Bracket 2 [Goes Soft] - Bracket English edition

Publisher Marketing: From soft politics, soft power and soft spaces to fluid territories, software and soft programming, Bracket 2 unpacks the use and role of responsive, indeterminate, flexible, and immaterial systems in design. In an era of declared crises--economic, ecological and climatic, among others--the notion of soft systems has gained increasing traction as a counterpoint to permanent, static and hard systems. Acknowledging fluid and indeterminate situations with complex feedback loops that allow for reaction and adaption, the possibility of soft systems has reentered the domain of design. The examples displayed in "Bracket goes soft" are offered as nothing more than a short catalog of soft systems--some explicitly architectural, others geological, others entirely metaphorical. In all cases, these examples explore how the notion of going soft can be iterated across professions, disciplines, and fields of research. The book is divided into the themes "sensing/feedback"; "interfacing/ enveloping"; "subverting/hijacking"; "formatting/ distributing"; "contingency/ resilience"; "diffusing/generating." Bracket is a book series structured around an open call that highlights emerging critical issues at the juncture of architecture, environment, and digital culture. The editorial board and jury for Bracket 2 includes Benjamin Bratton, Julia Czerniak, Jeffrey Inaba, Geoff Manaugh, Philippe Rahm, Charles Renfro, as well as co-editors Neeraj Bhatia and Lola Sheppard. Bracket is a collaboration between InfraNet Lab and Archinect. Contributor Bio:  Bhatia, Neeraj Neeraj Bhatia is an architect and urban designer from Toronto. His work resides at the intersection of politics, infrastructure, and urbanism. Bhatia is a codirector of InfraNet Lab, a non-profit research collective probing the spatial byproducts of contemporary resource logistics, and the founder of The Open Workshop, a design office examining the project of plurality. He has worked for Eisenman Architects, Coop Himmelblau, Bruce Mau Design, OMA, and ORG. Bhatia has previously taught at Rice University, University of Toronto, University of Waterloo, and Ohio State University. His research has been published in Volume/Archis, Thresholds, Footprint, Domus, Onsite Review, Field Journal, and Yale Perspecta. Bhatia received his master's degree in architecture and urban design from MIT where he studied on a Fulbright Fellowship. Prior to that, he attended the University of Waterloo where he obtained a bachelor of environmental studies and a bachelor of architecture. Contributor Bio:  Sheppard, Lola Lola Sheppard received her Bachelor of Science in Architecture and Bachelor of Architecture from McGill University and a Master of Architecture from Harvard Graduate School of Design. She is Associate Professor at the University of Waterloo. she has taught at the University of Toronto, Ohio State University, and California College of the Arts. She previously worked in the offices of Jean Nouvel (Paris), Peter Rose (Cambridge), and Allies and Morrison (London) before forming LATERAL OFFICE. She is committed to architecture's new relationship to social and ecological possibilities - not just solutions. Sheppard is the recipient of the 2012 RAIC Young Architect Award.