Abstract:
Animation software promotes new architectural design practices where form
making is presented as a 'clean' indexical translation of contextual data or
information. The formal outcomes typical of this design method implicitly resist
the foregrounding of representation, either as a depiction or a tool, as a subject
worthy of research. Given the ubiquity of the image this rejection has a capacity
to create a rupture between the profession and the wider community. The
objective of this paper is to provide a critique of the implicit theoretical position
animation software has to representation and explore how the application of
other software can be used in conjunction with strategies and techniques aimed
at a critical engagement with the usage of the image present within this broader
social context. In doing so the discussion will draw on texts, including those of
Robin Evans and W. J. T. Mitchell, as well as built projects and outcomes of
design-based research.
The allure for abstract indexed form is evident of a longstanding architectural
'iconophobia' towards the image and as such embodies a very particular
ideological bias that restricts the agency of architecture to contest its
conventionalisation and subsequent deployment as a political tool or device of
the market. In light of this an argument will be made for the generative capacity
of the digital to act as a way of operatively engaging with the image's
representational 'job'. The paper is not therefore opposed to the digital but
against certain design practices that treat both the image as irrelevant and the
modes of representation as an unproblematic and neutral trans formative space.
