Spatiality and Digitisation

Abstract

Digital technologies have had a significant impact on the practice and theorising of architectural productions. Within the milieu of design practice, computer aided design has significantly changed the manner whereby architectural design and documentation are undertaken. At the level of architectural theory, key contemporary thinkers in the discipline of architecture have engaged with theorists in philosophy and cultural theory, in order to present something of a new
horizon for considering the architectural. Developments in technologies of virtual reality have opened a new domain of spatiality for design thinking.

Concomitant with this emerging horizon is a radicality in developing new epistemologies of spatial design. This paper examines the work of a number of key proponents of “Hypersurface Architecture” and assays the claims currently being made for digital technologies in architecture, as well as the grounds of those claims.