Week 8 Readings

Week 8 Readings – The surface as architecture

The convergence with cyberspace and architecture increases in importance. Stephen Perrella, an architect and theorist who predicted hypermedia from the term hypersurface.  The emergence of these aspects as well as the computers and networks, unpacks greater expansion of a variety of commercial advertisements. 

In correlation to the postmodernist theory, games remain as the surface of things and tend to seem complex in its material features. The importance of materiality within the virtual space brings about the attachment of the complexity and the flexibility of computer programs. As a result the surface of buildings and objects may become limited to these attachments. Two specific motives are ultimately explored within the digital architecture. The first revolves around the notion that surfaces tend to lean more on the formation of the object rather than the volume of the object. The volume is referred to as the independent geometric flows whilst the surface focus more on the representation of those volumes and are more naturally animated in design. The second is based around challenging the fundamental binary structures that have been set out for a long time, such as the defining the differences between the exterior and the interior of the structure. The surface itself is not defined to be the result of the enclosure aspect of the building, but a design that is independent of it.

References
Picone, Antoine, “the surface as Architecture,” in Digital Culture in Architecture: an introduction for the Design profession (2010): 84-93