Marcos Novak

Infobox Person
name = Marcos Novak


image_size = 100px
caption = Marcos Novak
birth_date =
occupation = Artist, transarchitect, theorist

Marcos Novak is a transarchitect, artist and theorist. His seminal work has included many virtual architectures and essays that arecrucial to those architects who are interested in the swiftly blossomingarchitectural cybertheory. For Michael Benedikt's "Cyberspace: First Steps"he wrote the influential chapter "Liquid Architectures in Cyberspace".

He wrote "cyberspace is architecture; cyberspace has an architecture; andcyberspace contains architecture." The new liquidity of the virtual isdefined in this essay. It was also illustrated by Novak's attempts to createan algorithmically composed design which resulted in a family ofarchitectures conditioned by one genotype generating programme. In the mid90s, his contribution to international architectural discourse was furtherexpanded by the coining and definition of the term "Transarchitectures".

In short, we conceive algorithmically (morphogenesis); we model numerically(rapid prototyping); we build robotically (new tectonics); we inhabitinteractively (intelligent space); we telecommunicate instantly (pantopicon);we are informed immersively (liquid architectures); we socialise nonlocally(nonlocal public domain); we evert virtuality (transarchitectures). He hasalso posited a new "Soft Babylon," a theoretical stance which posits that ourdigitized architectural palette is causing us to create a wired Situationistcity, while we struggle with some of the massive paradigm shifts that our erawill and must face. Whilst articulating highly fluent theory, he haspracticed, producing beautiful ethereal architectures that flux and shimmeras his algorithms run their designed logics.

They are, if anything, characterized by their generative complexities, simultaneously fragmented andfluid. Novak surfs on the Tsunami of technology, pushing the cyber envelopeof the profession into the next century. Here he considers the end of the
Modernist project: "After modernity, virtuality: all that is solid melts intoinformation. Between modernity and virtuality, transmodernity. As we allknow, definition, disciplines, institutions have become unstable andinadequate, and everywhere there are reevaluations of the structures by whichwe comprehend the world. These changes are not formless. They arecharacterized by the aspects of metamorphic change clustered under the prefix"trans": transmutation, transgression, etc. Everywhere present, this kind ofchange is most evident in the structures of our quest for knowledge." Novak'swork is central to many conceptual cyber notions, and often he gets therefirst. His current work is to do with "eversion," his word for the casting ofthe virtual onto the actual.

This is where the most fertile works of architecture in the future will be, in the crazy interstitial worlds wheresubstance and absence are blurred. [Neil Spiller, 10 x 10, New York: Phaidon, 2000. ]

References

External links

* [http://www.uia2008torino.org/U8T/Engine/RAServePG.php/P/31381U8T0400/M/27681U8T0404 Biography]

* [http://www.centrifuge.org/ Centrifuge: Marcos Novak's Website]

* [http://www.neural.it/english/marcosnovak.htm Marcos Novak Interview]

* [http://the-t-machine.blogspot.com/2008/05/allogenesis-and-architecture-discussion.html Marcos Novak interview on The T-Machine]

* [http://groups.google.com/group/worldmakers/ Novak's Worldmakers Google Group]