By Suzanne Strum

“On Gonçalo’s Furtado’s research since 2002” (#V.2),
By Professor Suzanne Strum (Barcelona and New York)

Furtado´s study makes use of original archival research to encircle and enter into the affiliations between the architect Cedric Price; cybernetician Gordon Pask; as well as architects John and Julia Frazer. Furtado offers a map through five decades of exchange between these figures, architecture, cybernetics and computational paradigms outlining a lineage for contemporary “Information Age” concepts. Furtado´s work is an important addition to recent scholarship on Price. Furtado provides a detailed account of the degree to which the visionary project Generator was actually developed. Furtado also provides a detailed and insightful account of the complex context, examining Price´s search for an anticipatory architecture. Finally Furtado suggests the implications and legacy for contemporary design practices of Price´s binding of social activism and technology, Pask´s conversant systems, and the Frazers, intelligent design. Implicit in Furtado´s critical work is a call for a more complex view and definition of Post modernism, not as a mere rupture, but as a continuation of a complex line of thought, once peripheral that has now entered the mainstream."