“big data” is not a mere quantitative phenomenon. It is a major shift in the history of science, technology and in modern (or, rather, post-modern) culture at large. Our approach to digital computation is longer that of the 90s, and today digitally intelligent architecture no longer looks the way it did twenty years ago.

Mario Carpo graduated from the University of Florence in 1983 with a degree in architectural history. From 1984 to 1987 he was a researcher at the European University Institute, where he received a doctoral degree in modern history; he was then an Assistant Professor at the University of Geneva (1987−1993). In 1993 received tenure in France, where he was first assigned to the École d’Architecture de Saint-Etienne, then to the École d’Architecture de Paris-La Villette. He was the Vincent Scully Visiting Professor of Architectural History at Yale University from 2010 to 2014. In 2014 he was appointed Professor of Architectural History at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL London. Dr Carpo was also a visiting professor in several universities in Europe and in the United States, including the University of Geneva, the University of Florence, the University of Copenhagen, Cornell University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Williams College. He was a scholar in residence at the Getty Research Institute in 2000 – 2001, a resident at the American Academy in Rome in 2004, and a scholar in residence at tne National Gallery of Art (Washington) in 2014. He was the head of the Study Centre at the Centre Canadien d’Architecture in Montréal between 2002 and 2006.

Mario Carpo’s research and publications focus on the relationship between architectural theory, cultural history, and the history of media and information technology. His publications include and The Digital Turn in Architecture, 1992 – 2012, an AD Reader (Wiley, 2012); The Alphabet and the Algorithm (MIT Press, 2011; also translated into other languages); a monograph on the work of Swiss architect Valerio Olgiati (2008, co-authored); Architecture in the Age of Printing (MIT Press, 2001; also translated into other languages), a commentary on Leon Battista Alberti’s Descriptio Urbis Romae (2000 and 2007, co-authored, also translated into other languages); La maschera e il modello (1993); Metodo e ordini nella teoria architettonica dei primi moderni (1993). He co-edited a volume of essays on the technologies of architectural representations (Perspective, Projections and Design , 2007). His recent essays and articles are published in the Log, The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Grey Room, L’Architecture d’aujourd’hui, Arquitectura Viva, AD/​Architectural Design, Perspecta, Harvard Design Magazine, Cornell Journal of Architecture, Abitare, Lotus International, Domus, Arforum, and Arch+ .