GSD Talks: “Emerging Issues in Architectural Representation

By now, most architects have mastered the standard softwares for design conceptualization and representation. However, it is only recently that we have begun to critically rethink the techniques and conventions of representation that have defined the discipline over hundreds of years. This event will focus a discussion around emerging issues in architectural representation that include orthographic and post-orthographic projection, extrusion, massing, material and computational color, movement, automation, and questions about authorship and appropriation. Presentations by Jennifer Bonner MArch ’09, assistant professor of Architecture, and Zeina Koreitem MDes ’16, design critic in architecture; moderated by Michael Hays, Eliot Noyes Professor of Architectural Theory and interim chair of the Department of Architecture.

[@MetamorphicThought]

Red vs. blue picnic blanket is really where this conversation should have gone.

[@petez4608]

Really wish that Archigram had been brought up as an obvious, but useful case study as part of the history of representation.

[@albewillbuild]

Very interesting and inspiring topic! It seems that these representations are based on a rapidly regenerating and repetitive processes resulting in form, pattern and texture. Have these processes led us to a point where color has superseded the notion of the interactions of space and light? Has our architectural perceptions and spectrum grown at such depth that light is too broad of a descriptive term and the gradients of color allows us to represent with greater precision. Also, it seems that space may be defined less in terms of voided volumes but rather through actual movements of diagrammatic forces and time. In the past, we were not able to efficiently map this movement through space, thus, space was merely a series of volumes or lack of volume with movement as an implication. Through these representations we are able to transcend the traditional notion of space and move into the fourth dimension of time with regenerative movements being the vehicle as a time tracking device.
If this is true, then my challenging question would be: at what level of representation do we get to a fifth dimension? Is there a such thing? Maybe that notion of autonomy is a fifth dimension. I say this because autonomy requires time as an operational construct but it is not bound by it. Is the fifth dimension an environment that has to be autonomous as it is the only means to elevate beyond human limitations?
That brings up an infinite number of conversations which is exciting. Maybe our role as architects on this earth was to help envision and develop the technology that would inevitably replace us? Maybe we are always unconsciously fabricating elements that are able to see beyond our limits; maybe that is our sole purpose? Even more interesting is: this technology would live on for millennia with nothing else but the embedded memory of their original creators (we should be embedding all of our technology with this information). Then, they would constantly be attempting to invent and fabricate that internal memory to recreate humanity just as we continually invent and fabricate technology.
That begs a different question, but one that is in line with the idea of representation: are the grand visions we have, the visions of every aspect of our environments just a memory? Is it a memory so deeply embedded that we can only define it as a vision or intuitive process? Maybe we are not really designing and building, but continually reconstructing or striving to reconstruct a memory that resides in the portions of our mind that we are currently unable to use. Does the advancement of representations reflect our ability to increase the capacity of our mind or mental aptitude? If so, is architecture and the built environment the most relevant measure of that capacity?

[@miguelgrau8348]

This conference is slow even in 2x. This girls architecture suuuuuuuuuck hard