Tools of perception

On the impact of digital technology on architectural design

Abstract

Over the last ten to fifteen years the architectural tools and ways of working have gone through significant changes, which mostly originate from the use of new digital technology in all the processes preceding a building. Digital technology creates possibilities of developing new architectural languages because with digital 3D-modelling programmes it is possible to shape complex forms that only a few years ago would have constituted a far more difficult and extensive task. And with a computer aided building component industry the prize of a special and customized product often equals that of the standard product. Likewise, the forms of cooperation in the design process as well as the organisation of the work process are changing because of the possibilities of simultaneity and net-working inherent in digital communication. But questions are rarely asked, as to whether digital tools also have the effect of changing the very way in which the architect conceives the building he is designing? Whether digital tools may – given the fact that they change the architect's visual and conceptual access to the design object, also changes his perspectives and priorities in relation to what is important when designing a building? In the phenomenological tradition there is an understanding of tools and techniques as being nonneutral. Heidegger stresses in Being and Time that any tool is not only a means to an end. When using any tool or technique some properties or qualities of what is worked on become recognizable or visible in a specific way, which is linked to this specific tool or technique, while other properties or qualities become invisible or irrelevant. The use of any given technique, then, entails a particular way of perceiving the world, at the expense of other potential ways of perceiving. In the paper, this understanding of the non-neutrality of tools and techniques will be used as a point of departure for addressing and discussing the questions which have been raised above. Through relating analyses of two buildings - one by UN studio and one by Henning Larsen Architects - to the design and planning processes which preceded them (including the digital visualization and planning tools which have been used), traces will be pointed out of how the applied digital tools and techniques have enhanced certain qualities and properties of the buildings in question, while failing to actualize other qualities important in pre-digital architecture.