Joseph Altshuler Publishes in Two New Books
“Purple Playthings: or, How We Can Have Serious Fun with Architectural Models” recently appeared in a new book entitled A Purple Architecture Design in the Age of the Physical-Virtual Continuum (Carnegie Mellon University ETC Press, 2024), edited by James Kerestes, Ebrahim Poustinchi, and Vahid Vahdat:
Architectural playthings are a special subset of architectural models that integrate dynamic opportunities for participation, stimulation, and animation among various audiences. By inviting input and interaction, playthings provide agency to navigate between fiction and reality. This essay speculates on new formats and categories for architectural playthings that amplify opportunities for audiences to generate spatial scenarios by embracing multiple realities and imaginaries—physical, virtual, and animated all at once.
“Intimate Inhabitation: Toward an Intercourse of Creaturely Urbanism” was recently published in the new volume entitled The Interior Urbanism Theory Reader (Routledge, 2024), edited by Gregory Marinic:
Public displays of affection need not be limited to human intercourse. The examples discussed in this chapter provide a toolkit to produce diverse architectures that share an intimate sensibility for inhabiting the city, and that, in turn, permit us and our fellow inhabitants to see and share in the affection available among our interior urban environments.