WK9 Reading

Over the past decade we have seen in architecture the emergence of complexly shaped forms and intricately articulated surfaces, enclosures, and structures, whose design and production were fundamentally enabled by the capacity of digital technologies to accurately represent and precisely fabricate artifacts of almost any complexity. With the different methods of technical reproduction of a work of art, its fitness for exhibition increased to such an extent that the quantitative shift between its two poles turned into a qualitative transformation of its nature. In a dramatic departure from the formally and materially reductive norms of much twentieth-century architecture, it is now possible to materially realize complex geometric organizational ideas that were previously unattainable. Furthermore, in a paradoxical way, the new techniques and methods of digitally enabled making are reaffirming the long forgotten notions of craft, resulting from a desire to extract intrinsic qualities of material and deploy them for particular effect. There is a close relationship of materiality in architecture to the extended realm of effects and affects. Articulation of surface and formal effects can have a tremendous affect on the experiential veracity of architecture. Digitally based technologies have introduced new spatial and formal capacities in architecture. This digital technological shift led to several lines of investigation in contemporary architecture, one aimed at seamless materially, in which fluid smoothness was primary design consideration, a second trajectory explored the outcome of digitally crafted, two and three dimensional non uniform patterns and textures, and a third sought out the unity of skin, structure and pattern. Beyond the pragmatic instrumentallty implications of manufacturing material effects lies a provocation of new ways of thinking about architecture. The idea of a harmonious whole being greater than and dependent upon the sum of its parts is examined today directly through interconnected relationships, layers of information, and a search for elegance in architecture.