Digital Property

Antoine Picon is the G Ware Travelstead Professor of  the History of Architecture and Technology at Harvard GSD. He works on the history of architectural and urban technologies from the 18th century to the present. In his book La Ville territoire des cyborgs (Editions de l'lmprimeur, 1998), he began to investigate the changes brought to cities and architecture by the development of digital tools and digital culture. His three most recent books - Digital Culture in Architecture: An Introduction for the Design Profession (Birkhauser,  2010); Ornament:The Politics of Architecture and Subjectivity (John Wiley & Sons,2013); and Smart Cities: A Spatialised Intelligence (Wiley, 2015) - deal extensively with this question. He received science and engineering degrees from the Ecole Polytechnique and Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussees, an architecture degree from the Ecole d'Architecture de Paris-Villemin, and a PhD in history from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. Wendy W Fok is the creative director/ founder of WE DESIGNS, which provides creative strategies for the built environment, as well as Resilient Modular Systems, a socially missioned venture and public-benefit corporation that focuses on innovative modular components using hybridised composite materials for the building industry. Her awards include the Autodesk® Pier 9 AiR (2016), Young CAADRIA Award (2015), Digital Kluge Fellowship awarded by the Library of Congress (2014- 15), the Art Directors Club of New York's ADC Young Guns 11 Award (2013), and the American Institute of Architects (AIA) Dallas 'Express Yourself' Women in Architecture Award (2013). She has a Master of Architecture from Princeton University, and a  Bachelor of Arts in Architecture from Barnard College, Columbia University. She is an Assistant Professor of Integrated Design at Parsons, and completed her Doctor of Design at the Harvard GSD. Her doctoral research investigates computational innovation, the ethical/equitable application of technical methods of digital fabrication, and issues of intellectual property law within ownership and authorship property rights for the built environment.

"... a new edition of a very, very good book, contains deep understanding and valid advice to the designer." (European Transactions on Telecommunications, November 2000)

• About the Guest-Editors 5 Introduction The Ownership Revolution 6 Serving, Owning, Authoring 16Adaptive Knowledge in Architecture: A Few Notes on the Nature of Transdisciplinarity 26From Authorship to Ownership: A Historical Perspective 36A/B Architecture: Publicly Augmented Design 42Massive Re-Patterning of the Urban Landscape 48Fab-Union: A Collective Online to Offline Robotic Design Platform 52Design Instruments of Service in the Era of Connection 60An Art of Connectivity 68Post-Digital Transdisciplinarity 74VULCAN: Closing the Loop in 3D-Printed Architectural Design 82Architectural Patents and Open-Source Architectures: The Globalisation of Spatial Design Innovations (or Learning from ‘E99’) 92When Matter Becomes Media: How Our New Tools Are Reinventing Physicality 100Design Signals: The Role of Software Architecture and Paradigms in Design Thinking and Practice 108Opening Up the Future of Open Source: From Open Innovation to the Internet of Things for the Built Environment 116Counterpoint The Culture of the Copy 126Contributors 134