'Architecture' and 'Machines' - or Alfred Jarry on his bicycle

Abstract

Architects like to invoke machines and do so in numerous ways. This dates back not just to modernism's machine obsession but to Book X of Vitruvius while in recent times machines have become popular in architectural schools to the point of oversaturation. 'Machines' is an elusive term and while there is abundant material on machines and architecture most focuses on a single aspect and there is therefore a sense in which it has only been approached fragmentarily. Through the medium of a collaborative exhibition and catalogue I and 7 others have been investigating what underlies the varied associations of architecture and machines.