Larry D Busbea

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Courses

Scholarly Contributions

Books

• Busbea, L. D. (2021). Proxemics: Social Construction/Environmental Design. Columbia University Books on Architecture and the City.
• Busbea, L. D. (2020). The Responsive Environment: Aesthetics, Design, and the Human in the 1970s. University of Minnesota Press.
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  monograph
• Busbea, L. D. (2020). The Responsive Environment. University of Minnesota Press.
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  In The Responsive Environment, Larry D. Busbea takes up the concept of environment as an object and method of design at the height of its aesthetic, technical, and discursive elaboration. Exploring emerging paradigms of environmental perception, patterning, and control, he shows how living space itself was reimagined as a domain capable of modification through input from its newly sensitized inhabitants.
• Busbea, L. D. (2007). Topologies: The Urban Utopia in France. MIT Press.

Chapters

• Busbea, L. D. (2019). Geometries of Thinking. In The Situationist Times. Torpedo Press, Oslo.
• Busbea, L. D. (2019). Pattern Watchers. In The Culture of Nature in Design. Routledge.
• Busbea, L. D. (2017). Arcoconsciousness. In Paolo Soleri: The City is Nature. Scottsdale: Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art.
• Busbea, L. D. (2011). "The Neo-Constructivist Environment". In Revisiting the Rhetorical Masters of the Neo-Avant-Garde(pp n/a). Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico.
• Busbea, L. D. (2011). Paolo Soleri and the Nonorganic Life of Architecture. In Making a Geologic Turn. Metropolis/DAP.
• Busbea, L. D. (2010). "Arcosanti vs. Onecity". In In Print. Columbia University.
• Busbea, L. D. (2010). "The Neo-Constructivist Environment". In Revisiting the Rhetorical Masters of the Neo-Avant-Garde(pp n/a). Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico.
• Busbea, L. D. (2009). "Arcosanti vs. Onecity". In In Print. Columbia University.
• Busbea, L. D. (2009). "The Neo-Constructivist Environment". In Revisiting the Rhetorical Masters of the Neo-Avant-Garde(pp n/a). Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico.
• Busbea, L. D. (2007). "Toward Superland". In Architecture + Art: New Visions, New Strategies(p. 159). Helsinki: Alvar Aalto Academy.

Journals/Publications

• Busbea, L. D. (2016). Soft Control Material: Environment and Design, c. 1970. Journal of Design History, 30(1), 1-18.
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  This article explores the conception and development of Soft Control Material (SCM) (1968–1974) as a key case in the mutually in ected development of post-war design and the emergence of the concept of environment. Designed by Warren M. Brodey and Avery R. Johnson, SCM was a suite of interdependent technologies—high and low, digital and analog—comprising a sponge-like material made from foam and/or Freon- lled plastic bladders, special types of valves, and various articulated cladding surfaces. According to its inventors, SCM was not a nite object with a distinct form but was ultimately conceived of as a self-organizing, biomimetic metastructure (both tool and toy) for facilitating new types of human-environment communication; a ‘medium’ that might, in Brodey’s words, ‘provide instantaneous feedback and thereby allow infolding with time, memory, energy, [and] relation.’ These, in turn, would effect for the subject a virtuous topology of environmental discovery, new types of ecological and ‘inter- species’ relationships and, ultimately, a conscious evolution of humanity.Keywords: design—design culture—ecological design—history of technology—environmental design—cybernetics
• Busbea, L. D. (2015). McLuhan's Environment: The End (and The Beginnings) of Architecture. Aggregate Online Platform.
• Busbea, L. D. (2015). McLuhan's Environment: The End (and The Beginnings) of Architecture. We-Aggregate.org.
• Busbea, L. D. (2013). Kineticism-Spectacle-Environment. October, 92-114.
• Busbea, L. D. (2013). Paolo Soleri and the Aesthetics of Irreversibility. Royal Institute of British Architects Journal of Architecture, 18(6), 781-808.
• Busbea, L. D. (2012). The Minor Installation of Luca Frei. The Minor Installation of Luca Frei.
• Busbea, L. D. (2011). The Minor Installation of Luca Frei. The Minor Installation of Luca Frei.
• Busbea, L. D. (2009). "Metadesign: Object and Environment in France, c. 1970". Design Issues, 103 - 119.
• Busbea, L. D. (2007). "Les Arcitectes et mai 68" book review. Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (Dec., 2005), 123-125.
• Busbea, L. D. (2006). "Yves Klein's Air Architecture" exhibition review. Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (Dec., 2005), 1500.

Presentations

• Busbea, L. D. (2015, June 2015). Soft Control Material. Ecological Histories of Design. Rachel Carson Center, Munich Germany: Rachel Carson Center & University of Oslo.
• Busbea, L. D. (2013, November). Environment as Material. Futures Past: Design and the Machine. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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  Major symposium inspired by the work of Nicholas Negroponte and the Architecture Machine Group at MIT.
• Busbea, L. D. (2012, Spring). Video Environments and the Subjects of Modern Architecture. College Art Association Annual Conference. Los Angeles.
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  Panel Speaker
• Busbea, L. D. (2012, Summer). Consciousness Design. European Architectural History Network Conference. Brussels.
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  Panel Speaker
• Busbea, L. D. (2010, Fall). Luca Frei's So-called Utopias. South Eastern College Art Conference. Richmond, VA.
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  Individual Presenter
• Busbea, L. D. (2010, Spring). Arcosanti vs. ONECITY. In Print: The Buell Conference in the History of Architecture. Columbia University.
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  Individual Presenter
• Busbea, L. D. (2009, Fall). "The Environmental Conditions of Neo-Constructivism". Abstracion in the Public Sphere: New Approaches. Snite Museum, University of Notre Dame.
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  Individual Presenter
• Busbea, L. D. (2008, Fall). The Neo-Constructivist Envrironment. Lecture Series. Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico.
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  Individual Presenter
• Busbea, L. D. (2008, Spring). From the Synthesis of the Arts to the Activated Spectator. College Art Association Annual Conference. Dallas, TX.
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  Individual Presenter
• Busbea, L. D. (2008, Spring). The Neo-Constructivist Envrironment. Lecture Series. Oberlin College.
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  Individual Presenter
• Busbea, L. D. (2007, April, 2007). Architecture and Mass Culture, International Responses, 1955-1975. Meeting of the Society of Architectural Historians. Pittsburgh, PA.
• Busbea, L. D. (2007, Fall). "From Mythologies to Metadesign". 50 years of Mythologies: Barthes, Design and Popular Culture. Pratt Institute, NY.
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  Individual Presenter
• Busbea, L. D. (2007, Spring). Chair, "Architecture and Mass Culture". Society of Architectural Historians Annual meeting. Pittsburgh, PA.

Reviews

• Busbea, L. D. (2017. A House in the Sun Book Review(pp 1257-1261). Journal of Architecture.
• Busbea, L. D. (2015. The Robotic Touch: How Robots Change Architecture.
• Busbea, L. D. (2014. Paolo Soleri: Mesa City to Arcosanti. CAA Reviews.
• Busbea, L. D. (2014. Spatial Ecologies, by Verena Andermat-Conley. H-France Reviews.
• Busbea, L. D. (2012. Caroline Maniaque-Benton, French Encounters with the American Counterculture, 1960-1980.(pp 1 - 3). H-France.net.
• Busbea, L. D. (2012. Utopie: Texts and Projects, 1967—1978 and French Encounters with the American Counterculture, 1960–1980(pp 1049 - 1055). Royal Institute of British Architects Journal of Architecture.
• Busbea, L. D. (2007. “Les architectes et mai 68 by Jean-Louis Violeau”. Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians.

Others

• Busbea, L. D. (2019, January). "Maldonado's Environment," foreward to Design, Nature, & Revolution. University of Minnesota Press. https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/design-nature-and-revolution
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  new foreward to a reprint of a classic text.