DISCUSS: Is it useful to engage media history and theory for thinking about architecture?
Public Writing, or writing for a public audience
This assignment builds upon the previous assignments.
Reading N. Katherine Hayles’s, “Cybernetics,” in Critical Terms for Media Studies, ed. W.J.T.
Mitchell, Mark B.N. Hansen (2010), 145–156, will be very helpful in thinking about this
assignment. The Hayles essay was required reading for week 10. Hayles offers a brief
history of cybernetics and importantly, she situates cybernetics in relation to media and
media studies. She offers a fuller definition of media.
For this assignment you will use the examples of architecture that you chose for
assignment #3. These will serve as the evidence you will employ to support your position
on the significance of architecture as a medium within the built environment. You can set
the parameter on what you mean by the built environment, for example: the city, the
neighborhood, the interior of a building, or a specific contextual situation. You may wish,
and are free, to argue contrary.
To do this assignment choose a specific focus. If might be helpful to think about these
questions:
a) Ask yourself why it is or is not useful to understand the history of media and design.
b)DISCUSS: Is it useful to engage media history and theory for thinking about architecture?