MARCH621 GE: Digital Diagrams

In the last two decades of architectural practice, new digital technologies have evolved from being simply representational tools invested in the depiction and elaboration of existing models of architectural space to becoming significant performative machines that have transformed the ways in which we both conceive and configure space and material. These tools have enabled the emergence of digital diagrams and parametric landscapes - often emulating genetic and iterative dynamic evolutionary processes - that not only radically change the ways in which we integrate disparate types of material information into the design process, but also significantly alter methodological strategies that are operative in both design and fabrication. The effects of these changes are theoretical as much as they are technological, producing (or resulting from) cultural shifts that are perhaps as significant to the evolution of contemporary practices as the overlay of Cartesiansim, industrial production, and social political models was to the generation of modern architecture. That our current models of space are far more continuous, variant and complex, is specifically a result of the tools we are using to produce them?an inevitable byproduct of the ever-expanding capacities of digital computation and related fabrication technologies as these intersect with theoretical trajectories that have long ago dismantled the social, functional and technological truths of the early part of this century. The digital diagram is therefore a method to interrogate current models of space along with the generative, spatial and material strategies used to produce them. It will be explored in this course through the investigation of contemporary architectural practices and projects that are specifically invested in elaborating new relationships between theoretical diagrams, generative processes and new digital technologies.

Course explores issues and ideas of architecture and its context in larger systems of culture and knowledge.