Visualization Techniques and Computational Design Strategies: Reflecting on the Milieu and Agency of Digital Tools in 1990s Architecture

Abstract

This paper explores digitally-based visualization techniques that were developed in architecture during the 1990s. The agency of digital tools problematized those more traditional themes of architectural history that had focused on the stasis of buildings by capturing the dynamic processes that afford architectural practice. By analyzing Greg Lynn’s Embryological House, I argue that digital modeling opened up the possibility of combining numerous software tools, leading to an individual design strategy. The visualizations encompassed drawings, animations, and physical models that were further extended through fabrication techniques. This led to encounters and interactions with other disciplines and knowledge practices. By basing the design process on the construction of a singular digital master model, however, Lynn initiated a discourse on the parameters determining the emergence of architecture. Yet in spite of this innovation, the challenge remains to assess the ways in which the programming of architecture’s parameters interact with the socio-economic fabric in which architecture participates.