On Monday, I’m defending my dissertation. I have many people I’d like to thank, and yet I know that I’ve not even begun to thank everyone.
The eight years I’ve spent immersed in graduate school have changed my brain and who I am as a person. Going back to school in my thirties meant leaving behind my technology and design career for an architectural, academic one, and this dissertation is the culmination of that sometimes-difficult and always-exciting journey. I have many people to thank.
First, this project would not exist without the patient ear and expert guidance of my adviser, M. Christine Boyer. I greatly appreciate your willingness to listen (sometimes for hours!) as I tested hypotheses and hashed out arguments. Your expertise in the very worlds I examined shaped this dissertation, and I am deeply grateful. Axel Kilian, my reader, offered another layer of expertise in computation, modeling, and artificial intelligence, as well as firsthand knowledge of the MIT milieu. Ed Eigen helped to shape the dissertation in its early phases. Further, my project could not have come to fruition without the influence of other members of the faculty. Mario Gandelsonas generously provided many opportunities to examine contemporary digital issues through the Princeton Center for Architecture, Urbanism and Infrastructure. I took some of my favorite classes from Jean-Louis Cohen, Anson Rabinbach, Brigid Doherty, Tom Levin, and Devin Fore. I also wish to thank Beatriz Colomina, Lucia Allais, John Harwood, Spyros Papapetros, former Dean Stan Allen, and current Dean Alejandro Zaera-Polo. And my gratitude to the people who make Princeton go, who include: Hannah Butler, Daniel Claro, Rena Rigos, Jennifer Bauer, Camn Castens, Cynthia Nelson, Fran Corcione, and Rascal.
This project benefited from insightful interviews: John Frazer, Barbara Jakobson, Tom Moran, Michael Naimark, Paul Pangaro, Terry Winograd, and especially Nicholas Negroponte, whom I interviewed twice. Nicholas generously gave me access to his personal papers, which made it possible to write about the Architecture Machine Group at all. I have also exchanged email with Dick Bowdler and with Phil Tabor, and am particularly thankful for Phil’s great insights over the last decade.
Portions of this work were shared at conferences at MIT, the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Umeå University, The New School, and Princeton. I published an interview with Nicholas Negroponte in A Second Modernism: MIT and Architecture in the PostWar, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013, edited by Arindam Dutta; a dictionary entry in Architecture School: 300 Years of Educating Architects in North America, edited by Joan Ockman, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012; an essay titled “Urban Software: The Long View,” in Habitar, edited by José Luis de Vicente and Fabien Girardin, 2010; a brief article, “Cedric Price’s Generator,” in Crit, 2010; and “Problems before Patterns: A Different Look at Christopher Alexander and Pattern Languages,” in interactions, 2009.
In 2010 and 2013, I spent parts of my summer at the Canadian Centre for Architecture. First, I used the Cedric Price Archive, a major source for Chapter Two. In 2013, I was the tutor for Toolkit on Digital, a two-week doctoral seminar that was vital for framing this dissertation. I want to thank Phyllis Lambert, Mirko Zardini, Maristella Casciato, Mariana Siracusa, Howard Schubert, Alexis Sornin, Albert Ferré, Colin MacWhirter, Renata Guttman, Tim Abrahams, Fabrizio Gallanti, Natasha Leeman, and all of the students. Special thanks to Antoine Picon, with whom I taught.
My colleagues got me through my time at Princeton. I have very much enjoyed trading ideas, food, drink and kvetch with Anthony Acciavati, Alexis Cohen, Rohit De, Gina Greene, Urtzi Grau, Romy Hecht, Evangelos Kotsioris, Anna-Maria Meister, Margo Handweårker, Nick Risteen, Bryony Roberts, Irene Sunwoo, Diana Kurkovsky West and Grant Wythoff. Pep Avilès was not just a colleague but also my cohort-brother. There was a whole host of Green Room denizens: Cristóbal Amunátegui, José Araguez, Joseph Bedford, Marc Britz, Craig Buckley, Esther Choi, Anthony Fontenot, Justin Fowler, Ignacio González Galan, Vanessa Grossman, Matthew Mullane, Clelia Pozzi, Daria Ricci, Federica Soletta, and Meredith TenHoor. I’m deeply grateful for growing up with the colleagues I had who followed on to Princeton after our master’s degrees at Yale: they are family. Britt Eversole, thanks for the 2006 argument that assured we’d be forever friends and for all the conversations since. Federica Vannucchi, you’re my graduate school sister. I spent meals, holidays and celebrations with Sara Stevens and Joy Knoblauch. The Writing Center was a godsend. Two of my professors from the past deserve special mention: Keller Easterling, for introducing me to Cedric Price, and Claire Zimmerman for her mentorship and friendship since my first class at Yale in 2005. How would we all have turned out without you?
Thank you, Magdalen Powers, for your editorial prowess, penchant for Glühwein, and many years of friendship; Daniela Fabricius for sharing Butler, Berlin, Brooklyn, and beyond, and for imparting wisdom at the right moments; my fellow residents of the Camp Butler Home for Wayward Boys and Girls: Alicia Imperiale, Yetunde Olaiya, and Mareike Stoll; Janet Vertesi told me the day we met that we would be good friends and later saved me with a glass of rosé and truffle fries, and she and her husband, Craig Sylvester, shared many meals and conversations with me; and Paul Dourish, thank you for the conversations, support, and connections to ideas and people. Enrique Ramirez, you receive the most special mention. I would not have been here if not for you and could not have completed this without you. You’re the most brilliant person I know.
There are a few people who planted the idea to go back to school. Greg Veen, Anne Galloway, Mocha Jean Herrup, and Bryan Boyer offered me the early twinkling of an idea that I might want do a PhD in architecture more than a decade ago—Greg on a walk in the desert at Burning Man, Anne at South by Southwest, Mocha as we drove around San Francisco, and Bryan in conversations overlooking the Bay and as my architecture grandparent, albeit a decade younger than me.
Outside of school, many friends cheered me on. I’m deeply grateful for the support from friends near and far: Angela Allen, Boris Anthony, Jason Aronen and Jana Sackmeister, Marit Appeldoorn, Jennifer Bove, Tom Carden, Steve Champeon, Tom Coates, Elizabeth Churchill, Cletus Dalglish-Schommer, Andy Davidson, Nick and Heather Donohue; Jeff Drewitz, Schuyler Erle, Heather Hesketh, Dan Hill, Joe Hobaica, Robin Hunicke, Kani Ilangovan, Pableaux Johnson, Matt Jones, Tara Kriese, Lulu Lamer, Tom Meyer, Andrea Moed, Paul Mison, Martin Nachbar, Paul Houseman, Liz Lawley, Ali Muney, George Oates, Lucy O’Dwyer, Ross O’ Dyer, Simon Philips, William Pietri, John Poisson, Alicia Pollak, Jen and Jeff Robbins, Celia Romaniuk, Shauna Sampson, Michael Sippey, Stephanie Corinna Smith, Tristam Sparks, Victor Szilagyi, Nick Sweeney, Kristen Taylor, Vicky Tiegelkamp, Leslie Veen, Anita Wilhelm, Allison Yates, Brian Yeung, Judith Zissman, Brian Zumhaugen, and many others I’ve surely neglected to list here. Thank you to Ray Koltys for building me an Arch Mac database so I could parse thousands of pages of material. And sadly, I also wish to acknowledge some friends who are no longer with us: Lee Dirks, Jeffrey McManus, Spiro Pina, and Laura Tatum.
One of the most fun parts of the last years has been developing a network of co-conspirators who rise to all kinds of intellectual mischief: Ken Anderson, Mouna Andraos, Marguerite Avery, Daniel Barber, Genevieve Bell, Rachel Binx, Catherine Bonier, Benjamin Bratton, Jennifer Brook, Stuart Candy, Ben Cerveny, Aaron Straup Cope, Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino, Carl di Salvo, Aliki Economides, Jordan Ellenberg, Jeff Ferzoco, Adam Flynn, Brady Forrest, Hugh Forrest, Gioia Guerzoni, Marian Glebes, Garnet Hertz, Sha Hwang, Erin Kissane, Peter Krapp, Michael Kubo, Jesse Le Cavalier, Stephanie Lee, Ana Maria Léon, Golan Levin, Jen Lowe, Joanne McNeill, Wendy MacNaughton, Annette Markham, Alice Marwick, Heather Mathews, Peter Merholz, Stefano Mirti, Rudolf Müller, Ginger Nolan, Andrew Otwell, Véronique Patteuw, Nicola Pezolet, Aram Price, Howard Rheingold, Erica Robles-Anderson, Frida Rosenberg, Fred Scharmen (bok!), Doug Sery, Ben Shapiro, Jeremi Szaniawski, Bruce Sterling, Jer Thorp, Anthony Townsend, Rebecca Uchill, Jasmina Tesanovic, Kazys Varnelis, Jessica Varner, Theodora Vardouli, Rob Wiesenberger, Rowan Wilken, Janice Wong, Liam Young, and Mimi Zeiger. And on top of those instigators, some of my favorite and most sustaining connections have been virtual and often secret: thank you to HC, chix, #lgnlgn, and Eyeo.
Several wonderful communities around the world, in Umeå, Sweden, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, hosted me while I was writing this dissertation. My friends in San Francisco gave me workspace and apartments with dogs and cats to watch. I’m indebted to Jenifer Hope and Steve Simitzis for your suggestion that I spend the summer of 2011 in San Francisco, and to Jenifer and her husband Stephen Hope for giving me their house to sit. Thank you to Adaptive Path, especially Laura Kirkwood Datta, Rae Brune, and Jesse James Garrett. Further SF gratitude to Adam Hemphill; Steve Doberstein, and Elizabeth Letcher; Rena Tom and Derek Lindner; Rusty Hodge and Merin McDonnell; Jennifer Berry, and Paolo Salvigione, for introducing me to the Vallejo; Marcy Swenson and Dale Larson; Mike Kuniavsky and Liz Goodman. You keep me eternally homesick for San Francisco.
Asking “What do I have to do to spend some time in Sweden?” led me to spending a total of several months since 2010 in Umeå, Sweden, as a guest of the HUMlab. Patrik Svensson, thank you for having me—I’m so grateful for the lab, your hospitality and all the ideas and people I’ve encountered. I owe huge thanks to Emma Ewadotter, who knows when and why glitter is important. Thank you to all of the HUMlab people who made me part of your family: Elin Andersson, Coppélie Cocq, Jim Barrett, Carl-Erik Enqvist, Stefan Gelfgren, Stephanie Hendrick, Karin Jangert, Finn Arne Jørgenson, Cecelia Lindhé, Jenna Ng, Jennie Olofsson, Fredrik Palm, Satish Patel, Mattis Lindmark, Jim Robertsson, Jon Svensson, and Johan von Boer, as well as to my friends in the Umeå School of Architecture and the Umeå Institute of Design. And finally, to my Umeå family, who spent my 40th birthday with me: Lorenzo Davoli, Kati Häfner, and Adam Henriksson. A double thank you to Mike Frangos and Anna Johansson, for paintings and crayfish.
I spent two years on faculty at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, in what is now called the Media Design Practices program. The students were amazing, the faculty even more so. Thank you to Anne Burdick for asking me to join the faculty and for being the coolest chair of any department, anywhere, and to Sean Donohue, Tim Durfee, Shannon Herbert, Ben Hooker, Jennifer Krasinski, Thea Petchler, Kevin Wingate, and Phil van Allen. Staying with Chris Spurgeon and Barbara Bogaev made my trips to LA a special treat.
I have two German host families who have supported me since the year the Berlin Wawll fell. Big hug to my wiedergefundene German sister Birke Gregg and her family. My German host family Lia, Hartmut, and Oliver Fest and Sabrina, Nico, and Jonas Adomeit have welcomed me every year in Düsseldorf since 1989, and again many times in the course of researching and writing this dissertation. Sadly, we have just bid farewell to my host father, Hartmut, on November 15, 2013.
At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, I’ve come full circle: It’s wonderful to be back here nearly two decades after I left. Special thanks go to Greg Downey for his mentorship, and to Lew Friedland, who launched my first career in 1994 and who reeled me back in in 2012. I’m particularly grateful for the friendship of Lucas Graves, Emily Callaci, and our renegade writing group with Stephen Young and Judd Kinzley; and friends Mark Vareschi, Matthew Berland, Tullia Dymarz, Eliana Stein and Randall Goldsmith, and the reconnection to my old friend Ralph Cross. And Sarah Roberts, thank you for turning me on to the Internet in 1993 and for entrusting me with your home in 2013.
In closing, I want to thank the people I go home to.
Simon King, you’re the best surprise in every way, and you make my world so vivid. I love you for arches, mountains, canyons, maps, birds’ nests, landscapes, beaches, sitting on the floor listening to records, and adventures. With you, everything is possible. &&&
There is nothing without family, and mine has put up with my unusual path while providing me with so much love and support. Thank you to my brothers’ families and my awesome niece and nephews: Andy, Carrie, Jack, and Maddie; Ben, Alexsis, and Sam; to my stepfather, Chuck DuFresne and my stepmother, Dr. Carol Coleman Steenson. You’ve all asked me when I’m going to be done with the dissertation; the answer is, “Now.”
Finally, I dedicate this dissertation to my parents, Professor Mike Steenson and Judge Mary DuFresne. You’ve never asked me to be anything other than who I am, and you’ve supported my eclectic path for doing whatever that meant for the last four decades and change. I learn so much from you, I emulate you, and I love you.