The Cooper Union is to host a new exhibition showcasing the impact of technology on architectural drawing. “Drawing Codes: Experimental Protocols of Architectural Representation: Volume II” will examine how “emerging design and production technologies impact the ways in which architects engage with traditional practices of architectural drawing and how rules inform the ways the built environment is documented, analyzed, represented, and designed."
The exhibition will feature 24 experimental drawings by firms such as Aranda\Lasch, Höweler + Yoon, and Outpost Office. The artists were challenged by the curators to consider at least one concept that expands on the notion of “code” in design and representation. A strict set of rules was enforced, including black and white media, and limiting the drawing to two dimensions.
The exhibition imagines coding as constraint and restriction which can intensify the search for new opportunities in representation, rather than hinder them. The contents therefore imagine how drawings might engage with latent meaning and hidden messages, and how drawings may adopt open-ended processes with no defined outcome.
This second volume of the show uses the same prompts as the first, and even though there are strict guidelines in the brief, we have found both considerable diversity and common qualities in the drawings. Even when there are constraints and guidelines, there are loopholes and variances that open up new potentials for architectural design and representation.
-Andrew Kudless, Curator
Works featured in the exhibition include “Double Agent Operations” by Marc Fornes / THEVERYMANY that depicts an autonomous agent-based scripting process which generated tectonic parts on doubly-curved surfaces, while “Gestural GPS” by Heather Roberge / murmur explores how algorithmic process can create new forms of vision.
We have found through this work that computation and code-based processes are compelling lenses through which to understand the discipline of architecture today. These tools now inform many aspects of architectural practice, and it’s a timely moment to step back and explore their impact on conventions of architectural representation.
-Adam Marcus, Curator
Running from January 23rd to February 23rd 2019, the exhibition has been organized by the Cooper Union’s Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture and the Digital Craft Lab at California College of the Arts (CCA). The curators are Andrew Kudless and Adam Marcus, associate professors at CCA.
For more information, visit the exhibition’s website here.
News via: Cooper Union
