Nikos Salingaros

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Nikos Salingaros

Nikos A. Salingaros (* 1952 in Perth ) is a Greek-Australian physicist and universalist, known for his work as an architecture and design theorist. He was a close collaborator of the architect and architectural philosopher Christopher Alexander , whose harsh criticism of conventional modern architecture he shares. Like Alexander, Salingaros proposes an alternative approach to architecture and urban planning that is more oriented towards human needs and that combines rigorous scientific analysis with empirically gained intuition.

Salingaros published substantial research in the fields of algebra , mathematical physics , electromagnetic fields and thermonuclear fusion before turning to architecture and town planning. Salingaros has been teaching mathematics at the University of Texas at San Antonio since 1983 . He also teaches at architecture faculties in Italy, Mexico and the Netherlands. Salingaros has received various awards.

His basic book A Theory of Architecture , published in Germany in 2006, caused a stir .

In 2008 Salingaros was included in the list of 50 VISIONARIES who are changing your world , published in the November-December 2008 issue of Utne Reader .

Life

Salingaros was born as the only child to Greek parents. His father is the popular composer Stelios Salingaros, his uncle is the opera baritone Spyros Sali (n) garos. After school he began to work as a painter, but then studied physics at the University of Miami , where he earned his bachelor's degree. This was followed by a master's (1974) and doctorate (1978) in physics at the State University of New York . He has been working with Christopher Alexander since 1982 . Most recently he was editor of Alexander's four-volume magnum opus The Nature of Order . Since 1983 he has been Professor of Mathematics at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

effect

Architecture and urban planning

Salingaros' work is primarily devoted to two key concepts: architecture and cities are seen as fractals on the one hand and networks on the other . Furthermore, Salingaros stands in the tradition of thought of Christopher Alexander and, as a long-term employee, partner and companion, has supported and helped shape his concepts.

Fonts

Salingaro's writings help to embed two essential concepts in the discussion of urban morphology: fractals and networks. His book Principles of Urban Structure has been compared to Michael Batty and Pierre Frankhauser's idea of ​​cities as gigantic fractals; as well as that of Paul Drewe and Gabriel Dupuy of cities as gigantic networks. Salingaro's work combines the urban form with concepts such as the small-world network and scale-free network . Michael Batty, Professor at Bartlett, University College of London, wrote the following about Salingaro's scientific contribution:

He shows how networks which evolve from the bottom up lead to ordered (scaled) hierarchies that are both efficient and well adjusted. [...] This theory of the small world, but contained within, there is the germ of an idea which has barely been exploited. In connecting elements in cities, there is a natural ordering from many short links which aggregate to a lesser number of longer links which, in my view, could be linked to small worlds, to scale-free networks, to power law distributions and, more significantly, to changes in transportation technology. Salingaros is the first to hint at this.

Computer science

Although Salingaros has never published directly on the subject of software, two of his articles are heavily discussed in computer science.

In The Structure of Pattern Languages ​​he argues that loose collections of patterns do not meet the requirements of a pattern language. This requires the validation of internal and external sample references.

In The Information Architecture of Cities (together with L. Andrew Coward, 2004) he describes cities as information architectures in which higher functions structure the system in communication modules.

Complexity theory

Salingaros represents a model of complexity in analogy to the thermodynamic quantities of physics, partly further developed with the computer scientist Allen Klinger . This work adapts the notation of Herbert A. Simon and suggests a simple procedure for its determination. Christopher Alexander discusses this model in Volume 1 of his work The Nature of Order .

philosophy

Saligaros is a harsh critic of deconstructivism in architecture, as well as the uncritical application of the philosophy of poststructuralism . In his essay The Derrida Virus , he argues that an uncritical application of Jacques Derrida's ideas leads to a viral dismantling of knowledge and logical thinking. In doing so, Salingaros uses the meme model introduced by Richard Dawkins , although he does not follow this model either in essential points - such as the classification of religion as a meme.

Article (selection)

Books

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Spyros Saligaros's website ( Memento of the original from April 24, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.spyrossaligaros.gr
  2. ↑ Michael Batty: Review of Principles of Urban Structure by Nikos A. Salingaros. In: Journal of Urban Design. Volume 11, No. 1, 2006, pp. 141-143
  3. ^ The Structure of Pattern Languages ( Memento from September 27, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ^ L. Andrew Coward, Nikos A. Salingaros: The Information Architecture of Cities . In: Journal of Information Science . tape 30 , no. 2 , 2004, p. 107-118 ( utsa.edu ). Reprinted as Chapter 7 . In: PRINCIPLES OF URBAN STRUCTURE . Techne Press, Amsterdam, Holland 2005.
  5. ↑ The Derrida Virus
personal data
SURNAME Salingaros, Nikos
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Salingaros, Nikos A .; Salingaros, Nikos Angelos
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Greco-Australian mathematician and physicist
DATE OF BIRTH 20th century
PLACE OF BIRTH Perth