Perspecta #52 – Ensemble

They produce and are produced by a highly circumscribed definition of creativity—that of a predictive state inherently based on a chain of linked, given events, thus a computational intelligence predicated on the established patterns of the database. Are these mathematical ensembles different from those of neoclassical composition? How are the new ensembles characterized and materialized relative to their conceptual tradition? This issue of Perspecta — the oldest and most distinguished student-edited architectural journal in America—is a projective art history of ensemble as form and politics. It uses theories of ensemble to propose both alternative extensive stagings of design objects, as well as other resistant assemblies of the corps of architects. Ensemble is posed a lens to theorize object-parts and states of motion at once, together: an architecture of the city.

The volume includes a new photographic essay on the contemporary city of Bengali by American and Indian artists. A collection of essays by interdisciplinary contributors interweave this new creative work, pointing toward a compositional project for an architecture that is multiple, extensive, spontaneous, collective, durational, temporary.