Panel Statement

Panel: Emerging Architectures

There is an ongoing controversy in architecture about the role of electronic imaging in Postmodern Urbanism. The debate concerns whether these images erode or enhance the social contract of community. The electronic image has become a powerful tool for describing not only physical form but a kind of “quality of life” for the city of the imagination. Two of architecture’s most notorious radicals Peter Eisenman and Bernard Tschumi, have made the “half real” electronic image an essential part of their polemic. But curiously one of the prophets of the electronic imaging revolution, Michael Benedikt cautions us about losing our humanity while dwelling in this new kind of virtual space.

• Jeffrey Hannigan (Canada) is an architect teaching at McGill University and the University of Vermont, his buildings and projects have been recognized through publications and design awards. Previously he was an partner in Studio Works and Hanningan/predergast of New York. Mr. Hannigan currently directs The Smoke and Mirrors Studio, exhibit designers in Burlington, Vermont.