Horizontal - Past - Individual

Theoretical issue:

A major concern at present is the loss of the ‘individual’ in the present digital age. Industrialisation has extinguished the presence of the human touch in design. Movements in the past, such as the Arts & Crafts Movement and Organic Architecture have sought to assert haptic expression and reject the machine-made.

Experiment:

Inspired by these past movements, we respond with ‘survival’ tactics for the digital age…

Schedule:

Weeks 8-9/15

“Computer imaging tends to flatten our magnificent, multi-sensory, simultaneous and synchronic capabilities of imagination by turning the design process into a passive, visual manipulation, a retinal journey. The computer creates a distance between the maker and the object, whereas drawing by hand as well as model-making put the designer into a haptic contact with the object or space.” (Juhani Pallasma)

Scholarship:

Steven Holl / Juhani Pallasmaa ‘The Eyes of the Skin’

Precedents:

Steven’s Holl’s ‘Horizontal Skyscraper’

“A horizontal megastructure, lifted to a variable height of nine to fourteen metres off the ground, will stretch over an invented landscape designed - as Holl himself states - "like a scribble'.”

Method of investigation:

1. Artistic exploration within digital reproduction

2. Artistic exploration of the ‘horizontal’ within the typical vertical city, using image-capturing media

3. Artistic Exploration of the unexpected side effects that personalise an otherwise standardised form

Modes of representation:

3D Models & images