Spring 2026 | Princeton University
The seminar explores the implications of technologically networked urbanism for architectural programming and the design of spaces and places. How networked information technologies are re-shaping architectural programming and our ideas of spaces, places, and community. How programs for spaces, buildings, places, and the city are being transformed by the mobility, fluidity, and 'blurring’ of activities enabled by technologies allowing space to be used differently. The history of ideas shaping our understanding of technology and urbanism, programming and architecture: the cyborg, networked, sentient, or smart city, as well as big data, hybrid places, and AI urbanism.
General
Readings
1. Introduction to themes and assignments (January 28)
2. Precursors: Cyborgs and Cybercities (February 4)
Before there were smart cities, sentient cities, or big data, there were ideas of the cyborg and the cyber city. As Boyer notes – what the machine was to modernism, the computer is to post modernism. Information technology challenges the functionalist modernist program for cities that dominated the architecture and urban planning of the twentieth century. What are the precursors of information technology re-shaping our understanding of the city and the changing role of the architect?
Required Readings
[\a] Sonja Hnilica. “The Metaphor of the City as a Thinking Machine.” In Architecture and the Smart City, edited by Sofia Figueiredo, S. Krishnamurthy, and T. Schroeder. London: Routledge, 2019, pp. 68–83.
[\c] Andrew Witt. “The Machinic Animal: Autonomic Networks and Behavioral Computation.” In When Is the Digital in Architecture?, edited by Andrew Goodhouse. Montreal: Canadian Centre for Architecture; Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2017, pp. 215–277.
[\o] Ruha Benjamin. “Engineered Inequity: Are Robots Racist?” In Datapolis: Exploring the Footprint of Data on Our Planet and Beyond, edited by Paul Cournet and Negar Sanaan Bensi. Rotterdam: nai010 Publishers, 2023, pp. 147–162.
Background Reading
[\c] Orit Halpern. “Architecture as Machine: The Smart City Deconstructed.” In When Is the Digital in Architecture?, edited by Andrew Goodhouse. Canadian Centre for Architecture; Sternberg Press, 2017, pp. 122–175.
[\o] A. Jackman. “AI Urbanism and Feminist Geopolitics: Making Space for Diverse Practices, Actors and Agencies.” Urban Geography 45, no. 7 (2024): 1292–1296.
3. The Cyborg City and Post-Sedentary Space (February 11)
Mitchell’s innovative ideas of technology creating a ‘post-sedentary space’ is fundamental to the emerging ideas of nomadic urban patterns of use and a fluid approach to the architectural program of buildings, spaces and the city.
Required Readings
[\c] William J. Mitchell. Me++: The Cyborg Self and the Networked City. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003. Chapter 9, “Post-Sedentary Space,” pp. 143–168.
[\c] Carlo Ratti and Matthew Claudel. The City of Tomorrow: Sensors, Networks, Hackers, and the Future of Urban Life. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016. Chapter 5, “Cyborg Society,” pp. 57–70.
[\a] Miguel Valdez, Matthew Cook, and Stephen Potter. “Exploring Temporal Pleats and Folds: The Role of Urban AI and Robotics in Reinvigorating the Cyborg City.” In Artificial Intelligence and the City: Urbanistic Perspectives on AI, edited by Federico Cugurullo et al. London: Routledge, 2023, pp. 136–154.
Background Reading
[\c] Frank Duffy. Work and the City. London: Black Dog Publishing, 2008, pp. 6–66.
[\o] Matthew Gandy. “Cyborg Urbanization: Complexity and Monstrosity in the Contemporary City.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 29, no. 1 (2005): 26–49.
[\o] William J. Mitchell. City of Bits: Space, Place, and the Infobahn. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995. Chapter 3 “Cyborg Citizens” and Chapter 4 “Recombinant Architecture,” pp. 26–105.
4. The Sentient City (February 18)
The ambient immaterial bits of the digital world may have become as significant as spaces and materials in how we experience the city, augmenting the physical world to form a sentient city.
Required Readings
[\c] Mark Shepard. “Toward the Sentient City.” In The Sentient City. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2015, pp. 16–35.
[\c] Martijn de Waal. “The Urban Culture of Sentient Cities: From an Internet of Things to a Public Sphere of Things.” In The Sentient City. edited by Mark Shepard. MIT Press, 2015, pp. 190–195.
[\o] Federico Cugurullo. “Urban Artificial Intelligence: From Automation to Autonomy in the Smart City.” Frontiers in Sustainable Cities 2 (2020): Article 38.
Background Reading
[\a] Dan Hill. “The Street as Platform.” City of Sound blog, 2008.
[\a] Erik Swyngedouw. “Circulations and Metabolisms: (Hybrid) Natures and (Cyborg) Cities.” Science as Culture 15, no. 2 (2006): 105–121.
[\c] Shin’ichi Konomi and George Roussos, eds. Enriching Urban Spaces with Ambient Computing, the Internet of Things, and Smart City Design. Hershey, PA: IGI Global, 2017.
5. Smart Cities (February 25)
Networked devices, wireless connectivity, and sensors are woven seamlessly throughout the city, providing an infrastructure to enable ‘smartness.’ What does the so-called smart city provide and for whose benefit?
Required Readings
[\c] Chris Salter. “Utopia Unresolved.” MIT Technology Review 125, no. 4 (July/August 2022): 66–70.
[\c] Rob Kitchin. “Reframing, Reimagining and Remaking Cities.” In Creating Smart Cities, edited by Claudia Coletta et al. London: Routledge, 2019, pp. 219–231.
[\c] Anthony Townsend. Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia. New York: W. W. Norton, 2013. Chapter 10, pp. 282–320.
Background Reading
[\a] Nick Dunn and Paul Cureton. “Frictionless Futures.” In Architecture and the Smart City. Routledge, 2019, pp. 17–28.
[\o] Rem Koolhaas. “Are Smart Cities Condemned to Be Stupid?” ArchDaily.
[\o] Richard Sennett. “No One Likes a City That’s Too Smart.” The Guardian, 2012.
6. Big Data and the City (March 4)
The so-called smartness of cities is producing unprecedented volumes and velocity of data. What does ‘big data’ enable cities, city managers, and end users to do?
Required Readings
[\a] Michael Batty. “Big Data and the City.” Built Environment 42, no. 3 (2016): 321–337.
[\a] Martijn de Waal. “A City Is Not a Galaxy.” In Data and the City, edited by Rob Kitchin et al. London: Routledge, 2018, pp. 17–30.
[\c] Karrie Jacobs. “The Next New Utopia.” MIT Technology Review 125, no. 4 (July/August 2022: 45–49.
[\o] Georg Vrachliotis. “Notes on an Archaeology of Design Data Literacy.” In Datapolis: Exploring the Footprint of Data on Our Planet and Beyond, TU Delft Open Publishing, 2024.
Background Reading
[\o] Dan Hill. “Clockwork City, Responsive City, Predictive City.” Medium blog.
[\o] Chiehyeon Lim et al. “Smart Cities with Big Data: Reference models, challenges, and considerations” Cities Volume 82 (2018): 86–99.
[\a] Antoine Picon and Thomas Shay Hill. “Is the City Becoming Computable?” In Architecture and the Smart City. Routledge, 2019, pp. 29–42.
7. Hybrid Places, Third Places, and Urban Experience (March 18)
Post-industrial urbanism associated with new information technologies is ‘re-spatializing’ urban typologies with new forms of digital production and social software and tools, reintegrating manufacturing into daily life, enabling new kinds of hybrid and mixed environments for living and working.
Required Readings
[\c] Carlo Ratti and Matthew Claudel, The City of Tomorrow: Sensors, Networks, Hackers, and the Future of Urban Life, Yale University Press, 2016, Chapter 9, ‘Knowledge’, pp. 118-130.
[\a] Duncan Mclaren and Julian Agyeman, Sharing Cities: A Case for Truly Smart and Sustainable Cities, MIT Press, 2015, ‘Introduction’, pp. 1-20.
[\c] Adrien Grigorescu and Romain Curnier, ‘Hyperwwork: Is Alexa our new Chief Happiness Officer? IoT and the Logics of Soft Production,’ in S. Figueiredo, S. Krishnamurthy, T. Schroeder, Architecture and the Smart City, Routledge, 2019, pp. 87-100
[\a] Sarah Barns, ‘Ambient Commons? Valuing Urban Public Spaces in an Era of AI-Enabled Ambient Commons,’ in Artificial Intelligence and the City, Urbanistic Perspectives on AI, by Federico Cugurullo, Federico Caprotti, Matthew Cook, Andrew Karvonen, Pauline McGuirk, Simon Marvin, Routledge, 2023, pp. 189-204.
Background Reading
[\a] Ray Oldenburg, The Great Good Place: Cafés, coffee shops, community centers, beauty parlors, general stores, bars, hangouts, and how they get you through the day,’ Paragon House, New York, 1989
8. New Rules for Programming, Design, and the User (March 25)
New information technologies, structures, and practices such as AI (as well as Bitcoin, DAO, Crypto, Web 3.0 etc.) are stimulating a re-invention of architectural programming and the design process as well as the ways in which spaces and buildings are procured and obtained.
Required Readings
[\a] Kate Crawford, The Atlas of AI, Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2021, Introduction, pp.1-13
[\o] Federico Cugurullo, Federico Caprotti, Matthew Cook, Andrew Karvonen, Pauline McGuirk, Simon Marvin, ‘The rise of AI urbanism in post-smart cities: A critical commentary on urban artificial intelligence.’ Urban Studies, Sage, 2023, pp.1-15
[\c] Carlo Ratti and Matthew Claudel, The City of Tomorrow: Sensors, Networks, Hackers, and the Future of Urban Life, Yale University Press, 2016, Chapter Six, ‘Living Architecture’, pp. 71-87
[\o] Shannon Mattern, A City is Not a Computer: Other Urban Intelligences,’ in Paul Cournet and Negar Sanaan Bensi, Datapolis: Exploring the Footprint of Data on Our Planet and Beyond, nai010 Publishers, Rotterdam, 2023, pp. 132-146
Background Reading
[\o] Cristine Ampatzidou, Matthijs Bouw, Froukje van de Klundert, Michiel de Lange, Martijn de Waal, The Hackable City: A Research Manifesto and Design Toolkit, January, 2016.
[\o] Dan Hill, ‘Urban Parasites, Data-driven Urbanism, and the case for Architecture’ in Architecture + Urbanism (A+U), 2014, pp 6-10.
[\a] Marcus Foth, Martin Brynskov and Timo Ojala, (editors) Citizen’s Right to the Digital City: Urban Interfaces, Activism and Placemaking, Springer, 2015