Virtual Dimension : Architecture, Representation, and Crash Culture

In a century immersed in technological acceleration, we have reached a strange new plateau in the human condition. Advanced technologies such as biometrics and DNA cloning have not only caught up with reality, they have in many ways already surpassed it. The Virtual Dimension critically examines the role that digital and immersive technologies have on the methods used by architects, designers, and artists to conceptualize and represent new mediated spaces, topologies, and both real and virtual communities. This collection of interdisciplinary essays addresses the implications of "going virtual" from a variety of cultural and theoretical >viewpoints. Over thirty contributors, all leading architects, urban theorists, philosophers, scientists, and cultural critics, have contributed to this collection. These include Stan Allen, professor of architecture at Columbia University; Gareth Branwyn, contributing editor of Wired and co-author of The Happy Mutant Handbook and Jamming the Media: A Citizen's Guide; Canadian artist Char Davies; Manuel Delanda, author of War in the Age of Intelligent Machines; William J. Mitchell, author of City of Bits; Michael Heim, author of The Metaphysics of Virtual Reality, Vivian Sobchack, associate dean of film studies at UCLA; and philosopher and author Paul Virilio. The breadth and size of this collection will make it the most important reader on the subject, of interest to anyone excited by the possibilities of electronic communication.

"Poised at the "continuous unfolding" between techno-culture and architecture, Beckmann's anthologises essays from architect-theorists like Berkel and Bos on the predigital model of endlessness pioneered by Friedrich Kiesler back in the 30s and 40s and now realisable in the "multidimensional spatial experience" of computer aided designs like their Dream House together with the German digital urbanists Knowbotic Research on their networked topologies of their Tokyo10-dencies project." -- I-D, UK, May 1999

"Technophile design guru John Beckmann has rounded up most of the cybercultural elite for this survey of technology at the end of the century. -- Matthew DeBord, Bookforum, Summer 1999

"The Virtual Dimension uncovers the newest frontiers for architecture albeit one still in its Wild West phase." -- Gavin Keeney, Oculus, June 1999

"This book will certainly be on my list of reading material for recommending to any student to assist their quest in joining the digital avant-garde." -- Neil Spiller, Building Design, UK, April 23, 1999