28 November 2016

Week 13- avoiding digital pitfalls

1.   Picon says, “It is not that the computer in itself has changed architecture; it is that, because both nature and society have changed, architecture is confronted with new challenges.” What kinds of challenges may Allen be referring to when he says this? Clients? Form? Scale and proportion?

2. Are we as designers/ architects forming a boundary by involving our practice with computer technology and the virtual realm? Or is our practice dependent on evolution an investigation using different production methodologies?

3. Picon says computer-generated forms can’t reach the same status of architectural form that is derived from after research and development. What does that say towards parametric design aided by computers? Or the Data Forms we worked on recently? Do these examples pertain to the conversation?

4. Allen starts his second hypothesis by saying that architecture is amongst the disciplines that utilizes computes for their compatibility with the physical and virtual world. He continues by saying that computers get even more interesting when you use them to produce things other than images; referring to milling, fabrication, and plotting. And although this has been great and aiding with production of models, prints, and manufacturing, it seems that we are stopping short of what is capable. Is there more that we can use/do with the technology at hand?

5.  According to Allen, we are now in an era in which new architects are taught solely on the digital platform and first generation digitally trained architects have evolved their skills into a phase that he says is more mature and less complex. He says that as designers they’ve found new potentials between the digital and analog and at the same time they’re realistic with the outcomes and limitations of the computers. What does this say in regards to the future of learning and practice of architecture?

1 comment:

Abigail Rohlinger said...

1) Picon states “Architectural form used to appear as the ultimate result of a process of research.” However, he believes computer-generated architectural form cannot boast being of a similar status. Do you agree with his statement that these new forms are merely “an arbitrary stop in an endless process”? With a form of infinite possibilities, what allows us to say a form is complete?

2) In the reading, Picon interprets producers of architecture, as well as those for whom architecture is being produced, as cyborgs. A combination of man and machine. Should architects view computers as merely an extension of their drawing hand and traditional tools or do digital drawings offer a different interpretation?

3) Allen states "visualization presumes abstraction as a liability to overcome". Should designers be expending so much of their time and resources to imitate reality when a similar understanding of a project can be deduced from arbitrary color and line work?

4) The traditional approach to architecture is the movement of focus from general to specific, creating a gradual zoom into the building. However, today's technology allows us to jump from detail to whole and back again in an instant. Does this new motion through the process have an adverse effect? Are parts of the building left more developed then others?

5) In the reading, Allen quotes Paul Virilio who states "the field of freedom shrinks with speed". Does the ability to have instantaneous drawings and renderings having a negative effect on our process of development? Do we limit our ability of exploration with such immediacy?