Login

* * UPGRADE * *

       
  • DIGITALIA: architecture and the environmental, the digital and the avant-garde

Hagan, Susannah, 2008, Book, DIGITALIA: architecture and the environmental, the digital and the avant-garde Routledge, London. ISBN 978 0 415 39546 5

Abstract or Description:

The title 'Digitalia' is an amalgam of 'digital' and 'marginalia', is an inclusive view of an evolving practice: digital design in architecture. It developed from research done during an EPSRC MPhil fellowship at the University of Cambridge. The book brings together for the first time digital innovation not only in architectural form-finding, but in environmental design, and analyses in detail the ideas now driving an emerging convergence towards a focus on building performance between the two agendas. The architectural avant-garde has laid claim to the incursion of computers into architecture, sidelining other uses and developments in the same field, especially the role of the digital in environmental design. There is in fact a split between an ‘autonomous’ version of the avant-garde, pursuing formal novelty in practice, and an ‘engaged’ version that loops back from the virtual to the actual – actual global urbanisation, actual global warming, actual meta-architectural problems. The book uses unexpected as well as expected sources to identify the split and postulate its increasing irrelevance – from Ali Rahim to Manfredo Tafuri. The research was developed through a literature review of architectural form-finding, the history of digital environmental design, and critical studies of the architectural avant-garde. Research also used interviews with selected architects and environmental design professionals with a central role in the development of the use of the computer within this context, and research-by-design to draw evidence-based conclusions from firsthand experimentation with digital parametric design. Cited in
1 ‘Towards Morphogenesis in Architecture’ in International Journal of Architecture. Multi Science Publishing. Vol 7, No 3/Sept 2009. 345-374.
2 Benedict Singleton (2009). ‘Service Design in New Territories’ in Proceedings of the International Association of Societies of Design Research.
3 Simon Guy (2010): 'Pragmatic ecologies: situating sustainable building'. Architectural Science Review, Volume 53, Issue 1. Special Issue: Transforming markets in the built environment: adapting to climate change. 21-28.
4 Joanne Aitchison (2011). ‘Craft Thinking & Digital Making’ in The role of the architect in the digital era. http://www.frrarchitects.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/craft-
thinking-digital-making_Joanne-Aitchison.pdf.

Subjects: Architecture > K100 Architecture > K110 Architectural Design Theory
School or Centre: School of Architecture
Copyright Holders: Susannah Hagan
Date Deposited: 30 Jul 2012 16:23
Last Modified: 09 Nov 2018 14:24
URI: https://rca-9.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/853
Edit Item (login required) Edit Item (login required)