week8: Visualization and the image

Digital renderings have become a common tool in everyday practice for the presentation of design. 3D models developed in the computer also provide the ability to view, explore and critique formal propositions from the conceptualisation stages. Walter Benjamin in the article explored these visual implications and the changing meaning of the reproduction. "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction." He started off with a brief history in the profound shift of visualisation. The art of Visualization became truly recognizable in the nineteenth century as lithography made its appearance (a form of printing). This was then was surpassed by photography an art medium in which we use today. Benjamin also pointed out visualization benefits, these benefits are photography reproduction process can bring out those aspects of the original that are unattainable to the naked eye, technical reproduction can put the copy of the original into situations which would be out of reach for the original itself. There are also limitation in visualization as he mention that the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be (Benjamin, 2016).

“Architecture After the Age of Printing” by Peter Eisenman discuss perspective of visualisation in a later period to Benjamin. Eisenman focuses visualization through a design tools such as BIM. He discuss that architecture never adequately thought through the problem of vision because it remained within the concept of the subject and the four walls. Architecture, unlike any other discipline, concertized vision. Vision can be defined as essentially a way of organizing space and elements in space. It is a way of looking at and defines a relationship between a subject and an object (Eisenman, pp.15-22).

“Question of Representation” by Alberto Perez Gomez discuss that production of architecture has had an automatic positive effect on our built environment. Visualization tools such as videos, computer-graphics and virtual image have transformed our conceptual understanding of reality. Architectural conception and realization usually assume a one-to-one correspondence between the represented idea and the final building (Gomez, pp.11-22).

Reference List

Benjamin, W (1936), "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction", from http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm

Eisenman, P (2013), Architecture After the Age of Printing, AD reader: The digital turn in architecture 1992-2012, M. Carpo, Chichester, Wiley: 15-22

Perez-Gomez, A (2007), Questions of representation: the poetic origin of architecture. From models to drawings: imagination and representation in architecture, M. Frascari, J. Hale and B. Starkey, London , New York, Routledge: 11-22