In the last twenty years new techmologies have changed our lives. Also the urban landscape changed immensely. New media and a drastically increased individual mobility have altered the way we perceive, use and inhabit it. This has begun to change its structure from within. Digital technologies revolutionize architecture as a profession. They change the design process, the production and the way architecture appears. Architecture has become part of the media industry, with all consequences.

'Reality Bytes' brings together a collection of essays on these themes and issues, written by Bart Lootsma and until now published only scattered over different magazines and books in different languages. "Byte" is a unit of digital information used in information technology and most commonly consists of eight bits. Reality Bytes is also the title of an essay by Bart Lootsma, in which he investigates the relationship between society and architects and town planners.

In the last twenty years new techmologies have changed our lives. Also the urban landscape changed immensely. New media and a drastically increased individual mobility have altered the way we perceive, use and inhabit it. This has begun to change its structure from within. Digital technologies revolutionize architecture as a profession. They change the design process, the production and the way architecture appears. Architecture has become part of the media industry, with all consequences.

'Reality Bytes' brings together a collection of essays on these themes and issues, written by Bart Lootsma and until now published only scattered over different magazines and books in different languages. "Byte" is a unit of digital information used in information technology and most commonly consists of eight bits. Reality Bytes is also the title of an essay by Bart Lootsma, in which he investigates the relationship between society and architects and town planners.

Bart Lootsma, Professor of Architecture as well as architectural historian, critic and curator, is one of the most multi-faceted figures amongst contemporary architectural theorists. He has produced numerous publications, including "Superdutch", an appraisal of contemporary architecture in the Netherlands published in 2000. In Reality Bytes he has now for the first time compiled hitherto (mostly) unpublished texts on architectural theory, on Second Modernism, on populism and architecture, on landscape architecture and on the changing role of architects in society.