Into the Uncanny Valley

2018-04-24T15:17:00-04:00

Architectural representations often embody the tension between familiar and unfamiliar. In an effective rendering, the new buildings or landscapes share the same illusionistic space with images of existing buildings or landscapes, producing an almost exquisite confusion between real and unreal.

Architectural renderings are not photographs; or are they? Susan Piedmont-Palladino examines the hyper-real imagined worlds of contemporary architectural drawings through theories of the uncanny, and considers the disconcerting effect that occurs when "we can't quite sort out the relationship of an image to the world."

Editor's Picks #253

2012-03-04T18:04:00-05:00

Chinese architect Wang Shu was this week named the 2012 Pritzker Prize winner. Will Galloway commented "unexpected but very coolio. i met wang shu last year at conference held by my uni her in tokyo. nice guy and very impressive presentation. love his work and his approach. i like that pritzker is not going after the usual suspects, personally."

Woody Evans a librarian living on the south side of Dubai., recently interviewed Sophia Vyzoviti an assistant professor of architectural design methodology at the Department of Architecture, University of Thessaly Greece, about Building Between Dimensions.

They discussed augmented reality, touching stuff, and the aesthetics of smart textures. Sophia is quoted therein saying "Material computing is a recent discipline specific term that describes the analogue form-finding processes complementing the new digital design tools". The two also explored the possible implications of applying the phrase uncanny valley from robotics to the development of biomimetic architecture. There is also this mouthful of a passage, used to describe Sophia’s book Soft Shells, "The work is primarily analogue, conducted in a low-tech, high-concept fashion, but operates as a digital morphogenesis propedia, exercises algorithmic thinking and suggests alternative and cross-over fabrication methods".

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Into the Uncanny Valley

Editor's Picks #253