Chris Abel

"I have always enjoyed the writings of Chris Abel. They are full of surprising insights and provocative connections between such diverse issues as history, technology and ecology"

Norman Foster, Founder, Foster + Partners

"Chris Abel is a nomad in the intellectual as well as the geographical sense. The result is always unconventional and challenging, and sometimes impressively prescient"

Colin Davies, The Architectural Review

"Abel does the work of a horde of architectural critics writing all at the same time from all over the globe’

Ken Yeang, Hamzah & Yeang

"For anyone interested in actually understanding the radical responses of architecture to the changing times, Abel offers a powerful perspective built over many years of reflection that is more relevant than ever"

Anthony Burke, University of Technology Sydney

"‘Having been taught by Chris I can testify to his passion and knowledge. VAST is amongst the very best in advanced tall building studios internationally"

Antony Wood, Executive Director, CTBUH

"This exhibition and book come at a crucial moment in the development of our cities…not because such approaches are the ultimate expression of the Modernist project or of a particular aesthetic, but because they can help to solve the problem of the growth of our cities"

Norman Foster, Founder, Foster + Partners

"It really makes me look at nearly everything I do with a critical eye; everything from the products I consume, to my design choices. It has added an entirely new dimension to the way I analyse architecture and lifestyles"

Student Andrews, on a climate change seminar, UNL

Cyberspace

In their eagerness to escape their physical 'prisons', cybernauts have forgotten that our body is the one thing they actually rely upon for being able to think about and relate to the world, as well as to move about in it. The ability to see things as objects located in space and separate from ourselves, is itself dependent upon having a physical body as a constant frame of reference - indeed, it is the only sure constant in any personal life. By the same token, any conceptual separation or objectification of mind and body arises from a process of thinking which is only made possible by our having a body which we can look out from and measure other things by. The detachment of the mind from the body involved in cybernaut's fantasies is pure illusion - one that can never be realized without destroying the very mentality it is supposed to preserve and to strengthen.

What actually happens when anyone uses the Net and tries to visualize it and make it more 'real', as the language used by all the writers quoted from here clearly shows, is that we 'inhabit' cyberspace pretty much as we inhabit any physical realm, by metaphorical extension of ourselves. We assimilate the 'non-spatial' realm of cyberspace into the spatial world we already know. In so doing, we humanize what might otherwise appear a lot stranger than it already is. That may also be an illusion, but it is one that confirms and enhances - not threatens - our special way of being.

From: 'Cyberspace in Mind,' in C. Abel, Architecture, Technology and Process. Architectural Press, 2004, p. 56-57.