Digital Architecture – Fantasy or Mundanity?

 The notion “digital architecture” appeared in the professional usage in the early 1990s. During that time architects from many countries were actively seeking different means of expression and principles of creating new vivid images. All their effort focused on how to use scientific achievements, they tried to get away from modularity and standardization in construction and reject symmetry and statics in composition. The idea that an object of architecture can be perceived in motion, with the relevant evaluation category being time and the apparent building integrity being rather nominal, was first to be found in the conceptual construction of specialized pavilions for exhibitions and festivals.

Close attention to the technology, material and interrelations between various textures became a way to apply the new approach to the choice of the architectural appearance of the building. First of all, it affected the development of the external envelope of the building. Although deconstruction, which is today regarded as one of the branches of the broader notion of digital architecture, suggested that the whole structure of the building was modified according to the general non-linear approach to the forms under construction, the most popular ones in high-rise construction were projects with non-linear facades. It is especially interesting that within the recent couple of decades most ideas have been realized in actual constructions instead of being a mere means of scientific approach to the design of tall buildings.

No doubt in high-rise construction there was some backlog from the contemporary architectural concepts and the first digital pavilions of the 1990s. The level of technology had to catch up so that the pretty bold and even “absurd” ideas of mostly young architects could seem feasible.
The practical development of requirements to new skyscrapers gradually got influenced by such purely theoretical studies of philosophy and architecture as the “foldedplate theory”. It dwells on the concept of motion through space where form can be both external and internal as well as open and closed. In the “flow theory”, on the other hand, it is not the shape of buildings that is the key element but the nature of the mental perception of the building (i.e. it is a set of people or traffic that sets everything into motion, an information flow, etc.).

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МАРИАННА МАЕВСКАЯ.
de Architekten Cie, eVolo, Zaha Hadid Architects, James Law Cybertecture International