astronomy

Mark Wigley

Mark Wigley is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Mark Wigley rather than just read about it. In short: Mark Antony Wigley (born 1956) is a New Zealand-born architectural historian and critic based in the United States. He is a Professor of Architecture at the Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation.

Key takeaways

Mark Wigley belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Mark Wigley to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Mark Wigley from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Mark Antony Wigley (born 1956) is a New Zealand-born architectural historian and critic based in the United States. He is a Professor of Architecture at the Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. From 2004 to 2014, he was the Dean of Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation.

Career Wigley received both his Bachelor of Architecture (1979) and Ph.D. (1987) from the University of Auckland, New Zealand. Mike Austin was his doctoral supervisor. Wigley left Auckland in 1986 and taught at Princeton University, from 1987 to 1999, serving also as the director of Graduate Studies at Princeton’s School of Architecture. In 1988, Wigley co-curated with Philip Johnson the MoMA exhibition Deconstructivist Architecture. The exhibition featured the works of seven architects, who were already well-known at the time for a style of architecture that involved in various ways "deconstructing" conventional notions of architectural convention: Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Peter Eisenman, Daniel Libeskind, Bernard Tschumi, Rem Koolhaas and Coop Himmelb(l)au. The curators linked the works to the philosophical notion of Deconstruction, as espoused by French philosopher Jacques Derrida, as well as the art-architectural historical precedent of Russian constructivism, and several works from this period were displayed in the exhibition. However, of the architects involved only Eisenman and Tschumi acknowledged the connection to Derrida.

Volume In 2005, Wigley founded Volume Magazine together with Rem Koolhaas and Ole Bouman. A collaborative project by Archis (Amsterdam), AMO Rotterdam and C-lab (Columbia University NY), Volume Magazine is an experimental think tank focusing on the process of spatial and cultural reflexivity. The magazine aims to explore "beyond architecture’s definition of 'making buildings'" by presenting global views on architecture and design, broader attitudes to social structures and created environments, and embodies progressive journalism. Created and founded in collaboration with Brett Steele, the Institute of Failure; essentially an academic institution for the instruction and theory of failure (as opposed to success).

Awards Wigley was awarded the Resident Fellowship, Chicago Institute for Architecture and Urbanism, 1989; International Committee of Architectural Critics (C.I.C.A.) Triennial Award for Architectural Criticism, 1990; and the Graham Foundation Grant, 1997.

Personal life Mark Wigley is married to architectural historian Beatriz Colomina.

Exhibitions Deconstructivist Architecture, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 23 June to 30 August 1988 (with Philip Johnson) Constant — New Babylon, Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam, 21 November 1997 to 10 January 1998 The American Lawn: Surface of Everyday Life, Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal, 16 June 1998 to 8 November 1998 (with Beatriz Colomina, Elizabeth Diller, Alessandra Ponte, Ricardo Scofidio, Georges Teyssot, and Mark Wasiuta) Another City for Another Life: Constant’s New Babylon, The Drawing Center, New York, 2 November 1999 to 30 December 1999 Laboratories: Six Young Architectural Firms in the CCA Galleries, Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal, 18 April 2002 to 15 September 2002 (with Frédéric Migayrou) out of the box: price rossi stirling + matta-clark, Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal, 23 October 2003 to 6 September 2004 (with Marco de Michelis, Philip Ursprung, Anthony Vidler, Hubertus von Amelunxen, and Mirko Zardini)

Bibliography (With Philip Johnson) Deconstructivist Architecture. New York: The Museum of Modern Art; Boston: Little Brown and Company; Distributed by New York Graphic Society Books, 1988. ISBN 087070298X The Architecture of Deconstruction: Derrida's Haunt. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1993. ISBN 0262731142 White Walls, Designer Dresses: The Fashioning of Modern Architecture. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1995. ISBN 0262731452 Constant's New Babylon: The Hyper-Architecture of Desire. Rotterdam: Witte de With, Center for Contemporary Art, 1998. ISBN 9064503435 (Edited with Catherine De Zegher) The Activist Drawing: Retracing Situationist Architectures from Constant's New Babylon to Beyond. New York: The Drawing Center, 2001. ISBN 026204191X (With James Graham). Cutting Matta-Clark. The Anarchitecture Project. Zürich: Lars Müller Publishers; New York: Columbia University GSAPP, 2014. ISBN 9783037784273 Buckminster Fuller Inc.: Architecture in the Age of Radio. Zürich: Lars Müller Publishers, 2015. ISBN 3037784288 (With Beatriz Colomina). Are We Human? : Notes on an Archaeology of Design. Zürich: Lars Müller Publishers, 2016. ISBN 303778511X Cutting Matta-Clark. The Anarchitecture Investigation. Zürich: Lars Müller Publishers; Montreal: Canadian Centre for Architecture; New York: Columbia University GSAPP, 2018. ISBN 9783037784273 Konrad Wachsmann's Television: Post-architectural Transmissions (Critical Spatial Practice, Band 11), London: Sternberg Press 2020

References

External links

17 September 2006 Hammer Conversation with Mark Wigley and Wolfgang Tillmans Columbia University faculty Biography Volume Magazine Interview Mark Wigley

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Mark Wigley

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Mark Wigley claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Mark Wigley before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Mark Wigley ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Mark Wigley

In research: Mark Wigley appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Mark Wigley in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Mark Wigley is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1956 births, American architecture writers, American male non-fiction writers, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Mark Wigley outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Mark Wigley in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Mark Wigley means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Mark Wigley out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Mark Wigley in simple terms?

Why does Mark Wigley matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Mark Wigley?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Mark Wigley.