298 THE ART OF ARCHITECTURE/THE SCIENCE OF ARCHITECTURE

10283EFE0F02 or the Seagram Building

SEAN KELLER
Harvard University

Like a strange organic molecule, the formula of puter modeling.1 Still uncommon and arcane, com-
the Seagram Building was discovered by Lionel puters were central to March’s effort as head of
March at the University of Cambridge in 1973 (figs. Cambridge’s Center for Land Use and Built Form
1 and 2). Removed from its famous site, stripped Study to direct architectural education and practice
of its materiality, and pinned to a cubic grid, Mies’s away from what he considered an unhealthy obses-
iconic work was distilled finally into a single num- sion with appearances, and toward the scientific so-
ber “about the same length as some telephone di- lution of social and environmental problems.
aling codes”: 10 2 83EFE0F0 2 . Similarly, Le
Corbusier’s Maison Minimum—apparently not com- Yet even March could not resist demonstrating the
pact enough—became F2803F71280EFE032F (fig. novel formal potential of his mathematics: by
3). These “boolean descriptions” appeared in an tweaking a few numbers one could easily produce
article describing the mathematical basis of com- a beveled version of the Seagram Building (fig. 4).
His colleague Robin Forrest used the same tech-
nique to create alternatives which were rotated,
Figure 1: Boolean description of the Seagram Building, scaled and sheared (fig. 5). For the first time in
Lionel March, 1976.
architectural history such transformational opera-

Figure 2: Seagram Building, New York, Ludwig Mies

van der Rohe, 1957.
 10283EFE0F02 OR THE SEAGRAM BUILDING 299

Figure 3: Boolean description of Le Corbusier’s Maison Figure 4: Bevelled version of the Seagram Building,
Minimum plan, March, 1976. March, 1976.

Figure 5: Seagram Building transformed by three-

dimensional sheer, Robin Forrest, 1976.

tions became a natural mode of production (once

the mathematical structures were in place, repre-
senting a cock-eyed cube was as easy as repre-
senting an orthogonal one). We see here, slipping
out of March’s strongly iconoclastic program, the
first signs of a new formal vocabulary of transfor-
mations, processes, and anti-materialism which
would come to define the architectural avant garde
of the 1980s and which since has evolved into an
entire mode of architectural production.

Twenty years after its completion, it was no longer

the Seagram Building itself, but its digital encod-
ing which signaled a new period of architectural
production—a period, which we continue to occupy,
marked not only by the shift from parallel rule to
parallel processing, and the formal consequences
which followed, but also by the end of the Modern-
ist social aspirations that motivated March’s re- lated, the last monument of high modernism be-
search. For the growth of computing led not to the came, unintentionally, the first evidence of a for-
rational resolutions of architectural programs en- mal strategy which has affected architecture far
visioned by March’s theory, but, ironically, to a new more deeply than the postmodern facades which
vocabulary of architectural forms suggested by his dominate our view of the 1970s. The story of the
(and his colleagues’) images. Encoded and manipu- Seagram Building’s code teaches a few lessons
300 THE ART OF ARCHITECTURE/THE SCIENCE OF ARCHITECTURE

then: about new technologies, about the end of Figure 6: Royal Festival Hall, London, Leslie Martin,
1951.
movements, and about where architectural forms
come from.

SYSTEMS LABORATORIES

Planning to study mathematics, March had entered

Cambridge as an undergraduate in 1955 with a
recommendation from computer pioneer Alan Tur-
ing, the central hero, and victim, of the British code
cracking effort during World War II. March seems
to have thought of architecture only after arriving
at Cambridge, where the “new status of the school
of architecture under Prof. [Leslie] Martin” con-
vinced him to alter course after his first year (he
would receive a first class B.A. in mathematics and
architecture).2 As a result, March studied with
Christopher Alexander who also had migrated from
mathematics to architecture. March remembers
Alexander suggesting in 1957 that “games theory
and linear programming might be useful techniques Figure 7: Cover of Circle, 1937.
in architectural design,”3 and though he claims that
Alexander’s references were beyond him at the
time, in fifteen years it would be March who was
running a research center at Cambridge devoted
to computational design methods and scolding
Alexander for sloppy mathematical reasoning—
while Alexander had abandoned computers and
mathematics for the intuitive knowledge of his “pat-
tern language.”4

The movement of these two prodigies from math-

ematics to architecture was not coincidental: the
“new status” of architecture at Cambridge, fostered
by Leslie Martin, was achieved largely by pushing
architecture toward the sciences and mathemat-
ics. Best known as the designer of London’s Royal
Festival Hall (1948–51, fig. 6), Martin was also the
first professor of architecture at Cambridge (ap-
Figure 8: Le Corbusier and Martin, University of
pointed in 1956).5 Before the war Martin had ed- Cambridge, 1959.
ited, with the artists Ben Nicholson and Naum Gabo,
Circle: International Survey of Constructive Art,
which included contributions from Piet Mondrian,
Le Corbusier, Henry Moore, Marcel Breuer, Richard
Neutra, Siegfried Giedion, Walter Gropius, Laszlo
Moholy-Nagy and Lewis Mumford (figs. 7 and 8).6
His prewar involvement with modernism—particu-
larly his—“constructivist” faith in an underlying
continuity between science and art—gave Martin a
receptive predisposition toward the postwar infatu-
ation with science, especially the new technology
of electronic computing. The result was an explo-
sion of architectural “science” under his leadership.
 10283EFE0F02 OR THE SEAGRAM BUILDING 301

The turn toward science was also a response to a Figure 9: Plan for the New Town of Crawley, 1947.
professional crisis of confidence and lingering sense
of inferiority brought on by architects’ experiences
during the war. The extremities of war had forced
to the surface many doubts about architecture as
a significant modern profession: did architects pos-
sess special expertise? Was their expertise objec-
tive or merely based on taste? In times of real
need, were architects necessary? In short, was
architecture serious business?

The crisis is most clearly illustrated by the waver-

ing of architects’ official status in Britain during
the war. At the start of World War II, architecture
was considered an essential occupation and archi-
tects twenty-five and older were reserved from
military service and restricted to employment within
their profession. Presumably they were meant to
aid the construction of military and industrial fa-
cilities and to coordinate the planning of evacua-
tions and the use of air-raid shelters. However, most Figure 10: NENK design process, Ministry of Public
Buildings and Works, c. 1965.
of this work was actually given directly to large
contracting firms with few architects involved. Pri-
vate building was restricted by law in the fall of
1940 and architects were left without work. Awk-
wardly, the Royal Institute of British Architects was
forced to push for reevaluation of their members’
status. Architects were first removed completely
from the category of reserved occupations, enabling
them to enlist in the armed services, and later frac-
tionally reserved. When enlisted, architects
struggled to be treated as favorably as engineers.7

Meanwhile, the entire British building industry was

put under the control of the Department of Works
and Buildings. Anthony Jackson makes clear that,
in this context, architects had to fight to be viewed
as anything other than superfluous aesthetes. 8
After the war, public building exerted a dominant
influence on British architecture and urban plan-
ning. At a peak in 1955, 45% of architects practic-
ing in Britain worked in public departments, and
by 1964 that fraction was still as high as 39% (fig.
9).9 One result of the centralization and quantifi-
cation of building information during the war and
subsequent reconstruction was the establishment broadly defined research that architects began to
of architectural research as a distinct, and fundable, deploy computers in a “scientific” approach to de-
activity. The scope of architectural research also sign methodology.
expanded from concerns technical issues such as
heating, lighting, and estimating to a focus in the At Cambridge, architects were not alone in adopt-
1960s on the general relationship of structures to ing a scientific approach: as a visiting scholar noted
user needs—what became known as environmen- in 1961,”“The university itself . . . should get a
tal design (fig. 10).10 It is in the context of this last different name. Not the University of Cambridge,
302 THE ART OF ARCHITECTURE/THE SCIENCE OF ARCHITECTURE

it really should be called Fenland Tech; and we primarily from British public agencies. By 1971 the
should all go out and get T-shirts to advertise this center housed sixteen full-time researchers and about
message.”11 Or, as a participant in the scene re- an equal number of post-graduate doctoral candi-
called, “Models, quantitative techniques, structur- dates and visiting associates.16 The center espoused
alism seemed to be in the Fenland air.”12 March an explicitly mathematical approach:
recalls the influence of work coming out of other
Cambridge departments: Mary Hesse’s Models and
Analogues in Science (1963), Richard Stone’s Math- The common method of the Centre’s work
ematics in the Social Sciences and Other Essays is to formulate mathematical and logical
(1967), Richard Chorley and Peter Haggett’s Mod- models which make it possible to charac-
els in Geography (1967), and David Clarke’s Ana- terize and to explore the ranges of spatial
lytical Archeology (1968). When this work was read patterns which accommodate various ac-
by researchers in architecture “there opened up tivities. . . . The research is mainly in the
the prospect of disciplines merging together field of quantitative methods, mathemati-
through the form of approach, despite the ever- cal and logical models, and computer aides
increasing specialization of content.”13 The form of for building and environmental design,
approach in all cases was to be mathematical, and planning, development and management.17
the common tool would be the computer.
A STRUCTURAL REVOLUTION
A distinct setting for architectural research was es-
tablished in 1967 with the creation of the Centre for The most zealous version of the Cambridge posi-
Land Use and Built Form Studies within the Depart- tion was given in a special issue of Architectural
ment of Architecture first under Leslie Martin’s direc- Design, published in 1971, edited by March, Marcial
tion, and then under Lionel March’s.14 Research was Echeñique and Peter Dickens, and filled exclusively
no longer conducted by “lone scholars” like Peter with the work of Cambridge researchers and gradu-
Eisenman, who received a Cambridge Ph.D. in 1963 ates (fig. 12).18 The one-page introduction to this
(fig.11), but by “systems laboratories”: collection, titled “Polemic for a structural revolu-
tion,” gives a concise summary of the assumptions
underlying their work.
the old Vitruvian view of architecture which
related it to the study of classics, divinity, First, that “architecture and physical planning lack
fine arts and music (some of the subject adequate theoretical foundations.” Second, that
areas in Group I of the Faculties in which only the certainties of mathematics can provide
Architecture finds itself in Cambridge) has the needed theoretical base. Third, that the inter-
long since been outgrown . . . . Today most rogation of architecture and planning through
of our research workers would connect mathematical methods is part of a more
most easily to engineering, geography and general”“structural revolution” taking place in the
geology, mathematics, and even physics social and behavioral sciences which is based on a
and chemistry: indeed many of them come new awareness of”“systems and structures.”
to us from these disciplines and not from Fourth, that this mathematical approach is intended
architecture.15 to replace the “intuitive skill”, “confusion”, “sophis-
tical sciences”, “individual hunches”, “court jesters
Like the scientific labs which were its models, the and acrobats”, “private pranks” , “pricey prima-
Centre was financed by research contracts and grants, donnas”, “hallucinations”, “extravagant and empty

Figure 11: Diagrams from Peter Eisenman’s Cambridge

Ph.D. thesis, 1963.
 10283EFE0F02 OR THE SEAGRAM BUILDING 303

Figure 12: Cover of “Models of Environment,” special standing of the building as an object of sensory
issue of Architectural Design, May 1971.
engagement is replaced by the idea of the building
as a system of functional relationships (although
we will see that for March this too might be “aes-
thetic” in some sense). An architectural theory that
rejected images was rejecting the profession’s
dominant medium of communication—both inter-
nally and with the public—as well as the profession’s
established methodologies, all of which were im-
age based. That the long history of drawing could
be replaced by mathematics was not obvious and
“revolution” seems a fair term.

Like Reyner Banham, the Cambridge researchers

argued that, as yet, modernism’s relationship to
science had been only metaphorical had led to a
host of subjective, thoroughly unscientific, archi-
tectural styles (fig. 13). Instead, they claimed,
postwar architecture needed to share the meth-
ods of the sciences—it did not need to look “scien-
tific” (what architecture should look like was never
addressed in the Cambridge work). Strangely
though, this doggedly scientific approach would
images”, “individual expression” and “personal
soon find itself demonstrating nothing so much as
prejudice” which threaten architecture and plan-
its own limitations, so that the apparent triumph
ning. Fifth, that the structural revolution will re-
of functionalism turned out to be its end. Even
quire architecture and planning to be closely related
worse, from the Cambridge perspective, the com-
to other disciplines with mathematics as a com-
puter turned out to be a prolific font of novel ar-
mon language. This will mean abandoning irrel-
chitectural images and forms rather than a cool
evant professional distinctions established in the
calculating machine of architectural logic.
nineteenth century in favor of a holistic, interdis-
ciplinary approach. Finally, that all of these tenets PROGRAMMING PROGRAMMING
are intended to encourage objective, communal
and socially responsible answers to what is de- In The Architecture of Form from 1973, March
scribed as the “environmental dilemma” of the emphasizes the distinction between “architectural
1960s and early-1970s. engineering” and”“architectural science.”20 The lat-
ter is meant to apply to the analysis and design of
As an architectural theory, this polemic is most the built environment as a whole: a mathemati-
radical in its rejection of artistic intuition and in its cally-based theory of architecture from which, ul-
deep iconoclasm. Intuition is condemned on two timately, new buildings and cities could be
counts: first, that it is unequal to the complexity generated. “Architectural science” became possible
of postwar politics, economics, and technology; only “with the coming of large, fast and reliable
second, that it is unaccountably private and, so, computers during the latter half of the 1960s.”21
inappropriate for a discipline as public as architec- March and his colleagues intended to solve build-
ture. Instead, the methodologists seek an explicit, ing programming with computer programming.
quantified, design process which is open to criti- Strict functionalism, they believed, could finally
cism and gradual improvement. Regarding archi- succeed through the merger of the two: program-
tectural images, the damnation is concise: ming programming (figs. 14 and 15).
“Draughtsmanship is a drug.”19 In the work of the
Cambridge methodologists, texts, formulae, dia- Continuing the trajectory begun by Christopher
grams and computer code replace plans, eleva- Alexander, this “architectural science” focused on
tions and photographs as the proper tools of problems of spatial arrangement, particularly prob-
architectural research; and the long-held under- lems of architectural plans. These took a number
304 THE ART OF ARCHITECTURE/THE SCIENCE OF ARCHITECTURE

Figure 13: Walking City on the Ocean, Ron Herron, 1964.

Figure 14: Paper tape used to program an early of related forms: arrangement of rooms within a
computer, 1966.
given perimeter, of spaces according to a given
architectural program, or of activities within a given
plan (figs. 16 and 17). Normally the goal was to
minimize walking distances for users. Working on
these sorts of problems the Cambridge research-
ers, many of whom had mathematical backgrounds,
were able to draw on an existing body of work in
topology and graph theory.

However this research faced serious challenges:

not only from outside critics such as Alan Colquhoun
Figure 15: Early CAD system. and Colin Rowe, but soon from within the Centre
for Land Use and Built Form Study itself. In a neat
turnabout, two Cambridge researchers, Philip Ta-
bor and Tom Willoughby, offered a critique in which
careful scientific arguments are used to reject “that
most extravagant of fancies, completely automatic
design.”22 Both their reviews of prior work and their
own efforts (fig. 18) led Tabor and Willoughby to
conclude that quantifiably optimized architectural
solutions were largely impossible. They suggested
that, at best, quantitative approaches have a lim-
ited use for certain very complex problems, and
must always rely upon many assumptions which
cannot be quantified. Tabor argues against any
attempt to automatically produce designs which
are too carefully tailored to specific descriptions of
use—which is to say that he rejects dogmatic func-
tionalism. Instead, he suggests, “buildings can be
designed only for general ease of communication”
and that this may be achieved through the use of
inherited types.23
 10283EFE0F02 OR THE SEAGRAM BUILDING 305

Figure 16: Dual relationship of a plan graph and its Figure 18: Programmatic analysis, treble-linkage Venn
adjacency graph, Philip Steadman, 1976. diagram, Philip Tabor, 1976.

Figure 17: Enumeration of rectangular dissections for

0-6 subdivisions, Steadman, 1976.
THE SYSTEMS AESTHETIC

So by the early 1970s, it had become clear that

even with the new analytical power of computers
there was no convincing path which directly con-
nected functions, formulae and forms. In response,
March began to acknowledge these critiques and
to describe a more limited, if still central, role for
mathematics and the computer in architectural
methodology.

The fullest version of March’s theory appears in

The Architecture of Form.24 March begins with a
critique of his former classmate Christopher
Alexander who is identified as the source of naive
scientism in architecture. March then introduces
his own theory which, though under the heading
“scientific approach,” sounds strikingly like that of
Rowe or Colquhoun.

Any scientific approach to design must confront the

issues raised by the pluralism of individual values
and the autonomy of social choice; and must accept
the conditionality of degrees of conviction about truth,
rightness and goodness.25 March’s model of archi-
tectural methodology then springs directly from his
reaction to Karl Popper:Popper’s philosophy of sci-
ence cannot be applied directly to architecture.
306 THE ART OF ARCHITECTURE/THE SCIENCE OF ARCHITECTURE

The philosophy of Karl Popper has had some influ- We conceive of rational designing as having three
ence on modern architectural design theory. In the tasks—(1) the creation of a novel composition,
main its impact has been pernicious, but this is as which is accomplished by productive reasoning;
much the result of misunderstandings as it is of (2) the prediction of performance characteristics,
Popper’s own shortcomings. Just as Popper draws which is accomplished by deduction; (3) the ac-
a distinction between logic and empirical science, cumulation of habitual notions and established
so too must a distinction be made between these values, an evolving typology, which is accom-
and design. To base design theory on inappropri- plished by induction.28
ate paradigms of logic and science is to make a
bad mistake. Logic has interests in abstract forms. March believes that this has always implicitly been
Science investigates extant forms. Design initiates the way designs have been developed, whether by
novel forms. A scientific hypothesis is not the same individuals, architectural offices or entire building
thing as a design hypothesis. A logical proposal is traditions. Not unlike Alexander however, he ar-
not to be mistaken for a design proposal.26 gues that there is a new need, and a new capabil-
ity, to make the process explicit:
If architects have missed this distinction, that is
largely because they have followed Popper’s re-
jection of synthetic logic which, March believes, If internalized personal judgement, expe-
design requires since it aims to produce unique rience and intuition alone are relied upon,
compositions rather than universal statements.27 the three modes of the PDI-model become
What March attempts to describe, then, is a ratio- inextricably entangled and no powerfully
nal theory of design which takes synthetic reason- sustained use of collective, scientific knowl-
ing into account. He does this in two ways, first edge is possible. Design will remain more
through the work of the American philosopher or less personalistic and a matter of opin-
Charles Sanders Peirce and then through Baye- ion, albeit professional. If the design pro-
sian probability theory. The basic structure is the cess is externalized and made public, as it
same in both systems: design is presented as a evidently must be for the team work to be
“cyclic, iterative procedure” (like most computer fully effective, then the three stages of the
programs) which passes repeatedly through three PDI-model are worth making explicit so
phases: production, deduction and induction (the that as much scientific knowledge can be
“PDI-model”, fig. 19). brought to bear on the problem as seems
appropriate. In this externalized process it
Figure 19: The PDI (production/deduction/induction) is feasible to experiment with artificial evo-
model of design, March, 1976. lution within the design laboratory using
simulated designs and environments. New,
synthetically derived stereotypes may
emerge, and old ones may be given new
potential without having to wait for practi-
cal exemplification. Design comes to de-
pend less on a single occasion of
inspiration, more on an evolutionary his-
tory, greatly accelerated as this iterative
procedure can now be—a prospect opened
up by recent advances in computer repre-
sentation.29

For March the success of this “artificial evolu-

tion” depends on the creation of broad, sophisti-
cated computer models which can simulate the
demands of the real world and which—following
the mandate set out by Leslie Martin in 1959—
can unite the disparate concerns of the architect
in one design space:
 10283EFE0F02 OR THE SEAGRAM BUILDING 307

The mathematical model of the design may Third, the Boolean description would have been
be made alive on a computer, complete with for March only the grammar of a proper architec-
its structural integrity, with its environmen- tural model, which would also have included struc-
tal climate, with patterns of user activities; tural, environmental, programmatic and economic
it may be disassembled into its component information. As nearly as possible this model would
elements and costed; it may be speedily have been a simulation of reality, permitting the
modified, transformed, and manipulated. “artificial evolution” of designs and assuring that
the architectural proposal responded to objective
Architectural education around the concept of mod- criteria, not just the formal whims of the designer.
elling—even penetrating into the teaching and In this way mathematics was put in the service of
methods of architectural history—becomes, I be- March’s socialist ends.
lieve, an intellectually tough discipline around the
theme of man and his environment. . . . It re- Finally, we must consider an almost contradictory
moves architecture from the invention of images motivation which was only hinted at earlier. For
which reflect the externalities of our technological despite the iconoclastic rhetoric, all of this math-
culture (the machine aesthetic), and penetrates ematical work was driven by an interest which
beyond appearances to the elements, relationships, March himself described as’“aesthetic.” Reflecting
and processes of its very existence: we might coin on his time as a student at Cambridge, March re-
the phrase, “the systems aesthetic”. It turns its called:
back on architecture warped by the competitive
individualism of the 19th century and the
. . . most strongly I recollect Sandy Wilson
aggrandisement of personal genius, and faces for-
stopping me in a corridor and saying some-
ward to an architecture balanced in its collective
thing about the future possibility of archi-
design and its commitment to the promotion of
tecture being notated as a mathematical
cultural evolution: architecture no longer residing
code. This rang bells. It reinforced a
in the souls of individuals, but in the body of a
thought planted by Bruce Martin that the
profession.30
elements of architecture might be set out
BOOLEAN DESCRIPTION OF BUILT FORMS like Lavoisier’s chemical table, and by a
further analogy, that with such a limited
Returning to March’s “Boolean description” of the means architectural works of the imaginary
Seagram Building, we can now see all that it meant power of a Beethoven symphony might be
for him. First, Boolean algebra represented the constructed (fig. 20) . . . . My impelling
mathematization of “the very processes of ratio- motivation at this time was aesthetic. It
nal argument.”31 Being able to describe buildings still is. There are other motivations, but
through this algebra would make architecture more deep down what makes me tick is an aes-
rational and less intuitive, more scientific and less thetic sense of order, of essential simplic-
artistic. This representation would relate architec- ity behind apparent complexity.33
ture to circuit design, topology and information
theory rather than painting, sculpture, or music.32 Like Leslie Martin, March believed that this sort of
order could unite the two cultures of art and sci-
Second, all of these associations with mathemat- ence in a non-superficial way.
ics and computer science would give architecture
not just a sound epistemological base, but also All of which did not happen. Instead what we see
greater practical standing in a postwar society in his paper on Boolean description, and in the
dominated by science. Architecture would be re- Cambridge work which built on it, are the first hints
constructed as a serious business with a legitimate, of the formal experimentation which could occur
and fundable, role for advanced research like that in digital environments freed from the constraints
carried out at Cambridge. March argued that for of actual buildings—freed from gravity, from ma-
the first time since the eighteenth century archi- teriality, from structure, from inhabitation, from
tectural studies had “touched the frontiers of knowl- economics—and freed from the restraints of tradi-
edge” and it seemed that architects might regain tional drafting and modeling techniques. In the
membership to the Royal Society. beveled and sheared versions of the Seagram build-
308 THE ART OF ARCHITECTURE/THE SCIENCE OF ARCHITECTURE

Figure 20: Juxtaposition of serial music and bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976). There is some
architectural research, March, 1972 confusion about the date of the material contained in
this volume: March’s forward to the volume, which he
indicates was written after the articles, is dated June
1973, the book’s bibliography contains entries from as
late as 1975, and the copyright is 1976.
2
March, “Modern Movement to Vitruvius: Themes of Edu-
cation and Research,” Royal Institute of British Archi-
tects’ Journal (Mar. 1972): 101.
3
Ibid., 101.
4
See March, “The Logic of Design and the Question of
Value,” introduction to Architecture of Form; and
Alexander introduction to paperback edition of Notes on
the Synthesis of Form (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 1971). Strangely, today it is Alexander’s
pattern language which is well-respected in some com-
puter science circles today.
5
Peter Carolin and Trevor Dannatt, eds., Architecture,
Education and Research: the Work of Leslie Martin: Pa-
pers and Selected Articles (London: Academy Editions,
1996).
6
Leslie Martin, Ben Nicholson and Naum Gabo, eds.,
Circle: International Survey of Constructive Art (London:
Faber and Faber, 1937).
7
Anthony Jackson, The Politics of Architecture. (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1970), 79.
8
Ibid.
9
Ibid., 41.
10
Ibid.
11
Clinton Rossiter in 1961 as quoted by Colin Rowe in
As I Was Saying: Recollections and Miscellaneous Es-
says, vol. 1 (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996), 131.
12
March, foreword to The Architecture of Form, ix.
13
Ibid.
14
In 1974 LUBFS merged with the smaller Technical Re-
ing we see the first signs of the—“free space” ar- search Division of the Department of Architecture to cre-
chitecture, “anti-architecture,” and”“eighty-nine ate the Martin Centre for Architectural and Urban
degree” architecture which would sweep the disci- Studies—it continues to operate under this new name.
pline in the next two decades. We see the forms 15
March, foreword to The Architecture of Form, xii.
which can evolve in simulations cut loose from their 16
Nigel Lloyd, description of the Centre for Land Use and
referents. Somewhere in the Cambridge fens func- Built Form Studies, University of Cambridge (unpub-
tionalism had committed computer-aided suicide, lished), 29 Nov. 1971, Library of the Martin Centre, Uni-
and architecture was left with a new representa- versity of Cambridge.
tional system with which to project its images of 17
Ibid.
the future—images created through ever more 18
Lionel March, Marcial Echeñique and Peter Dickens,
technical means, but for ever less scientific ends.
eds., “Models of Environment,”Architectural Design 41
NOTES (May 1971).
19
Ibid., 275.
1
Lionel March, “A Boolean Description of a Class of Built 20
March, foreword to The Architecture of Form, xiii.
Forms,” The Architecture of Form, Cambridge Urban and
Architectural Studies 4, edited by Lionel March (Cam- 21
Ibid., xiv.
 10283EFE0F02 OR THE SEAGRAM BUILDING 309

22
Tabor, “Analysing Communication Patterns,”The Archi- 28
Ibid., 18.
tecture of Form, 284. 29
Ibid., 21-2.
23
Ibid., 309. 30
March, “Modern Movement,” 108-9.
24
March, “The Logic of Design,” The Architecture of Form. 31
March, “Boolean Description,” 41.
25
Ibid., 5. 32
Ibid., 71-2.
26
Ibid., 15. 33
Ibid., 101.
27
Ibid., 15.