The Alphabet and the Algorithm

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The rise and fall of identical copies: digital technologies and form-making from mass customization to mass collaboration.Digital technologies have changed architecture--the way it is taught, practiced, managed, and regulated. But if the digital has created a "paradigm shift" for architecture, which paradigm is shifting? In The Alphabet and the Algorithm, Mario Carpo points to one key practice of modernity: the making of identical copies. Carpo highlights two examples of identicality crucial to the shaping of architectural modernity: in the fifteenth century, Leon Battista Alberti's invention of architectural design, according to which a building is an identical copy of the architect's design; and, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the mass production of identical copies from mechanical master models, matrixes, imprints, or molds. The modern power of the identical, Carpo argues, came to an end with the rise of digital technologies. Format Paperback | 184 pages Dimensions 137 x 203 x 10mm | 295g Publication date 04 Feb 2011 Publisher MIT Press Ltd Imprint MIT Press Publication City/Country Cambridge, United States Language English Edition Statement New Illustrations note 13 b&w illus.; 26 Illustrations, unspecified ISBN10 0262515806 ISBN13 9780262515801 Show more