My good friends at Adaptive Path are hosting a talk I’m giving tomorrow night on my research — on the history of architectures of information. Do come! I’m very excited to be sharing what I’ve been finding. Most of it hasn’t been published or presented anywhere since the mid 60s.
Here’s the gist of my talk.
Today, we’re used to the idea of informational interfaces melding with our buildings. But the idea of architecture made of information has a surprising history.
Starting in the 1960s, British architect Cedric Price created information architecture — or rather, architecture made of information. He designed number of buildings that would be used to navigate information, that could learn from their users and respond to what they did. These included the Fun Palace, cybernetic buildings (1964); a proto cybercafe (1966) and sensor-enabled kits of parts that could get bored and rearrange themselves (1976).
These prescient projects show an architecture of information in the truest sense of the term — information codified and categorized, computers specified for information management, novel interfaces for receiving content — a full decade before Richard Saul Wurman coined the term “information architecture” in 1976.
RSVP on Upcoming.
Thursday, September 16, 2010
6:00pm – 8:30pm
At Adaptive Path, 363 Brannan St in San Francisco
(Between 2nd & 3rd)