Design Strategies for Reimagining the City is situated between projective geometry, optical science and architectural design. It draws together seemingly unrelated fields in a series of new digital design tools and techniques underpinned by tested prototypes.
The book reveals how the relationship between architectural design and the ubiquitous urban camera can be used to question established structures of control and ownership inherent within the visual model of the Western canon. Using key moments from the broad trajectory of historical and contemporary representational mechanisms and techniques, it describes the image’s impact on city form from the inception of linear perspective geometry to the digital turn. The discussion draws upon combined fields of digital geometry, the pictorial adaptation of human optical cues of colour brightness and shape, and modern image-capture technology (webcams, mobile phones and UAVs) to demonstrate how the permeation of contemporary urban space by digital networks calls for new architectural design tools and techniques. A series of speculative drawings and architectural interventions that apply the new design tools and techniques complete the book.
Aimed at researchers, academics and upper-level students in digital design and theory, it makes a timely contribution to the ongoing and broadly debated relationship between representation and architecture.
Author(s): Linda Matthews
Series: Routledge Research in Architecture
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 190
City: London
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
Figures
Tables
Abbreviations
Acknowledgement
Part I: Constructed Fields of Vision
Introduction
Notes
1. The problem of the image of the city: From perspectival to digital space
Disruptive techniques of spatial representation
Singular or narrative spaces of representation
The 'symbolic' intent of linear perspective geometry
The perspectival city
Photography as the bearer of truth
Fragmentary spaces of representation
Anamorphosis and the reversal of logic
The Vertovian image: Issues of critique, representation and form-making
Filmic space/architectural space
Vertov in the digital image: Envisioning the contemporary city
The qualitative image and affective space
Notes
2. The pixel's visual territory
From analogue to digital
Unique modes of digital assembly
The discontinuous digital line
Qualitative content is connected data
The predictability of pixel relationships
Digital geometry's intersection with optical science
Perceptual behaviours
The digital mediation of colour, brightness and shape
Technological disruption
Digital colour: Unique translations of digital technology
Contrast perception, luminosity and the contextual advantages of pixel geometry
Form perception and the inherent imperatives of pixel geometry
Representation and the pixel's 'symbolic form'
Many authors
Notes
3. Seeing through digital image-making technology
Colour's transformation
Colour as form
The digital manipulation of colour
Proprietary colour
Colour by guesswork
New digital opportunities
Non-proprietary colour and open-source code
Exploiting CFAs
The digital perception of brightness
Shifting the register: The pictorial application of brightness
Eliminating the uncontrollable: Brightness as an artefact
Fraunhofer diffraction as a productive aberration
Digital image legibility: Shape
The human perception of shape
The human visual system and scan path theory
Saliency and the advantages of webcam technology
The productive inclusion of digital artefacts
Notes
4. The new agency of distributed digital networks
Digital anamorphosis and the virtual picture plane
Pre-digital anamorphic techniques
The affective anamorphic network
Digital anamorphic techniques
The expanded image
The distributed network and the multiplication of viewpoints
An expanded temporal frame
Responding to the digital city
Notes
Part II: New techniques of intervention and disruption
5. Generative techniques
New modes of practice
The qualitative image
The space within the image
The anamorphic potential of digital technology
The dynamic image
The image as a 3D volume
The synthesised landscape
Transdisciplinary modes of activating digital colour and luminance (brightness)
Colour and luminance (brightness) profiles as a generative procedure
Conclusion
Notes
6. The building surface as a colour modifier
Design templates for the built surface
Test strategies
Colour
Image artefacts
Attention tracking
Validation methods
Series 1 tests overview
Test part 1: Strategies of pattern hierarchy
Test technical data and conditions
Test analysis methodology
Test results
Test summary and conclusions
Test part 2: Hierarchies of visibility - the shifting function of luminosity (brightness)
Test results
Test summary and conclusions
Test part 3: The disruptive potential of additive colour
Test technical data and conditions
Test results and analysis
Test summary and conclusions
The data matrix
Notes
7. Re-viewing diffraction
Series 2 tests overview
Patterns of disruption
Test technical data and conditions
Test analysis methodology
Test results and analysis
Unique colours
Particle data count
Test summary, conclusions and the data matrix
Notes
8. New readings of the city
Series 3 tests overview
Scanning variants
Test technical data and conditions
Test analysis methodology
Test results and analysis
Pattern legibility
Luminosity
Test summary, conclusions and the data matrix
Concluding comments on the test series and the data matrices
Notes
9. 'La città ideale': Design drawings for the digital city
The digital Urbino Panel
Preliminary digital site mapping procedures
The digital Urbino Panel: A summary of visual effects
Intervention 1
Intervention 2
Intervention 3
Notes
10. Conclusion
The new tools and techniques of architecture
The disciplinary shift
Notes
Glossary
Anamorphic/anamorphosis (digital anamorphosis)
F-stop and zoom
Indexical/raster or pixel grid
Instrumentalisation
Notes
Bibliography
Index
