[ISEA2004] Paper: Sven Sterken – Architecture as a Time-Based Art: Immersive Strategies in Iannis Xenakis’ Polytopes

Abstract

This paper deals with the ‘Polytopes’, a series of large-scale multimedia environments conceived by the composer and architect Iannis Xenakis during the 1960s and 1970s. It is argued that these cybernetic installations offer challenging examples of a time-based and dematerialized architecture where the very notions of space and place become an expressive medium in itself. Doing so, the Polytopes bring a new element in the discussion on what role is left for architecture in the era of multimedia and Virtual Reality.

  • Sven Sterken (1975) is an engineer-architect and researcher, affiliated with the University of Ghent (BE) and the Jan Van Eyck Academy in Maastricht (NL). In 2004, he obtained a PhD in architectural history with a dissertation

Full text (PDF) p. 9-14