The emergence of new digital design tools like photogrammetry, augmented reality, virtual reality, and mixed reality enables the contemplation creation and exploration of novel architectural processes and mediums. Coupled with big data sources, geographical information systems, and powerful computational applications that allow for digital sculpting, painting, and modeling, new possibilities open for the augmentation of physical conditions in ways which have previously been unavailable to us as designers. Like the many technological innovations which have proceeded them, their capacity to inform the design process and design product should be interrogated both optimistically and critically. In this course we will be examining, testing, and expanding the potential of these new design tools and evaluating their capacity and limitations in creating compelling and innovative materials, forms, and spatial configurations.
The architectural design process and product has always been shaped by the tools used to conceive and construct it. Technology has always been integral to the design process. But its increased influence requires the development of skills that allow us to control technology, to avoid being controlled by it – whether employing digital modeling, rendering, parametric algorithms or immersive mediums.