesting Mies’s aphorism “Less is

more” and proposing instead that “More is more.”17

For him, “out of control” specifically refers to self-organized or bottom-up systems. In such emergent

systems, higher-level complexity arises from theaccretion of vast numbers of simple, low-level

decisions or actions, rather than small numbers ofelaborate operations. The behavior of swarming

bees, flocking birds, and whirlpools are allexamples of emergent systems; their properties are

greater than the sum of their parts. Such distributed,nonlinear, and non-hierarchical systems aresimultaneously flexible and unpredictable,

redundant, and resilient. Emergent technologies aretechnologies of excess, not efficiency; their logics

enable Diller + Scofidio to realize projects withgreater flexibility and adaptability and to design

work that generates “more.”

To subvert any educational or entertainmentprogram for Blur, the media projects Diller + Scofidiodeveloped for the building, all but one of which wereeventually eliminated because of budget constraints,

incorporated emergent technologies to induceunpredictable or undetermined events. In the

penultimate version of Blur, entering visitors wouldhave answered a short personality questionnaire and

then been issued Braincoats — smart raincoatsprogrammed with their profile. Encountering other

visitors on the foggy platform, wireless transmittersembedded in the coats would send this information

to a computer that would compare personalityprofiles. The coats would blush red to indicate

affinity or green to signal antipathy. As swarms oflike-minded people spontaneously gathered in

different areas of the platform, the groupings wouldaffect subsequent visitors’ navigation of the project,

further reinforcing these impromptu organizations.

In addition to promoting self-organization,technologies of excess can accommodate and

negotiate dynamic, unpredictable conditions.18 Blur’sirregular cloud in constant flux is an example of such

uncontrolled — and uncontrollable — excess.(Ironically, it is an early concept rendering, a clearly

defined image of a static cloud bearing only a passingresemblance to Blur’s final roiling turbulence, that

has been immortalized in Swiss popular culture. Thepristine white smudge adorning countless sugar

packets, phone cards, candy bars, and umbrellas hasbeen elevated to iconic status.) Embracing the

uncertainty inherent in constructing and maintainingits self-generated microclimate, Diller + Scofidio

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developed the fog-generating system to dynamicallyregulate, and yet only loosely determine, its shape,size, and density. The system combined softwarewith data from weather sensors that continuallymonitored temperature, humidity, and wind speedfrom atop the structure. Every eight minutes,the system compared current conditions withsaved scenarios, adjusting the output of the eighty-eight high pressure pumps to maintain an“acceptable… quality of fog.”19 The ever-changingform’s dimensions and configuration remainedindeterminate and unpredictable for the duration ofthe Expo, to the periodic dismay of adjacent café andbar owners — especially on cool days, when the“building” came ashore.

The constant fluctuation in Blur’s shape, size,density, and location emerged as a result of atechnology “out of control.” As the form of Blurchanged, so did viewers’ sense of its materiality.Some critics claimed that at moments the projectresembled an oil derrick trailed by fog floating thirtyfeet away (though this observer never saw such anextreme condition, either in Yverdon or over theExpo’s webcam). A stiff wind, interacting withincreasing nozzle pressure, would sharply define theleading edge of the “nothing.” The atomized waterappeared skinlike, draped between and pulled tautagainst the ridges of the fog nozzle lines. When thewater was warmer than the air, the mist would form arapidly rising mushroom cloud, and when convectioncurrents rose from the lake, the leading edge seemedto roll. When the wind stilled, Blur’s edges becamediffuse, soft, and permeable, dissipating so graduallyin all directions that it was difficult to say whereit ended — but always it was moving: rollingdownwards, lifting up, floating outward, driftinglow along the water. Frequently, in the time betweencomposing a photograph of Blur and releasing theshutter, a gust of wind would shift the center ofmass. The “building” had moved.

In the age of email, cell phones, and CNN, we expectimmediate response. The value of each newtechnology relies on an increase in reaction that nowapproaches simultaneity. Computers with ever fasterprocessors, high-speed Internet connections, anddirect-connect cell phones promise “no waiting”and “instant access.” In their pledge of temporalefficiency, these technologies resemble improvedversions of the motorways prophesied by 1939’s“World of Tomorrow.” By contrast, Diller + Scofidioimplement technologies to deliberately institutedelay. The architects use the gap or lag producedby their projects as both a critique of and to heightenawareness of our present moment. Effects of changing weather

conditions, Blur Building, 2002

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Surveillance technology extends the moment ofentry into the Brasserie from a unique event takingplace in a single time and location into three discreteevents in time and separate places in space: first, theentry into the building through the revolving doors,triggering a snapshot image recorded by an overheadcamera; second, the entry of the image onto the“video beam” (Bar Beam, created in collaborationwith artist Ben Rubin) above the bar; and then thepatron’s third and “actual” entry into the center ofthe dining space, which is further delayed by theattenuated proportions of the staircase. Mirroringand emphasizing these successive delays, the videobeam performs as an asynchronous meter of activityin the space. Activity in the bar is preceded byactivity on-screen; a frequent flicker of the screensas new arrivals are added to the rack portends anespecially animated crowd.

At times, the temporal inefficiencies Diller + Scofidiogenerate other, perhaps unintended, outcomes. InBlur, the eight-minute interval between the weathersystem’s gauge of and its reactions and adjustmentsto prevailing weather conditions proved to have asignificant effect on the project. This lag time madeadjusting for lone gusts of wind impossible, and evengradual weather changes were accommodatedslightly after the fact, producing a constant variationin the density, shape, and limits of the fog. Thisinstability affected the form of the cloud as well asvisitors’ experience inside. The most intriguing areasof Blur were not those that manifested the architect-specified “acceptable fog quality,” but those that, inthe grip of this delay, were almost devoid of mist.Within eight minutes (when the system was workingwell) those locations became the setting of dramaticvisual, tactile, material, and aural transformation. Onan auspiciously warm, humid, and variably windy dayin June, I gravitated toward these fog-deficientareas, chasing the possibility of witnessing thechange. The hiss of the nozzles grew louder as thewater pressure increased — a process that took abouta second — followed by large plumes of drenchingmist that almost immediately reduced visibility tonear zero. This profoundly apparent temporaldisplacement attenuates the relationship betweencause and effect, dissociating instruments oftechnology from means of control. In these intervalsDiller + Scofidio construct spaces in time that resistthe modernist tyranny of efficiency by framing andquestioning our present condition.

The history of modern technologies in America is ahistory of futuristic speculation. For over a century,the rhetoric surrounding each new technology —

industrial, electronic, environmental,telecommunication, and computer — has promised a

better tomorrow. Yet, as Diller observes, “There’snothing that dates faster than speculation about the

future.”20 Although utopian predictions of the pasttoday appear at best naive and at worst untenable,

contemporary technological rhetoric reiteratesfamiliar claims: access to information, increasedconnectivity, and temporal efficiency will foster

economic prosperity, social progress, educationaladvancement, improved health, and even happiness.

By contrast, Diller + Scofidio have for more thantwenty years maintained a critical stance toward

modernist associations of technology withproductivity, efficiency, and progress, while

simultaneously embracing technologies for theeffects they produce. Their rejection of technological

optimism is a rejection neither of technology nor ofoptimism. Rather, they maintain an optimism for

inefficient technologies, not to project an idealizedfuture, but instead to reconfigure a very real present.

notes

1. Blur’s structure is based on the tensegrityconcept Buckminster Fuller developed inthe 1950s. (The word is a combination of“tension” and “integrity.”) Tensegritystructures combine continuous cables intension and discontinuous members incompression to enclose a volume. The useof forces in balance enables each memberto be lighter, while the entire structure isomnidirectional, nonlinear, and able todistribute local loads. Blur’s exterior “skin”is entirely comprised of tension members.2. Japanese artist Fujiko Nakaya, who servedas a consultant on Blur, developed fog nozzlesfor the Pepsi pavilion at Expo ‘70, a World’sFair held in Osaka. There, 2,520 fog nozzlesshrouded a geodesic dome in mist. 3. The subtitle of the book Blur, thearchitects’ documentation of the project’sgenesis, is “The Making of Nothing.”4. Elizabeth Diller, “Blur/Babble,” inAnything (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001), 137.5. Roger Anderegg, “Die Wunder-Wolke,”SonntagsZeitung, May 19, 2002, p. 17, quotedin Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio, Blur:The Making of Nothing (New York: Harry N.Abrams, 2002), 372.6. Norman Bel Geddes’s Futurama exhibit atthe 1939 New York World’s Fair integratedtechnology, efficiency, progress, productivity,and happiness into a singular image of thefuture. 7. Mechanical, electrical, and informationtechnology systems in new constructiontypically comprise as much as 25 to 30 percentof a project’s gross area and roughly 25percent of total construction costs.8. Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture(New York: Dover Publications, 1986), 133.

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9. Lynn uses computer numeric controlled(CNC) milling, a CAD-to-productiontechnology that directly translates designsinto actual objects, eliminating manyefficiencies realized through repetitive massproduction. While design time may beincreased, production time (and thereforecost) remains constant, even when each objectis unique. 10. Elizabeth Diller, quoted in Ben Gilmartin,Amanda Reeser, and Ashley Schafer,“Technological Landscape,” Praxis, no. 4 (fall2002): 104.11. Each of these phrases has been coined byDiller + Scofidio to describe a project-specificapproach to technology. “Technologicalsublime” refers to Blur’s intersection oflandscape and technology. Para-site (1989)employed the “technological parasite,” wheretechnology operated like an opportunisticorganism as a system of cameras and monitorstransformed museum visitors into displayobjects. 12. See Stan Allen, “Practice vs. Project,”Praxis, no. 0 (winter 1998): 116. For Allen,“Material Practices unfold in time, confidentin the logical structure of the discipline as astarting point, but never satisfied simply torepeat or to execute a system of rules definedelsewhere.” I would argue that for Diller +Scofidio, technologies are a material forinvestigation.13. Elizabeth Diller, quoted in ShonquisMoreno, “Conversation Pieces,” Frame, no. 25(March/April 2002): 42.14. The bronze-colored glass curtain wall ofthe Seagram Building is more reflective thantransparent, at least in the physical sense.With this building, Mies transformed the earlymodernist notion of a transparency of glass toa transparency of structural technology. Thatis, the building is transparent in that ittranscribes the techniques of its production.The wide-flange steel mullions on the exteriorof the building are not structural, but ratherrepresent the steel frame structure hiddenwithin concrete fireproofing inside. Mies’stransparency reveals what is interior toexterior, whereas Brasserie works the oppositeway, bringing what is exterior to the interior.

15. Frederick Winslow Taylor, The Principles ofScientific Management (New York: Harper &Brothers, 1911). 16. The prerecorded, selectable view invokesthe precedent of the Underground WorldHomes, designed by Architects Cox andKittres for the 1964 New York World’s Fair,though that project replaced the natural viewwith a singular, controlled one. 17. Kevin Kelly was founding editor of Wiredand of the Whole Earth Review and Catalog.His studies center on the culturalconsequences of technology; see Kevin Kelly,Out of Control: The New Biology of Mechanics,Social Systems, and the Economic World(New York: Addison Wesley, 1994), 22.18. The self-regulation of the smart weathersystem, combined with the exponentiallylarger number of fog nozzles, distinguish Blurfrom Nakaya’s Pepsi pavilion. 19. Diller and Scofidio, Blur: The Making ofNothing, 307.20. Diller, quoted in Gilmartin, Reeser, andSchafer, “Technological Landscape”: 97.