Reading 5: The Co-Operative Evolution of Cities and Buildings

This reading discusses John Frazers view on co-operative buildings. These buildings were helped to be generated by the computer. This reading ties in directly with the lecture, where John Frazer discusses the same concepts with us. He explains the breakthroughs he made when it comes to electronically producing buildings and how we have progressed and need to realise all the possibilities which have been made available to us with the advance of technology over the past 40 or so years. I find his concepts of buildings that change and adapt quite interesting. Especially what he refers to as the Generator project (pg.131). I think its interesting how the buildings get bored if they are not moved around enough and hence tell the crane driver to move them, this ensures that when people get to lazy or are too scared to change the set out, it changes anyway. Thus the space is constantly changing and this promotes the people to want to change it to suit their own individual needs. This was the basic idea of our folie, that it could be moved by the user to suit their constantly changing needs.

Frazer, J., The Co-operative Evolution of Buildings and Cities. In N. A. Streitz, S. Konomi, &H.-J. Burkhardt, eds. Cooperative Buildings: Integrating Information, Organization, and Architecture. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Berlin Heidelberg, pp130-141.