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From Blueprint to Digital Model: The Information Age, Archives and the Future of Architectural History*
Get PDFThe digital revolution has not only transformed the process of thinking and making architecture,but has also led to shifts for researchers in the field and the institutions that safeguard and interpretevidence of the architect's design process. As the rise of PowerPoint made it less cumbersometo view multiple images simultaneously, pioneering art historian Heinrich Wöfflin's morelimited binary lantern slide presentation was effectively rendered obsolete. However, digital imagingand projection in the field brought risks as great as the new freedoms it afforded. The shiftfrom a work environment dominated until recently by drawings on paper and architectural models(even as CAD was being implemented over the last 20 years) to one dominated by digitaldesign and 3D modeling has irrevocably affected the ways contemporary architects produceand save their drawings as well as how they are stored and accessed in archives, how they aredisplayed, and how they are published. As technology has brought new horizons to the profession,the image of the architect has gone from the solitary scholar of Medieval architecture depictedby A. W. N. Pugin in 1841 to that of savvy manager overseeing large firms like Foster +Partners; the historian too has shed the image of recluse toiling in the bowels of a dusty archiveor library.
The Changes in Architecture Terminology
Get PDFThe intention of this research is to inspire a discussion about the changes in architecture terminologywith the revolution in communication and representation forms as a result of digitalisation.The blurred boundary between the virtual and the analogue worlds, the misunderstandings andthe confusion that appear with the interaction of these two worlds nowadays form the major problems facing architectural design, education and research. The researchers in this field arefocused on the interface, the meeting and the transformation point between the digital and analogue worlds in order to prevent those problems and confusions. One of the main reasonsof this ambiguity is the architectural terminology that changes according to the changing status of architectural representation i.e. new forms of representation; new forms of communicationi.e. the new role of the architect and the researcher.Whenever and wherever information and knowledge specialised is created, communicated ortransformed terminology is involved in a way or another. An absence of terminology is combined with an absence of an understanding of concepts. Therefore with the new information and communication technologies; new and developing subject areas the existence of terminology and its update is indispensable. Thus the changing status of the terminology must be analysed. As architecture terminology is essential to improve today's challenging, multidisciplinary communication in order to clarify the problems of ambiguity and unawareness (as a result of shift of specific architectural vocabulary) it is necessary to analyse the changes in the architectural terminology which will form the discussion point of the following paper.As this paper is the beginning step of a research project which started on the occasion of the conference proposed by EAAE/ARCC we will here present only the objectives of this research,its general problematics, the methods that we wish to develop and some provisional results likethe illustration of this approach to be followed
Editorial: Architecture as a Communicative Medium
Get PDFEnvironmental psychology categorizes "physicalenvironment” as "typically neutral,” only coming into selfconscious awareness when individuals form stable andenduring representations of it [1]. We see this manifest inthe real world when the steeple of a church is able to communicate that it is a place for reflection and religious gathering; the bricks and ivy of Harvard Yard signifies years of scholarly research and education; the solid grey walls ofa prison conjures up images of torture and punishment; and the bright colors of a playground indicates play and joyfulness. In our relationship with architecture, we are ableto construct an understanding of our environment becausewe pick up such clues and cues from parts of ourenvironment and then construct a formulation of the whole based on our memories and knowledge. Thus, we are ableto communicate with the places we live in and the placeswe live in are able to act as interfaces for information interchange
Formal Modulation for Acoustic Performances of a Bridge
No full textIn the last fifteen years in architecture the frequent use of design instruments such as algorithms,dynamical relations, parametric systems, mapping, morphogenesis, cellular automata and bifurcationwith broken symmetry shows clearly how contemporary thinking in mathematics andphysical sciences, dealing with complex dynamics, non-linear systems, chaos, emergent properties,resilience, etc., has changed the way we think about design and the life of today's cities
Introduction
Get PDFThis issue contains ten papers presented at the 2008 EAAE/ARCC International Conferenceheld in Denmark. The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture, inCopenhagen graciously and superbly hosted the EAAE/ARCC 2008 conference entitled"Changes of Paradigms in the Basic Understanding of Architectural Research. ArchitecturalResearch and the Digital World.” The papers that follow were selected from over fifty presentedat the conference. The moderators of each paper session and members of the conferenceorganizing committee selected these papers for special recognition. These papers werethen blind peer-reviewed and two papers were selected to receive the designation as ‘BestPaper', one represents the ARCC and one represents the EAAE.Excerpts from the 2008 Conference Introductio
An Embodied Architecture
Get PDFAn architecture of the body is emerging out of theories of biology, complexity, and systems through the use of an evolving organism as its metaphor. Autopoiesis is the term used by biologists to describe the realm of existence for a living organism as it slides between the interchange of structure and information. Incoming information is filtered through the organism for its usefulness in the art of staying alive. Structural or organizational changes evolve as the organism adjusts to new information. To remain a viable organism”to survive”means that an entity must keep evolving without surrendering identity. Humans must maintain an embodied identity, often referred to as an organized self (Maturana & Varela, 1980, 1987), while viably exchanging information with other entities and the environment. This operation creates a topological boundary across which the communication takes place. Cognitive theorists and researchers have proposed that the animal condition is one of Embodied Realism; that is, animals such as we humans, are embodied, using our bodies to create basic metaphors, and, that we do this in a"real” world. The role of cognition in this equation is to allow humans the use of embodiment to explore abstract ideas through metaphor”such as "grasping an idea” (Lakoff &Johnson, 2003). In doing so, it allows the invention of an evolving language that refers to things "outside” our skin,like other entities and places. Autopoiesis describes the activities at the "edge” or boundary of an organism. The linguistic act can, therefore, be identified as fundamental medium for communication in the edge, between inside and outside, that assures the autopoiesis of place.In our own bodies, flesh is the biological manifest of the edge or boundary condition. Our understanding of flesh is that it is another of our organs; and at the same time, all organs are also bounded by flesh. It serves as a porous filter, delicate and complicated”it is our body boundary. The "flesh” or the lived body (Merleau-Ponty, 1968) is moreover, an inbetween concept that articulates the subjective mind to the objective world. It bridges the boundaries separating inside from outside. Thus, it could act as a metaphor for introducing the notion of edge in architectural place. The edge itself then, embodies the embodied being. Buildings have boundaries of foundation, wall, or roof, parts of which could be thought of as the"skin.” In today's practice, the various skins of a building have become more complicated and porous as the field of architecture extends itself into "systemic” conditions, within and without. It follows then that the body survives the interaction and communication between mind and theexternal world if it inhabits the edge of place embodying localized boundary metaphors. Architecture is beginning the process of aligning itself with a new moral code”one that is inclusive of our biological reality, the embodiment of ideas, systemic evolution, and ecological necessities. This paper is situated within this new moral code of systemic ecological and biologicalinteractions
Preserving and documenting the Cultural Heritage
Get PDFThe phenomenon of preservation may be described as a physical process that depends onconceptual facts. When observed from a conceptual point of view, ‘values' cause the divergencesin the preservation process, which could be named as the pre-requisites of the construction.Values carry emotional and physical points of view. The emotional context, of course, dependson recognizing and remembering while physical context depends on direction of research. They are indicators of cultural characteristics and historical identity. ‘Cultural values'1, more over, explains the meanings attributed to the cultural property, which meanings will be preserved, and the reasons for their preservation. On behalf of this context, the preservation process may be defined as the preservation of the cultural heritage within an effective system. This effective system isaimed at attaining the total quality as a result of a synthesis of the technology, technique, and material originally deployed with those of the present. Besides, one of the most important inputin the preservation process is the priorities of the intervention to be held, as the latter will determine the decisions and types of intervention during the implementation phase of the preservation project. As a significant paradox, the most important parameter that shapes both a preservationproject and its process appears to be the risks that consist of indefinite input preventing theproject from a proper definition of its context. Since all physical problems and the social statusof the cultural property to be preserved have direct impact upon the design process of thepreservation project, these priorities and the risks should be clarified in the course of pre-assessment phase at the beginning of the preservation process
On dependencies between architecture and media: considering the remote work
Get PDFTo consider architecture as a communicative medium requires acknowledgment of the necessity of mediating artifacts suchas drawings, models, and photographs, insofar as these artifacts provide structure for communication and discourse. In this essay, I examine the criticality of mediating artifacts to architecture's communicative potential by proposing a tactical identity between the act of architectural design and the study of architectural precedent. In both situations, mediating artifacts incorporate decisions and assumptions about how architectural significance should be communicated.I propose two hypotheses as frames within which to discuss architecture's dependence on mediating artifacts. First, the Neutral Frame hypothesis suggests that significant attributesof a work of architecture are capable of disclosure regardless of the medium through which these attributes are "filtered.” By contrast, the Production Bias hypothesis holds that significant attributes of a work of architecture can be identified as unique to a medium of investigation, and furthermore, that in some cases it may not be possible to disclose a given attribute by any other means. By considering existing photographs of a completed work of architecture (Crown Hall in Chicago,Illinois) in two ways, first through computer-aided manipulation and second by diagramming superimposed fields-of-view of photographs from two distinct sources, I suggest that the Production Bias hypothesis is the better explanation of architecture's relationship to mediating artifacts
Intuition as Design Dialogue: Discovering a Language beyond Words
Get PDFHenri Bergson considered the truest form of knowing to be attainable only through acts of intuition, as he believed the intuitive state created a direct connection to reality itself.For architecture, a field that is grounded in experience, it is important to balance the drive of the intellect with intuitive strategies, which help move toward the unification of data under an experiential aegis. Drawing primarily upon the writings of Bergson and Martin Heidegger, this paper describes how the reductive proclivities of the intellect tend to obscure the embodied insights of intuition, and how the listening response of intuition reveals a primal language that is activated by the immersed dialogue of one experiencing the world
Digitizing freeways: researching urban resources
Get PDFAt the beginning of his study on Los Angeles Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four EcologiesReyner Banham writes " ... like earlier generations of English intellectuals who taught themselvesItalian in order to read Dante in the original, I learned to drive in order to read Los Angeles in theoriginal (Banham 1971:23).” Banham implies, that Los Angeles can only be experienced whiledriving. The metropolis, the ‘urban sprawl', cannot be experienced walking but only through thecar. ‘Autopia' became one of the ‘Four Ecologies' of Los Angeles and he states that the ‘automotiveexperience' "prints itself deeply on the conscious mind and unthinking reflexes (ibid.:214).”Cees Nooteboom draws upon this image of the city in his essay " ‘Autopia'(1973) and Passagesfrom ‘The Language of Images'(1987)” and writes about the character of Los Angeles: "Itis, if one can say this, a ‘moving' city, not only a city that moves itself – breaks itself down, buildsitself up again, displaces and regroups itself – but also a city in which movement, freedom ofmovement, is a strong premise of life (Nooteboom 2001:15).” Nooteboom continues how theeveryday live depends upon the system of the road. The constant Movement of the city repeatsitself: "The other cars are mirror images of you in your car. You are driving behind yourself andin front of yourself, next to yourself and opposite yourself, you are the taillights of the one in frontof you. Everything is on the move (ibid.:21).