SUBSTANTIATING LINES: ENCODING, DRAWING AND MAKING ARCHITECTURE

We are proud to present an exhibition by Architect, Computational Designer, and Guest Researcher Corneel Cannaerts at the Library.

Corneel Cannaerts’ work and research explores the negotiation between the agencies found in matter, machine and code in a design process mediated through computation and digital fabrication, and situates this within architectural practices of drawing and making.

The exhibition consists of three interlinked media:

1.At the tables: A series of fabricated artefacts, and smaller test models, fragments of architectural designs exploring materiality of specific fabrication technologies
2.On the wall: 11 drawings
3.At the screen: An autonomously running software that shows close-ups of point clouds and meshes of scans of the artefacts

When: 24 April – 12 May 2017. Monday, Tuesday, Thursday: 10.00 – 16.00, Wednesday: 10.00 – 18.00, Friday: 10.00 – 15.00
Where: Aarhus School of Architecture, the Library, Nørreport 20, 8000 Aarhus C

The research behind the exhibition

“Architecture is increasingly designed, materialized and disseminated through digital technologies, habitual ways of designing and building are disrupted through technological innovations in the simulation, fabrication, and communication of architecture,” says Guest Researcher Corneel Cannaerts and continues:

“The discourse on digitalisation of architectural practice stresses the positivist impact of these technologies – better-integrated workflows, higher precision, uninterrupted flow from design intent to material artifacts.”

However, as he notes, computation and digital fabrication technologies are not neutral tools for designing architecture, they are design media that bring their own specific agencies to a design process.

“Architects have relied on drawing as the main medium for exploring, communicating and materializing design ideas. The adoption of computational design, digital fabrication and robotics are challenging this central position of drawing in architectural practice, but it also frees architectural drawing of its purely instrumental and representation role,” Cannaerts says and elaborates:

“Rather than dismissing architectural drawing, the exhibition explores what role it might play in an architectural design process mediated through computation and digital fabrication. It demonstrates how these technologies allow for new linkages between the encoding drawing and making and demonstrates how traces of code, fabrication processes and materially are intertwined.”