Deborah Hauptmann Livres

"Cognitive architecture questions how evolving modalities - from biopolitics to noopolitics - can be mapped upon the city under contemporary conditions of urbanization and globalization. Noopolitics, most broadly understood as a power exerted over the life of the mind, re-configures perception, memory and attention, and also implicates potential ways and means by which neurobiological architecture is undergoing reconfigurations. This volume, motivated by theories such as 'cognitive capitalism' and concepts such as 'neural plasticity', shows how architecture and urban processes and products commingle to form complex systems that produce novel forms of networks that empower the imagination and constitute the cultural landscape. This volume rethinks the relations between form and forms of communication, calling for a new logic of representation; it examines the manner in which information, with its non-hierarchical and distributed format is contributing both to the sculpting of brain and production of mind."--P. 4 of cover.

Anyone at all familiar with the architectural work of Herman Hertzberger (b. 1932) knows that underlying his designs is an extensive set of ideas and references. For thirty years Hertzberger has carried around a sketchbook to record his impressions. The accumulated books record fascinating analyses of buildings, landscape sketches, diagrams and partial solutions to current commissions. Two architectural historians have worked closely with Hertzberger to select from these sketches and notes pages which best reveal the architect's design process. The result is a stimulating look into the inner workings of one of architecture's great minds.