Points of Departure: Notes Toward a Reversible History of Architectural Visualization

Abstract

Before a pencil moves or a mouse twitches, computation, or at least, a certain computational intuition, has already “taken command” in architectural design studios and offices worldwide. But to what historical changes does this intrinsic development correspond? What continuities and discontinuities define the present in relation to the various modes of visualization by which, for example, modern architecture came into being in its diverse forms during the twentieth century? On the one hand, we see a shift away from a representational regime, governed by the projected building-as-telos, toward a communicational one, in which every drawing effectively redraws another, and the building is merely one informational node among many. Yet, the X-Y-Z coordinate system, the basis of much older projective systems such as linear perspective that persist into the present, underlies this shift. Historical change in modes of visualization is therefore nonlinear. Moreover, insofar as its governing technical logic remains calibrated to numerical grids on which two-way input-output sequences are performed, any history of digital modeling must be considered “reversible,” or indeterminate, precisely to the degree that it is technically determined.