Archinect - Features

Are We Digital #6: Make it Delightful

2020-05-04T16:16:00-04:00

In the Fall of 2018, all incoming, on-campus, freshmen at The Ohio State University received an Apple iPad from the school. Referred to as the Digital Flagship initiative, this program aimed to level the technological playing field for incoming students of all backgrounds. It was a kind of simplified response to William Gibson’s often-rehearsed claim that the future is already here, however, not evenly distributed. Students were now equipped with a portable screen (and camera), carrying case, and Bluetooth stylus, and faculty were introduced to a new world of teaching opportunities afforded by the common denominator of the Apple iPad.

Are We Digital? Pseudorthography and the Electronic Image

2019-11-30T09:00:00-05:00

The difference, in English, between the words “electric” and “electronic” is subtle but powerful. A simple definition might go something like: “electric” refers to things that use electricity as energy, while “electronic” is used to describe things that use electricity as a means to manipulate information. Therefore, a lamp is an electric object, but an email (previously e-mail) is an electronic letter. And yet, in the context of architecture, a field often troubled by semantics and syntactic nuances, we often take for granted our media’s relationship to electricity. Despite their reliance on electrical light, for instance, our drawings are still drawings, not e-drawings or i-drawings or any other variant that could separate them from mechanically produced media. Moreover, today the main difference between drawings, images, and photographs is simply derived from what file extension is used to format them.

Are We Digital? Drawing on a Telephone

2019-06-20T14:35:00-04:00

David Hockney loves to draw on a telephone. Sometime in the late 2000s, he began painting on an Apple iPhone and iPad, and he has not been shy about expressing his enthusiasm for gadgets. He uses them to sketch in the field, to send drawings to his friends, and he even records his process using the Brushes App. The devices afford him new freedoms. He can paint anywhere without equipment and produce infinite iterations. But I doubt any of us would label Hockney a digital artist.

Are We Digital? Of Mice and Pens

2019-05-11T11:47:00-04:00

In the short history of computing, an ongoing research project is human-computer interaction (HCI). We know the results of this research as the ever-expanding catalog of input devices developed since the 1950s for interfacing with computers. A few successful and obvious ones are: the keyboard, the mouse, the trackpad, the touchscreen, the pen, and the joystick. If most of design labor today is produced with mice (and/or pens), why are there so few discussions on those instruments? In a field bombarded with debates on the digitization of design, I’ve found everyday devices to be the most fascinating, yet overlooked, subject. So in lieu of reviewing the latest touchscreen, VR controller, or AR app, I’d like to talk briefly about mice and pens.

Are We Digital? Learning from Radio

2019-04-12T12:30:00-04:00

Did you know that the reason most doctors still actively use pagers at work has an architectural explanation? That hospitals, despite being one of the least sexy or experimental of building types, are perhaps the closest thing we have to a public architectural interface? And that radio waves today are some of the most consequential spatial components?

Forging Alternate Hybrids of Practice; Conversations with the Writers of The Blindspot Initiative

2019-02-06T09:00:00-05:00

Soapbox is a weekly series delivering a curated set of lectures, talks and symposia concerning contemporary themes but explored through the archives of lectures past and present. With the plethora of lectures, talks, symposia and panels occurring world wide on a daily basis, how can we begin to keep up and if not, find them once they are gone? Soapbox looks to assemble a selection of recent, archived and outlier lectures surrounding a given theme. Soapbox looks to curate this never-ending library of ideas into an engaging and diverse list of thoughts and provocations. Soapbox is just that, a collection aimed at discovering the occasional needle in a haystack.

This week, we look at the themes and voices from within the newly realized publication, The Blindspot Initiative. The Blindspot Initiative, the latest book of projects and essays on design resistance and alternative modes of practice edited by Jose Sanchez and will have a special launch event at Archinect Outpost this Saturday...

Are We Digital? The Computerization of Architecture

2019-02-05T12:29:00-05:00

The U.S. Census confirms it: as of 2016, 89 percent of American households own a computer. According to the report, this represents an 81 percent increase from 1984, the year of Apple’s now-famous Super Bowl ad and the release of their first Macintosh. The numbers are pretty clear. Seeing as most daily tasks require some interaction with software, from banking to setting your alarm, it makes sense for households to own at least one whirring box of circuit boards.

Less clear, however, is what exactly constitutes a “home computer.”