Forms of saturation: Discrete and continuous events in architectural design

Abstract

This essay addresses the opportunities and limits of architectural design at the juncture of technology and disciplinary specific developments in architecture. The theoretical model that it develops encapsulates the essences of what it means to work with respectively digital and analogue modeling systems. It poses a release from the continuous crisis of architectural education in coping with the onslaught of the digital. Moreover, it addresses the uncritical obsession that architectural academia has with this technology without relapsing into the various forms of reactionary practices that are currently emerging in the profession as well as the schools. The discussion focuses on systems and regimes of representation within architectural design and production and problematizes the role of digital and computational design procedures with respect to analogue systems of representation, architecture's infinite construction of our physical environment and the inherent limitations of digital systems given their 'rational' character. The essay attempts to address the influence and status of the digital by focusing on an inclusive notion of space. This is both architectural space but also the productive design space in which architects work. In unfolding the argument, three artworks have been discussed and the initial premise for the argument is based on art theory.