Architecture and image making: it’s cultural, aesthetic and media impact as a (not so new) discussion in architecture.
Architecture and the representation of the world have always had a close relationship. Since building architecture is constructing the world itself, it’s only natural wanting to familiarize, appropriate and represent with the world and our environment. However, it’s not always our desire to represent what’s already there, instead we want to imagine and explore what’s going to be next. Architecture it’s not only about what’s already built, architecture is always about what’s going to happen, it is about imagining new spaces and new environments, and the only way to achieve this is by creating images will be made and hopefully become a reality.
This is why you can’t conceive architecture without representing or drawing of it. Creating architecture is the about creating images, and the creation of images intrinsically is a crucial asset in the architect’s repertoire to imagine and push the discipline forward. In this text I’ll explore how images have pushed forward architectural thinking with two different examples, from the utopic, unbuilt projects by Archigram in the 60s, to the fluid and unthinkable difficult buildings of Zaha, from the point of how the images were a crucial statement that helped to push their ideas forward.
Images as a critical statement.
As the visual language is one of the most important elements to an architect, drawings and images will always be the best way to express your ideas as how something should be made, but also it’s not always about something being built or not, but how those ideas align with the architects discourse and what’s the idea behind the images, to critique, analyze or propose something to inspire a new generation. This is the case of Archigram, in which all their statements about architecture were made to criticize the status of architecture in that era and to push architecture to do better things. However to deliver this message, they had to adapt and embrace a visual language in accordance to their message, and they based themselves in the development and experimentation by mixing several techniques –applied through the history of architectural representation- to create new images. Projects like the plug in city, revolutionary even by today standards, helped achieve new conversations in all fields of architecture, from how should one habit the territory, to how such things could be built, but most importantly, all the statements were always accompanied by flashing and bold images which surely summed up their statements.
“Once we assimilate the idea that a photograph can be manipulated or constructed, it no longer matters whether it actually has been or to what degree. When photography’s illusion of neutrality dissipates, the act of making a picture becomes more than ever a charged statement about how the world could or should be”1
The utilization of technique is crucial to the architectural images, for which every technique has its advantages and disadvantages, and each technique, when fully understood, serves a different purpose in its context and helps broadened the statement. It’s important to note the availability of each technique and its evolution through history, for example in Archigram’s case, the mix and use of a lot of techniques available in that era when used to get a mixed result, results in a more shocking image with a deeper message. The use of collages, analog photographs juxtaposed with drawings, sentences, typography and critical texts, all serves the purpose of what the architects meant, and Archigram was meant to be a political and critical medium for which they related with the people to push forward the discipline. As a result, more shocking and critical charges images were used when needed.
The medium in which these images were distributed plays a lot in how these images relate to the popular and architectural culture. With new technologies and with the internet, now it’s as easy as ever to divulgate images to the mass media, making the images become more democratized and socially shared. But, as the images lose its value as object, and taking into account Vassallo’s comments “the limited number of prints and negatives that were produced retained a certain value as objects, and the passing of time has only added to the aura and preciousness of these photographic relics”2. This is the normal evolution of technique and its application in how we’ve divulged distribute images. By losing the objectism of the image, the content it’s what takes the most importance. Even if it democratizes the image and helps divulgate everyone’s ideas, the content is now what becomes the most important. Even if contrary to Archigram’s divulgation method in which the use of numbered and limited issues hinders its divulgation, and only a selected group of people were able to get these issues, what remains now are the ideas they proposed, which resonates as much as when they first where launches –if not more now-, and with the divulgation methods of today, these controversial publications can be accessed now more than ever, reaching a wider public with its availability digital on the internet archives.
As noted before, when technology advances, it serves as a new medium and as a new end to create and for images to reach new ends. The architect, with tools like computer-aided design and manipulation software, now more than ever takes the central role in the business of image-making to serve him a critical, aesthetically, theoretical, etc. purpose, its relevant more than ever one has to consider how one constructs images, we are now able to manipulate and create images that also reach new markets which expose architecture to millions of new people:
“Once we assimilate the idea that a photograph (or image) can be manipulated or constructed, it no longer matters whether it actually has been or to what degree. When (photography’s) illusion of neutrality dissipates, the act of making a picture becomes more than ever a charged statement about how the world could or should be” 3
Images as an aesthetic statement.
Even as the construction of images helps with and architects critical and political agenda, it also serves the purpose of creating new aesthetics, theory and ideas that are applied to buildable architectural objects. By iterating on one’s own personal ideas and influences it is possible to create a new image aesthetic that develops into a new architectural aesthetic, a great example of this can be view in the work of Zaha Hadid. From her first drawings in the AA, to the projects late in her career, it can be seen the evolution on how her own architectural ideas and interests are visible on the images she creates, being visible the evolution and creation of her own architectural and artistic aesthetic. However, the images are not created only for an aesthetic purpose, but these images define her own architectural ideas, thoughts and interest which developed in her firm. This is the perfect example of the creation of theoretically charged images in function to build architecture, as Lebbeus Woods said: “This work was serious theory in visual form, and more. The drawings were manifestos of a new architecture that Zaha was clearly determined to realize in building, and against any odds.”4
As the images produced served a very specific purpose in her work, to help to realize her architectural vision, each iteration serves the next, and every project serves as a basis of the next drawing, and the next project, and this can also be said for her technique. As her drawings begun as hand-drawings and paintings and using rather analog techniques, with the implementation of computer-aided design, her ideas didn’t lose against the overwhelming new way of production, instead her ideas evolved and managed to take full control of the techniques and this enriched her projects, designs and images. “(…) she had to originate a new system of projection in order to formulate in spatial terms her complex thoughts about architectural forms and the relationship between them.” . The image construction was in relationship to the construction of architecture and a clear aesthetic. This is another broad way in which image making directly relates in a more physical way to the architectural field.
Images as a cultural statement
As images evolve and get more integrated with social media and the general public, they shift from the act to creating images to develop architecture to the purpose of share themselves and create culture. The architectural image , apart from relating to the act of building, the act of advertise, etc. It’s focusing more in the act of sharing and serving as a cultural frame to identify ourselves as individuals (or groups of individuals) in the vast and endless sea of information.
The contemporary purpose of architecture is more than ever to build culture, not through buildings and cities, but as making images and making part of a widespread culture of an individual. Thanks to this shift in purpose, now is more than ever to research and identify yourself, for example with Archigram revolutionary thoughts, or with Zaha’s aesthetics, or with neither. The tools and techniques have evolved to the point where they go way beyond architecture itself. Now more than ever architecture is a cultural monster, defined by its aesthetic possibilities to resonate between groups of peoples and individuals alike. As images have served architects to develop critical ideas, theoretical statements, or aesthetic values, now is the turn for images to serve architects in the distribution of architectural thinking, architectural production and the architectural practice itself, influencing the millions of people it can reach now more easy than ever:
“The proliferation of images brought on by ever-changing technologies has fundamentally changed our relationship to architectural production and to architecture as a form of cultural practice” 6
The combination of widespread and easy exchange of information through the internet with the huge amount of available content forces the architectural images to stand on their own and provide even more than the practical use of building construction. They have to be being relevant and aesthetically pleasing, they have to have a valuable content, and be critically active, they have to meet all these requirements and even more for the public to be active in architectural discussion which they have not being part, when previous images served to distribute a critical view for a selected group, or an individual artistic expression, now they have to reach to the public and create culture, and build upon themselves: “In our new digital ecosystem, images detach themselves from their creators and their original locations in the world, thus becoming the context for other images”7 These images should serve their practical purpose of advertising, divulging and construction while at the same time create forms of cultural practices and aesthetics which gets appropriated by different types of individuals, defining and relating to their own culture and aesthetical framework to define themselves. The architectural image becomes a generator of culture that goes beyond architecture itself.
[1] Vassallo. Seamless: digital collage and dirty realism in contemporary architecture, 48
[2] Vassallo. Seamless: digital collage and dirty realism in contemporary architecture, 47
[3] Vassallo. Seamless: digital collage and dirty realism in contemporary architecture, 48. Even if he was talking about photography, I added (image) to the side of photograph to reinforce my point.
[4] Woods, Lebbeus. Zaha Hadid’s drawings.
[5] Woods, Lebbeus. Zaha Hadid’s drawings.
[6] Michael Meredith, “One Thing Leads to Another,” in Under the Influence, eds. Ana Miljacki and Amanda Reeser Lawrence (Cambridge, MA: SA+P Press, 2014), 67–72
[7] Vassallo. Seamless: digital collage and dirty realism in contemporary architecture, 47.
