Week 1 | Analogue to Digital

The lecture will include a review of analogue methods used in design – eg: hand drawing, perspective, diagramming, physical models, and collage. This review will be provided to demonstrate how analogue methods are continuing to be used in everyday practice integrating with digital methods.

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The History of architectural practices’ disassociation from building begun in the late Renaissance, “with the introduction of perspective representation and orthographic drawings as a medium of communicating the information about buildings” - Kolarevic, B (2003), Pg. 70 [1]. With the need of external information for contractors, additional analogue methods including; orthographic abstractions, such as plans, sections and elevations were developed as they believed drawings were “a means to explore ideas, to develop theories, to speculate on matter and use, and a space in which to dream and research”. The same notion applies today as the architectural practice remains true to some traditional methods. However, at the same time, architects are choosing to “shift their attention from drawing production to digital information authoring” - Kolarevic, B (2003), Pg. 74 [2], as in this way, the adoption of more contemporary methods increase efficiency and design freedom. Frank Gehry’s office stands as a great example which explores the familiar design worlds of the analogue and the digital. In their work a more specialised and controlled design world is essential as with an extensive shape vocabulary, used in conjunction with geometric transformations, shape algebra is developed. Thus, with a more specialised vocabulary, they are able to focus “on worlds that entail high-complexity derivations” - Mitchell, W (2003), Pg. 85 [3], and provide the architectural world with complex architectural masterpieces such as the Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao. It is with this correlation we can establish that the practice of design and the art of architecture, can establish that "Whenever we attempt to speak, write or otherwise represent aspects of our experience and understanding of physical reality we are entering into a modelling relationship with the world" - Starkey, B (2005) Pg. 265 [4] to which connects what we envision digitally to what exists within our physical realm.

Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao

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r e f e r e n c e s

[1] [2]: Kolarevic, B. (2003). Information Master Builders. Architecture in the digital age : design and manufacturing. B. Kolarevic. New York, NY, Spon, Press: Pp. 69-74

[3]: Mitchell, W. (2003). Design Worlds and Fabrication Machines. Architecture in the digital age : design and manufacturing. B. Kolarevic. New York, NY, Spon Press: Pp. 83-88.

[4]: Starkey, B. (2005). "Architectural models: material, intellectual, spiritual." Arq : Architectural Research Quarterly 9(3-4):Pp. 265-272.