Contemporary techniques can provide new opportunities in architectural design that can correlate with the endeavors of human progress. Great. Accepted.
Technology can provide these new means of formal expressions based on previously unavailable techniques that are now made accessible by software and hardware. Great. Accepted.
The beef I have with the Ali Rahim article is that the graphics contradict the statements. It is quite spectacular to read and ponder the possibilities of mathematical analyses of social conditions. However, regardless of the utilization of "inverse kinetics" and "vertical and gradiant field forces", the products (graphics in the article) thereof can only be shown in traditional architectural terms of cardinal elevations and obliques/axonometrics.
My frustration here is: if the argument cannot be graphically represented, or in this case when the graphics rebut the conTEXTual statements, then how can I be convinced of the validity of the text without some level of personal sympathy?
If new technology can provide new solutions to the same old agendas, then why now graphically represent these new solutions in a non-traditional standard of architectural representation?
The danger here is... when a presentation cannot be coherently achieved, it brings about great skepticism in the audience. It can almost make me wonder whether the thinker behind the project was in his/her little world unaware of the rest of the world when having sought out the overall cohesiveness of the presented material.
Or, on the contrary, the dillemma of the topic is one that restricts an author's ability to clearly represent concepts that are in "reality" both difficult to visual and impossible to formulate without sufficient technological aid. When it all have to come back to a 2-d medium and ink on paper, the argument itself suffers when taken out of the comfort of a digital environment.
I am being critical with the visual aids that I have been presented with. In an architectural sense, graphics should help to convey the idea of the complexity in the digital process, but not demean the product into an otherwise meaningless but pretty formal experience.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
I think this problem is at the root of all 'computer generated architecture.' It is why people like Greg Lynn are so successful at what they do becuase they have adequate experience in coming up with a unique idea and coming up with the appropriate graphics so support it. Others who have tried to emulate some of these landmark generators of new form have come up short because, you are right, don't have appropriate graphics, or worse, don't have appropriate foundations or methodologies in which they are basing there pretty graphics on! How can we get the best of both worlds in a new age where we all want the flashy design, but the amount of time required to completely, successfully get a unique idea across can sometimes be overwhelming? I think we need a more in depth connection with the software that we are using. I'm not sure how to go about that, but I think it would help our ability to represent unique ideas, more quickly and far more successfully.
Post a Comment