Digital Technology

Architectural convention operates through processes of mediation: orthographic drawings, perspectives, or physical models, to name a few. Translation between multiple techniques are required to approximate the full complexity of building. Sensitivity to the inherent bias in each medium is necessary to translate with intention. To develop this sensibility, this course iterates through a series of 2D and 3D translations, starting with a photograph of an iceberg.

Icebergs are not buildings. They are material organizations with their own scales, contexts, logics and behaviors. Icebergs have no reference, no reverence. Despite our monitoring technologies, they remain mysterious. In their otherness, icebergs offer critical distance to examine disciplinary convention. Translating these glacial forms raises fundamental issues of how to communicate qualities of architectural objects - how to abstract, how to extrapolate. To make an image is to produce and communicate knowledge. This course aims to familiarize students with disciplinary tradition, while creating opportunities to identify terrain for innovation, extending the conversation to interdisciplinary questions of environment, ecology, and our constructions of nature.