Special Questions in Theory of Architecture: Architecture and Digitaliy

Abstract

This seminar explores the history of digitalization in architecture with a focus on 1990s architectural discourse. Using theoretical positions and case studies, the seminar will discuss the entanglement of conceptual, technological and practice-oriented approaches, and examine their significance for current practices.

Objective

To date, computer-based design approaches of the 1990s have been primarily discussed in the context of iconic projects and the possibilities of non-standard production methods. This seminar takes another approach to evaluating the architecture of time, by focusing on the interplay between the economic, socio-political and technological conditions of its creation. It will therefore ask: which rhetoric, semantics and aesthetics shaped architectural discourse in the 1990s? How can we grasp the modes of communication, rationales and forms of knowledge that changed architectural practice in the decade? How did architecture, economics and politics interact? Further, can contradictions within architectural discourse be disentangled, and the connections between analogue and digital modes, central to design strategies, be uncovered? To answer these questions we will look at post-structural theories and their significance for the architectural discourse and analyze the media constellations behind individual designs using different case studies. The seminar is also interested in methods that can account for the contextual specificity of digitalization in architecture. At the end of the seminar, participants will have gained an overview of various theoretical positions on the digital in architecture and have developed a sense of the continuities and patterns of transfer between digital and analogue practices that characterized 1990s architecture. Above all, students should have their own theoretical understanding about how digital media and architecture interact and how a historical perspective on the ‘digital turn’ can contribute to our understanding of current developments.

Content

The seminar will take a critical look at the characteristics of computer-based designs from the 1990s and their reference to theoretical positions. Each session provides a different vantage point from which to examine the 1990s: Contextualizing the Design Culture, Folding in Architecture and the Superfold, Organic Structures and Technical Systems, Architectural Bodies, Questioning Architectural Practice, and Political and Economic Infrastructures. We will discuss Stan Allen, Karen Burns, Jennifer Bloomer, Mario Carpo, Hélène Frichot, Catherine Ingraham, Reinhold Martin, Antoine Picon and others in order to understand how the conception of architecture was challenged when digital technologies were introduced into the design process. Projects like Big Jugs (Jennifer Bloomer), the Embryological House (Greg Lynn) as well as projects realized at the chair for Architecture and CAAD at ETH Zürich (Gerhard Schmitt, Maia Engeli) will function as case studies, enabling a discussion about dynamic conceptions of architecture, the techniques and technologies that were applied and what characterized their processes and materiality. The seminar will explore the design environment by looking closely at software applications, and how digital technologies circumscribe, transfer, transport, and model design processes, seeing which aspects of a design are made visible and which get obscured. A historical perspective will not only facilitate a critical examination of the 'digital turn' but also yield insights for future digital design approaches.

Resources