Architecture, Experience and Visuality in the Digital Age

This paper argues that in order to reconcile the relationship between digital media and contemporary architectural experience, as well as to strengthen the connections between the real and the unreal, one has to develop a deeper understanding of visuality and the contemporary subject who ultimately engages a work of architecture. It is precisely our act of vision and subsequent cognition that has always acted as the common ‘glue’ between the immaterial and material realms.To make this argument, the paper looks at several theoretical positions regarding subjectivity and spatial engagement. From this historical mapping, a comparison emerges between two contemporary positions, one being Anthony Vidler’s notion of ‘warped’ space and the other being Hal Foster’s idea of the ‘split’ subject. Both try to articulate the new condition of the subject in today’s digital world, yet each offers a unique reading in terms of the potential consequences of this new situation on artistic or architectural formal strategies. The paper ultimately uses these two positions to analyze and compare the work of Zaha Hadid and Rem Koolhaas (most particularly their own submissions for the IIT project in 1998) as a way to see how the post-modern subject is being considered today.

Volume Editors
Marilys R. Nepomechie & Robert Gonzalez

ISBN
0-935502-54-8