Abstract
This paper explores digitally-based visualization techniques that were developed in architecture during the 1990s. The agency of digital tools problematized those more traditional themes of architectural history that had focused on the stasis of buildings by capturing the dynamic processes that afford architectural practice. By analyzing Greg Lynn’s Embryological House, I argue that digital modeling opened up the possibility of combining numerous software tools, leading to an individual design strategy. The visualizations encompassed drawings, animations, and physical models that were further extended through fabrication techniques. This led to encounters and interactions with other disciplines and knowledge practices. By basing the design process on the construction of a singular digital master model, however, Lynn initiated a discourse on the parameters determining the emergence of architecture. Yet in spite of this innovation, the challenge remains to assess the ways in which the programming of architecture’s parameters interact with the socio-economic fabric in which architecture participates.
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Notes
- 1.
On the development of computer science within the US American military context (Edwards 1988).
- 2.
- 3.
For a discussion on architecture and knowledge networks during the age of cybernetics see Martin (2005).
- 4.
In her Ph.D. dissertation, Molly Wright Steenson discusses the relation between information processing and architecture within the approaches of Christopher Alexander, Cedric Price, and Nicholas Negroponte’s Architecture Machine Group, see Wright Steenson (2014).
- 5.
On the understanding of design as a cultural technique see Hauser (2013).
- 6.
- 7.
Discussions taking place at Columbia University in the context of the “paperless studio” point towards heterogeneous approaches in dealing with digital technology, see also Bredella (2014).
- 8.
The design and research project Embryological House was conceived in the context of the exhibition Body Mécanique. Artistic Explorations of Digital Realms at the Wexner Center for the Arts, which was also financed by the Graham Foundation (see Rogers 1998).
- 9.
Files and the physical model series of Greg Lynn’s Embryological House (1997–2001) are archived at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA). In 2007 the CCA received the files of the project on a CD. Among the file formats were vector graphics (MicroStation: DGN), surface modeling files (Maya: MA, MB), scripts (Maya: MEL), two dimensional images (JPG, TIF), animations (MOV, AVI), graphic layouts (PDF, SGI, AI) and computer-controlled model making files (ORD). For more information see Bird and Labelle (2008).
- 10.
Before the CCA received the files of the Embryological House Project, a case study was conducted during July and October 2006 in order to set criteria for archiving the computer-based design project. In a second phase (October 2007–July 2008), concrete recommendations were given on how to archive the Embryological House Project. The results were documented in Bird and Labelle (2008). In the context of the recent exhibition “Archeology of the Digital”- curated by Greg Lynn, the CCA presents the question of how to archive computer-based design projects (see Lynn 2013).
- 11.
- 12.
As Antoine Picon notes: “One main reason is that the form produced by computer-aided design genuinely becomes inseparable from the process by which it was birthed. It becomes, to an extent, ‘consubstantial’ with its creative medium” (Picon 2008: 67).
- 13.
Lynn also references the work of Peter Eisenman in this context (ibid: 44).
- 14.
- 15.
MicroStation is a CAD Software for two or three-dimensional design, and was developed by the software company Bentley Systems (MicroStation 2015).
- 16.
In her lecture “A Brief Genealogy of Smooth Surface in design” presented at the conference “Industries of Architecture. Relations. Process. Production,” in Newcastle in 2014, Ann Marie Brennan explored the history of tools that contributed to the relationship between form, production, and capital in digital design.
- 17.
Maya is a three-dimensional modeling and animation program by Alias and was merged with Autodesk in 2006 (Maya 2015).
- 18.
Conversation with Greg Lynn, Vienna, December 2013.
- 19.
Conversation with Greg Lynn, Vienna, December 2013.
- 20.
On a critical position on a total computational model enabling design see Sean Keller (2012).
- 21.
On the transfer of files see the tutorial, IGES (exported from MAYA) > .NCC (SurfCAM format) > .gc (G-Code for the mill). http://static.dieangewandte.at/gems/archlynn/surfcamtutorial.pdf. Accessed 12 Mar 2015.
- 22.
On design and analyses of the landscapes see: Greg Lynn’s Embryological House: case study in the preservation of digital architecture. http://www.docam.ca/conservation/embryological-house/GL6BContents.html. Accessed 12 Mar 2015.
- 23.
On the difficulties Gropius and others encountered when pursuing new alliances between architecture and industry during the postwar period in the USA see Bergdoll (2008: 25).
- 24.
I want to thank Greg Lynn for his time and his insights. I would like to thank the Canadian Centre for Architecture for generously making available material on the Embryological House. This paper arose in the context of the research project “Architecture and New Media,” which is funded by the German Research foundation (DFG).
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Bredella, N. (2017). Visualization Techniques and Computational Design Strategies: Reflecting on the Milieu and Agency of Digital Tools in 1990s Architecture. In: Ammon, S., Capdevila-Werning, R. (eds) The Active Image. Philosophy of Engineering and Technology, vol 28. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56466-1_7
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