"Architecture Transformed" – Architectural processes in the digital image space

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The production and conception of architecture are not only shaped by the technical-constructive aspect but also by their visual representation. Building design already requires the means of different visual processes. From the initial concept as a sketch through the model-based presentation in a competition, to the designed representation for communication and marketing purposes, methods of visual modelling and pictorial representation have always been used - from the drawing to the built model and photography. Since the 1980s, with digital technologies for the design and visual representation of architecture (computer-aided design), far-reaching changes have occurred, resulting in fundamentally new possibilities for linking technical design and visual reproduction (computer rendering to virtual photography). Thus, digital planning processes allow a continuous production of visualisations, different perspectives and effective designs of the appearance for the widest variety of purposes and occasions. Realistic looking representations become possible already in the early phases of the design; at the same time, the computational capacities of modern computers make new constructions seem realisable, whereby the conception of freely formed structures can be determined by appearance and not by elemental tectonic conditions, seeming to have been liberated from the realm of the merely fantastic and the visionary.This project undertakes an investigation of these essentially process-related relationships outlined here in design and visualisation during the transition phase from analogue to digital planning and display format methods - i.e. between 1980 and the 2000s. In exemplary studies on the use and application of the new tools and their visual products (images), the aim is to determine how the ‘digital image' has changed the concept and production of architecture from an art-historical-media-critical perspective, on the one hand, and from the production-aesthetic point of view of architectural and architectural image production, on the other. At two workplaces (Marburg and Cottbus), studies on the history of visual representation are carried out in prominent architectural journals and the discussion of "digital architecture" in its various facets is examined, including the example of so-called blob architecture. On the other hand, the development and use of CAD programs is examined in order to explore their possibilities for the production of digital architectural images. Finally, on this basis, consideration will be made as to whether and to what extent ‘digital architecture' can or must be spoken of today and what share the ‘digital image' has in this possibly new concept of architecture.