Architecture _ definition by LAb[au]
From our point of view architecture and urbanism are structural and functional disciplines involved in the spatial and temporal organization of social, economic, political...structures through which they also constitute a semantic system of signs and codes. All these aspects define them as organizational disciplines that process, analyse and structure data within spatial constructs while improving it with a specific significance - meaning. Seen from this point of view a public library for example is more than a place to access information - it represents and structure knowledge according to the way we produce and share knowledge. On this level it reflects and produces cultural, social ...codes.
Defining architecture and urbanism in such terms implies to understand these disciplines in a much broader field than just the one of 'physical building; it is based on architectural thinking in the production of spatial artefacts. Here IC technologies have entirely changed the way we have to think about space, its organisation and representation, architecture so to speak. Technology based on the transmission and computation of information influences organization models (modes of production, work and knowledge) and affects the communication process (code, symbol) and the social relations as well as their spatialisation. To compare it with the example of a public library: in networks we represent knowledge to be accessed - it represents shared knowledge, - an informational value, it reflects cultural flows inside new spatial constructs. Here structuring data is based on the same questions as on its built counterpart, only the matter has changed. Now the structuring of information in visual, graphic, spatial representation has turn in the organisation of informational flows. In short maybe the public library of tomorrow is a browser displayed on a screen or any other device. But the objective stays the same, how through the structuring data, cultural, social...structures are processed - and knowledge represented, shared and produced. Of course IC technologies, as any media, enlarge the possibilities to think about these structures, processes and systems to a point where we as architects can't apply anymore traditional architectural methods.