Abstract 2

Techniques and Technology/Temporality and Time


Innovations in technology and materials and their applications in history is what leads to large changes in the way architects design. Defying convention and moving the field forward with new techniques of design is what defines unique architecture. But not only does technology pave the way for new techniques in architecture, individual technological landmarks develop and become more efficient tools. Techniques usually derive from fields not necessarily related to the construction of buildings, but can also be discovered in developments in other professions or even phenomena in nature. Technologies are useful for making the practice and application of architecture more efficient in terms of process, but they may not necessarily be used for design tools. CAD is useful for precisely drawing construction documents, but is not necessarily the best tool to facilitate a creative process as 3d modeling has been used recently. 3d modeling however also runs the risk of being a commonly used tool to quickly illustrate details of form rather than a tool to synthesize a scheme through iterations of design through transformations.
Temporal issues in architecture are generally destructive forces that negatively affect a building, but can also be utilized in the design process. Using two pseudo-scientific interpretations of the properties of time, it can be concluded that paths can be reversible producing an identical effect with a differing directional quantity in the vector, but a process, when inverted, creates a different effect. The process itself is mirrored and thus different, such as a physical state change of molecules. These two methods can be utilized in design in the way of studying the differences in form of an object over time. Through analyzing such changes, design can be influenced to produce unique concepts.

Assignment 2: Rendering

Reading 1: Digital Morphogenesis

Reading 1:Digital Morphogenesis Emile LeJeune
ADGM 320



Only in the past two decades out of the enormous spectrum of time architecture has been around has design started to shift from physical design method and representation to almost exclusively digital processes for some prominent firms. This change has brought many new methods of designing from computational processes. From digitally influenced development, many unique projects that break the bounds of traditional architecture practiced in the past.

The danger of this shift is that design may be derived from arbitrary sources and evolve only within the limitations of a program's sparse functions. Without well-informed design, architecture can transform into worthless manipulation of numbers without relevance to the project in question. Digital design should rely on using the power available in modeling programs to create groundbreaking schemes rather than just 'playing with shapes.'

As long as designers are aware of these pitfalls and avoid them, digital design is a potent tool for creating dynamic architecture that doesn't start with a plan drawing and grows from the base to become a static object. Digital design allows for manipulation of forms with the ability to immediately see the results and implications of changes.

Architecture in the past has relied on Euclidean geometries as inspiration for traditional form in design. A sort of vernacular in a sense that all architecture derives influence from regardless of the true cultural vernacular. Digital design partly uses Euclidean geometries to manipulate, but also gives the possibility of mathematically based non-euclidean geometries.

Design cannot solely rely on one method, it must rely on multiple tools, both digital and physical to create a well-informed and soundly based scheme. Digital tools are just that, tools, not design factories.