More Translations (from Drawing to Building)

In 2013 media theorist, Lev Manovich, wrote, “there is no such thing as ‘digital media.’ There is only software.” In other words, because all digital artifacts rely on a set of interpretations of virtual signals, software and media today are inseparable; to think of one is to think of the other. As such, designers have come to understand acts of making as fundamentally tied to a set of programs and interfaces that digitize our ideas by translating them into electric impulses. This has been the case in architectural design for the better part of the previous decade and is certainly the case today. However, while this phenomenon has led to a set of norms concerning the production of digital objects, an increase in the variety of tools available to architectural designers (particularly from video game design, visual effects industries, open-source initiatives, and app developers) has opened the door to new ways of producing and understanding architectural media. The goal of this paper is to examine architecture’s evolving relationship with software, and suggest a reevaluation of the role digital mediums play in architectural education.

https://doi.org/10.35483/ACSA.AM.106.25

Volume Editors
Amir Ameri & Rebecca O'Neal Dagg

ISBN
978-1-944214-15-9