Page 32 - Are-You-a-Model?

10:15 Carolin Höfler TH Köln
Models in reality: Computation and simulation in architecture
One of the most enduring influences on architectur- al design is the simplified ideal scenario according to which the design process is a chain of modelling stages that lead from the large to the small, from ur- ban design to detailed structural planning. At the be- ginning of each modelling stage there is an architec- tural hypothesis with its respective specific subject promise. The final modelling stage at the end of the chain is the specific construction. Computer-based design seems to interrupt this ideal chain of design operations. With the help of 3D modelling software, the design is developed less in successive stages that build on one another and more in a single stage that theoretically includes all other stages. Digital process chains eliminate the traditional separation between intellectual design act and material execu- tion. Production technologies directly intervene in the design processes.
In light of these fundamental changes in design processes, drastic crisis scenarios of the loss of im- portance of architectural design have been drawn up in recent years, whereas the consideration of the active potentials of computer-based models have remained underexposed. This talk will therefore fo- cus on digital and pre-digital models and modelling practices that can be considered as emergent ex- pressions of complex real-time systems. Modelling material systems and force fields in digital 3D space abandons the notion that the model is merely an ab- stract scheme. Rather, in the digital model, a mul- ti-layered event is made tangible in actual execution, which is essentially determined by its relationship to matter and material. The model literally steps into action to give an idea of itself in two respects: On the one hand, it appears as an event that takes place in reality; on the other hand, it enables an idea of the complexity of the medial and material context of effects, which includes a multitude of highly hetero- geneous factors. In this talk, models are understood as technical-ecological assemblages that set spatial, material and atmospheric processes in motion, there- by giving rise to a wide range of new ideas.
Carolin Höfler is Professor of Design Theory and Research at the TH Köln. She studied art history, German literature, and theater & film (M. A.) as well as architecture (TU Diploma) at universities in Cologne, Vienna, and Berlin. In her dissertation at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, she explored the history and theory of computational design in architecture. Until 2013, she was a teacher and researcher at the Institute of Media and Design, TU Braunschweig.
32 FRIDAY, 4.11.22
ARE YOU A MODEL?