The Architecture of Information

an article by Martyn Dade-Robertson (School of Architecture Planning and Landscape, Newcastle University (his research group’s work can be seen at www.archaid.org)) published in Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science & Technology Volume 39 Number 1 (October/November 2012)

Editor’s Summary

The relationship among architecture, information and information architecture can be thought of from the perspective of architectural prehistory.

The first instance of architecture may not have been a structure but the more conceptual designation and naming of territory, an information activity.

Early representations of digital space drew heavily on images of buildings and cities as a visual medium. As information space has evolved, the link to any physical reality has vanished, though we retain the metaphor of navigation to make real the experience of interacting with the abstract on multiple levels.

Users relate with information in semantic space, screen space and interaction space, each of which must be addressed by the information architect.

The rise of ubiquitous computing may disrupt much of that conceptualisation, leaving only an abstracted link between information and user action, with that interaction itself shaping the architectural space.

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