Author: Joseph Frank
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 9780813516431
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 220
Book Description
The Idea of Spatial Form contains the classic essay that introduced the concept of "spatial form" into literary discussion in 1945, and has since been accepted as one of the foundations for a theory of modern literature. It is here reprinted along with two later reconsiderations, one of which answers its major critics, while the second places the theory in relation to Russian Formalism and French Structuralism. Originally conceived to clarify the formal experiments of avant-garde literature, the idea of spatial form, when placed in this wider context, also contributes importantly to the foundations of a general poetics of the literary text. Also included are related discussions of André Malraux, Heinrich Wölfflin, Herbert Read, and E. H. Gombrich. New material has been added to the essays in the form of footnotes and postscripts to two of them. These either illustrate the continuing relevance of the questions raised, or offer Frank's more recent opinions on the topic.
The Idea of Spatial Form
Author: Joseph Frank
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 9780813516431
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 220
Book Description
The Idea of Spatial Form contains the classic essay that introduced the concept of "spatial form" into literary discussion in 1945, and has since been accepted as one of the foundations for a theory of modern literature. It is here reprinted along with two later reconsiderations, one of which answers its major critics, while the second places the theory in relation to Russian Formalism and French Structuralism. Originally conceived to clarify the formal experiments of avant-garde literature, the idea of spatial form, when placed in this wider context, also contributes importantly to the foundations of a general poetics of the literary text. Also included are related discussions of André Malraux, Heinrich Wölfflin, Herbert Read, and E. H. Gombrich. New material has been added to the essays in the form of footnotes and postscripts to two of them. These either illustrate the continuing relevance of the questions raised, or offer Frank's more recent opinions on the topic.
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 9780813516431
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 220
Book Description
The Idea of Spatial Form contains the classic essay that introduced the concept of "spatial form" into literary discussion in 1945, and has since been accepted as one of the foundations for a theory of modern literature. It is here reprinted along with two later reconsiderations, one of which answers its major critics, while the second places the theory in relation to Russian Formalism and French Structuralism. Originally conceived to clarify the formal experiments of avant-garde literature, the idea of spatial form, when placed in this wider context, also contributes importantly to the foundations of a general poetics of the literary text. Also included are related discussions of André Malraux, Heinrich Wölfflin, Herbert Read, and E. H. Gombrich. New material has been added to the essays in the form of footnotes and postscripts to two of them. These either illustrate the continuing relevance of the questions raised, or offer Frank's more recent opinions on the topic.
Space and Time in Language and Literature
Author: Lovorka Gruić Grmuša
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443815098
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 175
Book Description
Space and time, their infiniteness and/or their limit(ation)s, their coding, conceptualization and the relationship between the two, have been intriguing people for millennia. Linguistics and literature are no exceptions in this sense. This book brings together eight essays which all deal with the expression of space and/or time in language and/or literature. The book explores the issues of space, time and their interrelation from two different perspectives: the linguistic and the literary. The first section—Time and Space in Language—contains four papers which focus on linguistics, i.e. explore issues relative to the expression of time and space in natural languages. The topics under consideration include: typology regarding the expression of spatial information in languages around the world (Ch.1), space as expressed and conceptualized in neutral, postural and verbs of fictive motion (Ch. 2), prepositional semantics (Ch.3), aspectuality (in Tamil, Ch. 4). All articles propose innovative topics and/or approaches, crossreferring when possible between space and time. Given that all seem to propose at least some elements of “language universality” vs. “language variability”, the strong cognitivist nature of the approach (even when the paper is not written within a cognitive linguistic framework) represents a particularly strong feature of the section, with a strong appeal to experts from fields that need not necessarily be linguistic. The second section of this volume—Space and Time in Literature—brings together four essays dealing with literary topics. Inherent in each narrative are both temporal and spatial implications because a literary text testifies of a certain time, it is from and about a certain period, as well as about a certain space, even if virtual. A particularly strong feature of these papers is that they envision space and time as complementary parameters of experience and not as conceptual opposites, following the transfer of perspective through the whole century. Departing from the late nineteenth century England’s and Croatia’s fictive spaces (Ch. 5), the topic moves via the American Southern Gothic, focusing on Faulkner from the thirties to the early sixties (Ch. 6), via the post-WWII perspectives on history, probing the postmodern context of temporality (Ch 7), to finally reach the contemporary era of post 9/11 space-time (Ch 8). The voyage from chapter five to eight is thus a journey through space and time that allows for some answers to the nature of reality (of a variety of space-times) as conceived by both the authors of these essays as well as by the authors that these essays discuss. The main goal of the editors has been to bring together different scientific traditions which can contribute complementary concerns and methodologies to the issues under exam; from the literary and descriptive via the diachronic and typological explorations all the way to cognitive (linguistic) analyses, bordering psycholinguistics and neuroscience. One of the strengths of this volume thus lies in the diversity of perspectives articulated within it, where the agreements, but also the controversies and divergences demonstrate constant changes in society which, in turn, shapes our views of space-time/reality. All this also suggests that science and literature are not above or apart from their culture, but embedded within it, and that there exists a strong relativistic interrelation between (spatio-temporal) reality and culture. The only hope to objectively envisage any if not all of the above, is by learning how to move (our thought) through space, time or, to put it in simpler terms, how to shift perspectives.
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443815098
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 175
Book Description
Space and time, their infiniteness and/or their limit(ation)s, their coding, conceptualization and the relationship between the two, have been intriguing people for millennia. Linguistics and literature are no exceptions in this sense. This book brings together eight essays which all deal with the expression of space and/or time in language and/or literature. The book explores the issues of space, time and their interrelation from two different perspectives: the linguistic and the literary. The first section—Time and Space in Language—contains four papers which focus on linguistics, i.e. explore issues relative to the expression of time and space in natural languages. The topics under consideration include: typology regarding the expression of spatial information in languages around the world (Ch.1), space as expressed and conceptualized in neutral, postural and verbs of fictive motion (Ch. 2), prepositional semantics (Ch.3), aspectuality (in Tamil, Ch. 4). All articles propose innovative topics and/or approaches, crossreferring when possible between space and time. Given that all seem to propose at least some elements of “language universality” vs. “language variability”, the strong cognitivist nature of the approach (even when the paper is not written within a cognitive linguistic framework) represents a particularly strong feature of the section, with a strong appeal to experts from fields that need not necessarily be linguistic. The second section of this volume—Space and Time in Literature—brings together four essays dealing with literary topics. Inherent in each narrative are both temporal and spatial implications because a literary text testifies of a certain time, it is from and about a certain period, as well as about a certain space, even if virtual. A particularly strong feature of these papers is that they envision space and time as complementary parameters of experience and not as conceptual opposites, following the transfer of perspective through the whole century. Departing from the late nineteenth century England’s and Croatia’s fictive spaces (Ch. 5), the topic moves via the American Southern Gothic, focusing on Faulkner from the thirties to the early sixties (Ch. 6), via the post-WWII perspectives on history, probing the postmodern context of temporality (Ch 7), to finally reach the contemporary era of post 9/11 space-time (Ch 8). The voyage from chapter five to eight is thus a journey through space and time that allows for some answers to the nature of reality (of a variety of space-times) as conceived by both the authors of these essays as well as by the authors that these essays discuss. The main goal of the editors has been to bring together different scientific traditions which can contribute complementary concerns and methodologies to the issues under exam; from the literary and descriptive via the diachronic and typological explorations all the way to cognitive (linguistic) analyses, bordering psycholinguistics and neuroscience. One of the strengths of this volume thus lies in the diversity of perspectives articulated within it, where the agreements, but also the controversies and divergences demonstrate constant changes in society which, in turn, shapes our views of space-time/reality. All this also suggests that science and literature are not above or apart from their culture, but embedded within it, and that there exists a strong relativistic interrelation between (spatio-temporal) reality and culture. The only hope to objectively envisage any if not all of the above, is by learning how to move (our thought) through space, time or, to put it in simpler terms, how to shift perspectives.
Narrative Space and Time
Author: Elana Gomel
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134519702
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 262
Book Description
Space is a central topic in cultural and narrative theory today, although in most cases theory assumes Newtonian absolute space. However, the idea of a universal homogeneous space is now obsolete. Black holes, multiple dimensions, quantum entanglement, and spatio-temporal distortions of relativity have passed into culture at large. This book examines whether narrative can be used to represent these "impossible" spaces. Impossible topologies abound in ancient mythologies, from the Australian Aborigines’ "dream-time" to the multiple-layer universe of the Sumerians. More recently, from Alice’s adventures in Wonderland to contemporary science fiction’s obsession with black holes and quantum paradoxes, counter-intuitive spaces are a prominent feature of modern and postmodern narrative. With the rise and popularization of science fiction, the inventiveness and variety of impossible narrative spaces explodes. The author analyses the narrative techniques used to represent such spaces alongside their cultural significance. Each chapter connects narrative deformation of space with historical problematic of time, and demonstrates the cognitive and perceptual primacy of narrative in representing, imagining and apprehending new forms of space and time. This book offers a comprehensive analysis of the connection between narratology, cultural theory, science fiction, and studies of place.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134519702
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 262
Book Description
Space is a central topic in cultural and narrative theory today, although in most cases theory assumes Newtonian absolute space. However, the idea of a universal homogeneous space is now obsolete. Black holes, multiple dimensions, quantum entanglement, and spatio-temporal distortions of relativity have passed into culture at large. This book examines whether narrative can be used to represent these "impossible" spaces. Impossible topologies abound in ancient mythologies, from the Australian Aborigines’ "dream-time" to the multiple-layer universe of the Sumerians. More recently, from Alice’s adventures in Wonderland to contemporary science fiction’s obsession with black holes and quantum paradoxes, counter-intuitive spaces are a prominent feature of modern and postmodern narrative. With the rise and popularization of science fiction, the inventiveness and variety of impossible narrative spaces explodes. The author analyses the narrative techniques used to represent such spaces alongside their cultural significance. Each chapter connects narrative deformation of space with historical problematic of time, and demonstrates the cognitive and perceptual primacy of narrative in representing, imagining and apprehending new forms of space and time. This book offers a comprehensive analysis of the connection between narratology, cultural theory, science fiction, and studies of place.
The Postmodern Chronotope
Author: Paul Smethurst
Publisher: Rodopi
ISBN: 9789042015135
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 354
Book Description
The Postmodern Chronotope is an innovative interdisciplinary study of the contemporary. It will be of special interest to anyone interested in relations between postmodernism, geography and contemporary fiction. Some claim that postmodernism questions history and historical bases to culture; some say it is about loss of affect, loss of depth models, and superficiality; others claim it follows from the conditions of post-industrial society; and others cite commodification of place, Disneyfication, simulation and post-tourist spectacle as evidence that postmodernism is wedded to late capitalism. Whatever postmodernism is, or turns out to have been, it is bound up in rethinking and reworking space and time, and Paul Smethurst's intervention here is to introduce the postmodern chronotope as a term through which these spatial and temporal shifts might be apprehended. The postmodern chronotope constitutes a postmodern world-view and postmodern way of seeing. In a sense it is the natural successor to a modernist way of seeing defined through cubism, montage and relativity. The book is arranged as follows: - Part 1 is an interdisciplinary study casting a wide net across a range of cultural, social and scientific activity, from chaos theory to cinema, from architecture to performance art, from IT to tourism. - Part 2 offers original readings of a selection of postmodern novels, including Graham Swift's Waterland and Out of this World, Peter Ackroyd's Hawksmoor and First Light, Alasdair Gray's Lanark, J. M. Coetzee's Foe, Marina Warner's Indigo, Caryl Phillips' Cambridge, and Don DeLillo's The Names and Ratner's Star.
Publisher: Rodopi
ISBN: 9789042015135
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 354
Book Description
The Postmodern Chronotope is an innovative interdisciplinary study of the contemporary. It will be of special interest to anyone interested in relations between postmodernism, geography and contemporary fiction. Some claim that postmodernism questions history and historical bases to culture; some say it is about loss of affect, loss of depth models, and superficiality; others claim it follows from the conditions of post-industrial society; and others cite commodification of place, Disneyfication, simulation and post-tourist spectacle as evidence that postmodernism is wedded to late capitalism. Whatever postmodernism is, or turns out to have been, it is bound up in rethinking and reworking space and time, and Paul Smethurst's intervention here is to introduce the postmodern chronotope as a term through which these spatial and temporal shifts might be apprehended. The postmodern chronotope constitutes a postmodern world-view and postmodern way of seeing. In a sense it is the natural successor to a modernist way of seeing defined through cubism, montage and relativity. The book is arranged as follows: - Part 1 is an interdisciplinary study casting a wide net across a range of cultural, social and scientific activity, from chaos theory to cinema, from architecture to performance art, from IT to tourism. - Part 2 offers original readings of a selection of postmodern novels, including Graham Swift's Waterland and Out of this World, Peter Ackroyd's Hawksmoor and First Light, Alasdair Gray's Lanark, J. M. Coetzee's Foe, Marina Warner's Indigo, Caryl Phillips' Cambridge, and Don DeLillo's The Names and Ratner's Star.
Learning to Think Spatially
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309092086
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 333
Book Description
Learning to Think Spatially examines how spatial thinking might be incorporated into existing standards-based instruction across the school curriculum. Spatial thinking must be recognized as a fundamental part of Kâ€"12 education and as an integrator and a facilitator for problem solving across the curriculum. With advances in computing technologies and the increasing availability of geospatial data, spatial thinking will play a significant role in the information-based economy of the twenty-first century. Using appropriately designed support systems tailored to the Kâ€"12 context, spatial thinking can be taught formally to all students. A geographic information system (GIS) offers one example of a high-technology support system that can enable students and teachers to practice and apply spatial thinking in many areas of the curriculum.
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309092086
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 333
Book Description
Learning to Think Spatially examines how spatial thinking might be incorporated into existing standards-based instruction across the school curriculum. Spatial thinking must be recognized as a fundamental part of Kâ€"12 education and as an integrator and a facilitator for problem solving across the curriculum. With advances in computing technologies and the increasing availability of geospatial data, spatial thinking will play a significant role in the information-based economy of the twenty-first century. Using appropriately designed support systems tailored to the Kâ€"12 context, spatial thinking can be taught formally to all students. A geographic information system (GIS) offers one example of a high-technology support system that can enable students and teachers to practice and apply spatial thinking in many areas of the curriculum.
The Question of Space
Author: Marijn Nieuwenhuis
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1786601966
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 230
Book Description
The spatial turn has been deeply influential across the humanities and social sciences for several decades. Yet despite this long term influence most volumes focus mainly on geography and tend to take a Eurocentric approach to the topic. The Question of Space takes a multidisciplinary approach to understanding how the spatial turn has affected other disciplines. By connecting developments across radically different fields the volume bridges the very borders that separate the academic space. From new geographies through performance, the internet, politics and the arts, the distinctive chapters undertake conversations that often surprisingly converge in approach, questions and insights Together the chapters transcend longstanding disciplinary boundaries to build a constructive dialogue around the question of space.
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1786601966
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 230
Book Description
The spatial turn has been deeply influential across the humanities and social sciences for several decades. Yet despite this long term influence most volumes focus mainly on geography and tend to take a Eurocentric approach to the topic. The Question of Space takes a multidisciplinary approach to understanding how the spatial turn has affected other disciplines. By connecting developments across radically different fields the volume bridges the very borders that separate the academic space. From new geographies through performance, the internet, politics and the arts, the distinctive chapters undertake conversations that often surprisingly converge in approach, questions and insights Together the chapters transcend longstanding disciplinary boundaries to build a constructive dialogue around the question of space.
The Production of Space
Author: Henri Lefebvre
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
ISBN: 9780631181774
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 464
Book Description
Henri Lefebvre has considerable claims to be the greatest living philosopher. His work spans some sixty years and includes original work on a diverse range of subjects, from dialectical materialism to architecture, urbanism and the experience of everyday life. The Production of Space is his major philosophical work and its translation has been long awaited by scholars in many different fields. The book is a search for a reconciliation between mental space (the space of the philosophers) and real space (the physical and social spheres in which we all live). In the course of his exploration, Henri Lefebvre moves from metaphysical and ideological considerations of the meaning of space to its experience in the everyday life of home and city. He seeks, in other words, to bridge the gap between the realms of theory and practice, between the mental and the social, and between philosophy and reality. In doing so, he ranges through art, literature, architecture and economics, and further provides a powerful antidote to the sterile and obfuscatory methods and theories characteristic of much recent continental philosophy. This is a work of great vision and incisiveness. It is also characterized by its author's wit and by anecdote, as well as by a deftness of style which Donald Nicholson-Smith's sensitive translation precisely captures.
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
ISBN: 9780631181774
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 464
Book Description
Henri Lefebvre has considerable claims to be the greatest living philosopher. His work spans some sixty years and includes original work on a diverse range of subjects, from dialectical materialism to architecture, urbanism and the experience of everyday life. The Production of Space is his major philosophical work and its translation has been long awaited by scholars in many different fields. The book is a search for a reconciliation between mental space (the space of the philosophers) and real space (the physical and social spheres in which we all live). In the course of his exploration, Henri Lefebvre moves from metaphysical and ideological considerations of the meaning of space to its experience in the everyday life of home and city. He seeks, in other words, to bridge the gap between the realms of theory and practice, between the mental and the social, and between philosophy and reality. In doing so, he ranges through art, literature, architecture and economics, and further provides a powerful antidote to the sterile and obfuscatory methods and theories characteristic of much recent continental philosophy. This is a work of great vision and incisiveness. It is also characterized by its author's wit and by anecdote, as well as by a deftness of style which Donald Nicholson-Smith's sensitive translation precisely captures.
Binding Space: The Book as Spatial Practice
Author: Marian Macken
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 135126642X
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 435
Book Description
Books orient, intrigue, provoke and direct the reader while editing, interpreting, encapsulating, constructing and revealing architectural representation. Binding Space: The Book as Spatial Practice explores the role of the book form within the realm of architectural representation. It proposes the book itself as another three-dimensional, complementary architectural representation with a generational and propositional role within the design process. Artists’ books in particular – that is, a book made as an original work of art, with an artist, designer or architect as author – have certain qualities and characteristics, quite different from the conventional presentation and documentation of architecture. Paginal sequentiality, the structure and objecthood of the book, and the act of reading create possibilities for the book as a site for architectural imagining and discourse. In this way, the form of the book affects how the architectural work is conceived, constructed and read. In five main sections, Binding Space examines the relationships between the drawing, the building and the book. It proposes thinking through the book as a form of spatial practice, one in which the book is cast as object, outcome, process and tool. Through the book, we read spatial practice anew.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 135126642X
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 435
Book Description
Books orient, intrigue, provoke and direct the reader while editing, interpreting, encapsulating, constructing and revealing architectural representation. Binding Space: The Book as Spatial Practice explores the role of the book form within the realm of architectural representation. It proposes the book itself as another three-dimensional, complementary architectural representation with a generational and propositional role within the design process. Artists’ books in particular – that is, a book made as an original work of art, with an artist, designer or architect as author – have certain qualities and characteristics, quite different from the conventional presentation and documentation of architecture. Paginal sequentiality, the structure and objecthood of the book, and the act of reading create possibilities for the book as a site for architectural imagining and discourse. In this way, the form of the book affects how the architectural work is conceived, constructed and read. In five main sections, Binding Space examines the relationships between the drawing, the building and the book. It proposes thinking through the book as a form of spatial practice, one in which the book is cast as object, outcome, process and tool. Through the book, we read spatial practice anew.
Dynamic Form
Author: Cara L. Lewis
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501749196
Category : Photography
Languages : en
Pages : 329
Book Description
Dynamic Form traces how intermedial experiments shape modernist texts from 1900 to 1950. Considering literature alongside painting, sculpture, photography, and film, Cara Lewis examines how these arts inflect narrative movement, contribute to plot events, and configure poetry and memoir. As forms and formal theories cross from one artistic realm to another and back again, modernism shows its obsession with form—and even at times becomes a formalism itself—but as Lewis writes, that form is far more dynamic than we have given it credit for. Form fulfills such various functions that we cannot characterize it as a mere container for content or matter, nor can we consign it to ignominy opposite historicism or political commitment. As a structure or scheme that enables action, form in modernism can be plastic, protean, or even fragile, and works by Henry James, Virginia Woolf, Mina Loy, Evelyn Waugh, and Gertrude Stein demonstrate the range of form's operations. Revising three major formal paradigms—spatial form, pure form, and formlessness—and recasting the history of modernist form, this book proposes an understanding of form as a verbal category, as a kind of doing. Dynamic Form thus opens new possibilities for conversation between modernist studies and formalist studies and simultaneously promotes a capacious rethinking of the convergence between literary modernism and creative work in other media.
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501749196
Category : Photography
Languages : en
Pages : 329
Book Description
Dynamic Form traces how intermedial experiments shape modernist texts from 1900 to 1950. Considering literature alongside painting, sculpture, photography, and film, Cara Lewis examines how these arts inflect narrative movement, contribute to plot events, and configure poetry and memoir. As forms and formal theories cross from one artistic realm to another and back again, modernism shows its obsession with form—and even at times becomes a formalism itself—but as Lewis writes, that form is far more dynamic than we have given it credit for. Form fulfills such various functions that we cannot characterize it as a mere container for content or matter, nor can we consign it to ignominy opposite historicism or political commitment. As a structure or scheme that enables action, form in modernism can be plastic, protean, or even fragile, and works by Henry James, Virginia Woolf, Mina Loy, Evelyn Waugh, and Gertrude Stein demonstrate the range of form's operations. Revising three major formal paradigms—spatial form, pure form, and formlessness—and recasting the history of modernist form, this book proposes an understanding of form as a verbal category, as a kind of doing. Dynamic Form thus opens new possibilities for conversation between modernist studies and formalist studies and simultaneously promotes a capacious rethinking of the convergence between literary modernism and creative work in other media.
Operative Design
Author: Anthony di Mari
Publisher: BIS Publishers
ISBN: 9789063692896
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 144
Book Description
The core idea for this book is the use of operative verbs as tools for designing space. These operative verbs abstract the idea of spatial formation to its most basic terms, allowing for an objective approach to create the foundation for subjective spatial design. Examples of these verbs are expand, inflate, nest, wist, lift, embed, merge and many more. Together they form a visual dictionary decoding the syntax of spatial verbs. The verbs are illustrated with three-dimensional diagrams and pictures of designs which show the verbs 'in action'. This approach was devised, tested, and applied to architectural studio instruction by Anthony Di Mari and Nora Yoo while teaching at Harvard University's Career Discovery Program in Architecture in 2010. As instructors and as recent graduates, they saw a need for this kind of catalogue from both sides - as a reference manual applicable to design students in all stages of their studies, as well as a teaching tool for instructors to help students understand the strong spatial potential of abstract operations.
Publisher: BIS Publishers
ISBN: 9789063692896
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 144
Book Description
The core idea for this book is the use of operative verbs as tools for designing space. These operative verbs abstract the idea of spatial formation to its most basic terms, allowing for an objective approach to create the foundation for subjective spatial design. Examples of these verbs are expand, inflate, nest, wist, lift, embed, merge and many more. Together they form a visual dictionary decoding the syntax of spatial verbs. The verbs are illustrated with three-dimensional diagrams and pictures of designs which show the verbs 'in action'. This approach was devised, tested, and applied to architectural studio instruction by Anthony Di Mari and Nora Yoo while teaching at Harvard University's Career Discovery Program in Architecture in 2010. As instructors and as recent graduates, they saw a need for this kind of catalogue from both sides - as a reference manual applicable to design students in all stages of their studies, as well as a teaching tool for instructors to help students understand the strong spatial potential of abstract operations.