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That digital technology has transformed the forms and spaces of what we design has become commonplace. Its transformative potential for forms of design practice and spaces of knowledge has remained less examined, but is ultimately more radical in its implications. With the shift from the second machine age to that of information, the reflexive network has replaced the assembly line as a preeminent model of organisation even as media infrastructures have augmented physical transportation at multiple scales stretching from discrete sites of production and consumption, to economic, political and even social institutions. This nexus of computation, telecommunications and new organisations of economic and political power suggest that the 19th-century division of design into distinct professions might now be displaced by different organisations of knowledge and practices. The texts and projects contained in this issue demonstrate how networks of international, transdisciplinary, decentralised practices are emerging to reposition and retool design practice to engage today's unconventional problems, site briefs, clients and manufacturing processes.'Collective intelligence', as both a concept and a term, has its roots in a number of historical and contemporary contexts. In the 1960s Marshall McLuhan noticed the emergence of new social organisations based on principles of decentralisation and collectivity. Enabled in part by the advent of telecommunication technology, McLuhan quaintly referred to this model as 'the global village'. 1 Computing pioneer Douglas Englebart went further by suggesting that communication

Contentsvii CREDIT5 & ACKNOWLEDGMENT5 01 Chapter 1. II\lTRODUCTION 03 Prologue InFerrlal Returrls 05 The Body oF Architectural Knowledge 12 The Structure of the Book 15 Chapter 2. THE PHENOMENAL ORIGIN OF ARCHITECTURE 18 PrimalldrntlFicatio!l 20 The Home oF Mall 22 The Decay 01' Modem Architecture 29 lhe Pathos oF Phenomenology 33 Chapter 3. THE 5TRUCTURAL CONTINUITIE5 OF CLA551CI5M 36 Classlcal Systems oF Knowledge arld SubJects 38 Gendered Bodies of Archltecture ~I The Hidderllnterior oF Archltecture 44 Modernlty as "The End of the Classlcal" ~8 The Paradoxes of r~ot-Modern Archltecture 51 Post-Structural Problems 55 Chapter 4. MODULOR RE51DUE5 OF HI5TORY 57 Recallillg the Modulor 61 The Residual HIstoricity of the Modulor 62 The ~J1odLilor as "One Example" 64 The Modulor as Vitruvius's Heir 67 Urlfinished Business 71 Chapter 5. A MID-CENTURY RENAI55ANCE 73 Wittkower's RerkllssallCe Ir) A Paradlgl1l Shiff;J

Photograph from an ongoing series documenting the spaces being constructed by the biopolitical formations within the contemporary built environment. Engaging such territories as sites for design research requires theory, since they are undefined within our existing repertoire of concepts or, at best, are seen as negatives of known models (for example, SUB-urb). In understanding these super-modern conditions as positivities rather than bad copies of now historical formations, the traditional roles of theory and 'material' knowledge switch roles, with the former being pragmatic and the latter speculative.

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