Growth of Architecture in the Digital world

Growing technology, maturing designs, and revolutionizing architecture. Stepping into the digital world, architecture has turned over a new leaf, with extensive use of computer-aided equipment that questions the way architecture is perceived and changes the current trends of designs. With the progress of digitalization, the idea is to overlook its advantages and disadvantages and to address the direction architecture is inclining towards and the ambition to change the idea of representation of a design with the assistance of automated design procedures that guide architecture to understand the high-tech methods for innumerable design-based tasks

The vision

With increasing possibilities and probabilities, architecture has become the inquiry of what had been and what could be. The development in the Digital world through different mediums has influenced the course of the field radically. While in the past, architecture was an act of necessity to achieve protection and shelter, it has grown over time to be expressed as a luxury. The digitally-driven innovations describe the relationship between new architecture and new technology and characterize them together as contemporary architecture. It made the transition, from rigid introverted structures to free-flowing parametric buildings melting with the environment, negligent.

Architecture being Un-Digital

Architecture in the non-digital era can only be defined as an occupation where the time contributed to a design is directly proportional to the output of the design. A minor improvement only makes the project more time-consuming and a human more enduring. With the lack of a digital medium, historical architecture never stopped growing, it was thriving with its innovations and creating a broader perspective to look at the design, making it limitless and progressing day by day until it falls into the ring of its digital world.

The introduction of new materials and construction methods during the early 20th century is proof of evidence that architecture is gradually changing the way it expresses itself not only functionally but also aesthetically. The emerging new systems have changed the numerous elements in architecture, from patterns of construction of a floor plan layout to parametric classification of a building. The influence of architectural perceptions is explicated through historical references in digital architecture. It has brought aesthetics, imagination, and reality together in a structure in modern architecture. The innovation that helped the development of architecture was the discovery of computer technologies which allows humans to experience the digital world of architecture

Digital influenced Architecture

Architecture in the digital world can be defined with the characteristics of ‘water’. Like water in a glass, it is determined to take different forms and shapes. Technological advancements have played a very significant role in the progress of illustrating shapes and forms of a design. In the present, architects have been deriving their concepts and designs through the means of this medium with the help of hi-tech software. Are digital developments playing the architecture of today? 

Digital Architecture is the new architecture with computational designs where every design is visualized uniquely. The expressions and the impressions of a design have varying effects in this digital world, where the bold ideas of Brutalism are put behind and the idea of futurism is put forward with parametric conceptualization. Visualization, a task in the past, is the easiest tool in hand to analyze, characterize, and individualize a design with the assistance of Virtual Reality (VR), Building information modeling (BIM), and Augmented reality (AR). 

Contemporary architecture is merely put forward by the digital progression. It was created to design structures defining its uniqueness, to make a landmark of an urban space but the meaning of context was lost in the designs in the early stages. The digital revolution was changing directions experimenting with the three-dimensional shapes and boldly representing their concepts merging with the neighboring. One of the greater examples would be the design of ‘The Jewish Museum’ in Berlin by Daniel Libeskind completed in 2001, who worked on the concept of making a strong structure to feel the Jewish presence. It was an expansion to the original berlin museum that had lost its essence after World War 2. The structure depicted both individuality with its geometrical design as well as the expression of the Jewish presence with the planning. The design expressed deconstructivism which remains part of the present digital architecture.

Architecture plays geometry and geometry is played by technology. They are the interdependent characters in the progress of design in this digital world. The irony in the innovation of the technology is: that the complexity is the new simplicity. The form is the complexity whereas the plan is the simplicity. The technology has not only affected the exterior impressions of a design but also the interior of a building, understanding different plans of a design with maximum daylighting and cooling. Functionality and aesthetics are simultaneous acts that have gained momentum in this era.

In this Digital age, Architecture has become a way of depicting a man’s emotion by perceiving the spaces that embody both the senses and cultural essence of the place. It envelops the dynamic individuality of space through adaptive facades and reforming its functionality. With the enhancements in this era, architecture has become boundless as buildings become taller and forms become more organic. Architecture, technology, and innovations is an interaction that becomes the spine of new buildings and new cities. Indeed, the digital world is the architecture of the present.

Reference list:

Oxman, R. (2008). Digital architecture as a challenge for design pedagogy: Theory, knowledge, models and medium. Design Studies, 29(2), 99-120. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.destud.2007.12.003  [Accessed 15 Feb, 2024].

Magliozzi, A. ed., (2021). The Augmented Vision Of Architecture In The Digital Age. [online] World architecture. Available at: https://worldarchitecture.org/article-links/egmzv/the-augmented-vision-of-architecture-in-the-digital-age.html  [Accessed 17 Feb. 2024].

Riccobonno, A. (2013). Architectural Design in the Digital Era. [pdf] pp.1–326. Available at: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/53287902.pdf  [Accessed 16 Feb. 2024].

Cohen, D. (n.d.). Digital architecture for Digital Age. Available at: https://architizer.com/blog/practice/materials/metals-media-and-mesh-products/  [Accessed 17 Feb. 2024].

Schumacher, P. (2019). DIGITAL -The ‘Digital’ in Architecture and Design. AA Files. [online] Available at: https://www.academia.edu/39709156/DIGITAL_The_Digital_in_Architecture_and_Design. [Accessed 17 Feb,2024].

Book:

Branko Kolarevic (2003). Architecture in the digital age: design and manufacturing. New York, Ny: Spon Press.