‘High Code’ architecture - A diagram of de-materialization and reinstallation of architecture

Abstract

Architectural representations do not merely realize the transmission of intervened information between the architect and his audience. Through the growing importance of representation and the use of digital means of expression, which is obviously met in contemporary architectural discourse, one can safely suggest that in certain cases the information is created rather than treated or consumed through the procedure of digital representation. The issue raised is of far greater range than just the replacement of traditional means of representation. One can already trace definite signs of a new communicative entity, profoundly based upon the use of digital means, alongside the classic body of architecture. This new essence is the result of architectural representation, in its autonomous interpretation, when it creates the meaning and the information that initially was assigned only to transmit. All these special conditions are more effectively reflected into a new concept, this of ‘high code architecture’. ‘High code architecture’ implies and presupposes the existence of an additional inner mechanism that creates it. The procedure of emancipation of the architectural representations is rather incomplete without the validity of an associating mechanism between the representation itself and the represented object. This phenomenon can be studied through a diagram of de-materialization and reinstallation of architecture. This diagram is materialized in three distinctive stages: 1. The architectural object is de-materialized through various representations and procurations via digital, figurative and print media to finally become an image. 2. The images, as representatives and/or substitutes of an architectural object, re-materialize and form a kind of architecture that is of ‘abstracted perception’ and free of theoretic and ideological weights. 3. An array of morphological types, ‘iconic pictures’ is created, that form the base of the so called ‘high code architecture’.