rewriting the post
a sum of mapping, coding, drawing, and writing skills
The pace at which technology changes architecture as a discipline is curious to comprehend holistically, owing to the constantly evolving services development landscape augmented by generative AI. Earlier, when information streams were limited to an immediate network, architecture was defined by the books or journals you read, places you visited, and the practices you have worked or associated with. Reliable sources to direct architectural imagination are limited. Social constructs such as master architects restrict interpretation. Drawing is central to the disciplinary conversation then, but for today, based on the various information streams, just focusing on one point of view limits addressing knowledge constructed in today’s field.
🗺️ mapping. If technological changes are mapped from the early 2000s, architecture as a building-centric discussion changes after Google Earth. The plot survey map is no longer the limit; access to a context redefines what spatial design problem-solving can accomplish. Thanks to a new data set, disciplines such as urban design and landscape architecture benefit. Geographic information systems become the new norm to help organise and develop an area which desires an intervention. Drone photography aids in gathering better-resolution data, which was previously limited to those with access to aerial photographs. To manage a collection and then process the material to extrapolate further is now a complete job description with prerequisite skills.
⌨️ coding. The urban age facilitated by big data exponentially redefines the amount of information associated with a project, irrespective of its implementation status. Though coding is only becoming mainstream due to generative AI, visual programming is incorporated in most applications used in the construction industry to automate tasks. Computational design and parametric architecture have introduced the need to procedurally direct form-making, but it is a niche practice site. Search and social media control how we see the world based on the model it has built for us. The form of our posts and the hashtags we use indirectly code outcomes. If you see this post, the algorithms guide it your way.
✏️ drawing. Architecture today can be a map; it can be coded before it is a drawing. Unlike in the past, when only drawings of masterworks were guides from which to build, the way we use the technology we have access to can redirect our gaze to what architecture is. Drawing as discourse peaks during deconstruction at the advent of digital technologies. What we understand as the digital in architecture bears its foundation in the age of theory. Soon after came the epoch of intelligence, when research was a style, and now we have zoomed past big data and at the dawn of a future with generative AI. Climate models, too, are a way of seeing. What a building drawing today is to qualify as architecture is a question to unpack.
🖋️ writing. How much of a skill you are familiar with thus becomes your position on architecture from your point of view. Skills types are the craft to hone. Architecture in 2024 is no longer a derivate of only an isolated set of services provided or speculative proposals. Private practices do not hold the necessary intelligence to direct aesthetic futures since their impact is limited. In the ’70s, it may have been difficult to envision everything as architecture, but on the internet, a new set of possibilities exists that may take more than a lifetime to synthesise into a spatial discourse. Locating practice trends is a future guide to the discourse of architecture. What are the maps describing, the codes constructed, and the drawings projected and, therefore, a collective imagination?