Geoff Manaugh (BLDGBLOG) kicks off the 2012-13 History and Theory of New Media lecture series with his talk “Applied Topology,” on burglary, tunneling, and urban perforation. Manaugh will discuss the city as seen—and, more importantly, used and misused—by people other than architects and urban planners.
Ultimately asking if spatial crimes such as breaking & entering and burglary have anything to offer urban theory, “Applied Topology” explores an alternative, even illicit, understanding of how the city can be used and operated. From Gordon Matta-Clark to the tunneling crew of The Bank Job, from the Mole Man of Hackney to L.A.’s notorious “Hole in the Ground Gang,” how does applied topology—the forced introduction of unplanned connections, perforations, holes, tunnels, and cuts—transform our relationship with architectural space.
Geoff Manaugh is the author of BLDGBLOG, former senior editor of Dwell magazine, and a contributing editor at Wired UK. In 2011, he curated Landscape Futures: Instruments, Devices and Architectural Inventions for the Nevada Museum of Art, and a new collaborative project with British architects Smout Allen is featured in the 2012 Venice Biennale of Architecture. With Nicola Twilley, he is currently co-director of Studio-X NYC, an off-campus event space and urban futures think tank run by the architecture department at Columbia University.
The History and Theory of New Media series is produced by the Berkeley Center for New Media with support from the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS).