Transition towards a digital architecture: new conceptions on materiality and nature

Abstract

Industrialized societies are undergoing a transition towards an informational era, in which modes of production and culture, once transformed by industrialization, are being modi½ed by the ICTs. The advent of digital architecture results from this transition, which involves a new materiality and a new conception of nature, just as industrial mate-rials, techniques, and technologies not only paved the way to modern architecture, but also fostered the rejection of nature as an architectural model. If mass production of iron, glass, and reinforced concrete con½gured an industrial materiality from which ar-chitectural innovation emerged in the early 20th century, the innovative techniques of employing information through digital technologies are raising a digital materiality that is essential to novel design and manufacturing processes. Moreover, nature is once again a model for architecture through computational design, but not the visual or iconic one it used to be, due to its turn into an instrumental model in which natural processes, properties, and inner structures can be decoded and objecti½ed as design parameters of form-making processes. This work addresses the conceptions of ‘materiality’ and ‘nature’ in digital architecture, through a dialectical discourse with modern architecture that will provide a historical background that aims to sidestep the misconceptions, and discern the dilemmas, which may result from observing too closely an architectural shift driven by the effervescence of technological progress.