Between Digital and Analog Civilizations: the Spatial Manipulation Media Workshop

As the power shift from material culture to media culture accelerates, architecture finds itself in the midst of a clash between centuries-old analog design methods (such as tracing paper, vellum, graphite, ink, chipboard, clay, balsa wood, plastic, metal, etc.) and the new digital systems of production (such as scanning, video capture, image manipulation, visualization, solid modelling, computer aided drafting, animation, rendering, etc.). Moving forward requires a realization that a material interpretation of architecture proves limiting at a time when information and media environments are the major drivers of culture. It means to pro-actively incorporate the emerging digital world into our traditional analog work. It means to change. This paper presents the results of an intense design workshop that looks, probes, and builds at the very interface that is provoking the cultural and professional shifts. Media space is presented and used as an interpretive playground for design experimentation in which the poetics of representation (and not its technicalities) are the driving force to generate architectural ideas. The work discussed was originally developed as a starting exercise for a digital design course. The exercise was later conducted as a workshop at two schools of architecture by different faculty working in collaboration with it's inventor. The workshop is an effective sketch problem that gives students an immediate start into a non-traditional, hands-on, and integrated use of contemporary media in the design process. In doing so, it establishes a procedural foundation for a design studio dealing with digital media.