Peter Trummer – författare

The city is the largest human artefact. It is made by us, yet simultaneously it makes us, as well as all other nonhuman entities. The particular discourse to which this book on the city contributes is the discipline of architecture. It explores a simple question: How does the city effect the mode of existence of its buildings?The tradition within architectural history that identifies the city as the origin of our buildings poses a challenge to us, as architects, to theorise about the city’s form and use in order to rationalise our own actions. In opposition to other disciplinary approaches to the city and its architecture, the book argues not for type (Rossi, Ungers) as the deepest aspect of the architecture of the city. Neither will it be the function (Venturi & Scott Brown, Koolhaas) of the city to explain its material organisation, nor is matter considered (Jacobs, Banham) to be deeper than the real city. Instead, this book argues that the mode of existence of architecture is inherent to the city itself, which originates its architecture as part of its being as a technical object.

MEDIATED ARCHITECTURE: Vivid, Effervescent and Nervous, the second issue of the SAC JOURNAL, presents three projects de- signed at SAC during the last eight years. The three projects are: The Theatre of Immanence (2007), an installation and exhibition project in Städelschule''s Portikus gallery; Digital Bodies (2013-14), an experimental research project; and Orkhēstra (2014), which was an installation on a large, public square in Frankfurt and part of Luminale, ''Biennale of Lighting Culture''. The projects vary in scale and nature from gallery installation via laboratory-style modelling experiment to an urban intervention. They span a period in which architecture''s contribution to the production of space has become increasingly me- diated by technology. Each in their own way, the three projects probe this condition and explore new design opportunities given to archi- tecture. The results are vivid, effervescent and nervous – and always a mediated architecture. Accompanying extensive portfolios of drawi- ngs and pictures that document the respective design processes and their results, are texts that expound on the theoretical and practical implications of each project