Architecture as Atmospheric Media: Tange Lab and Cybernetics (original) (raw)

Much of the current debate and critical approaches to media ecol ogy and ubiquitous computing echoes architectural discourse on the media-saturated urban environment from the 1960s. It was then that the rapid growth of telecommunication networks and the intensification of data traffic prompted architects to consider urban space in relation to technical media. For these architects, thinking about urban design became inseparable from thinking about communication and information technologies, and architectural criticism became contiguous with media theory. While an echo from the past is only part of the conversation in the pres ent, the reverberations between Japa nese architectural theory from the 1960s and current media theory are worth considering, if only to contextualize the historical specificity of the former and to gain a comparative perspective on the latter.