Fictions: A Speculative Account

of Design Mediums
Damjan Jovanovic

The Albertian paradigm of architecture as an allographic1 This is where questions of code and its relation to language
practice implies that architectural design comprises in general come to the fore. Yet coding as a practice
forms of notation and representation. It would seem that (and code in general, its apparent similarity to writing
mediums2 are all that architects engage with. Architecture notwithstanding) does not immediately lend itself to
is primarily a cultural, visual practice that operates through any kind of aesthetic analysis. Coding depends on the
design, understood as composition and the arrangement axiomatic, mathematical model and belongs to a different
of relations. While architects work with drawings and semiology. Only when the outcomes of code become
models, they primarily produce images. With the advent visible as something other than code does software
of the digital, according to media scholar Lev Manovich, (and computation) become interesting for design. The
other media (print, photography, radio, film, etc) have crucial question is how these outcomes become visible,
been collapsed and integrated into software as a meta- and under what circumstances this visibility operates.
medium; in almost all areas of contemporary life, software
takes command.3 According to Marshall McLuhan, when ALGORITHMS AND INTERFACES
a new medium appears, it does its best to simulate the
preceding one before it inevitably supercedes it. Hence, Algorithms form the core of software’s medium specificity,
when cinema emerged in the late nineteenth century, its and they produce crucial effects, like interactivity.
formal vocabulary was that of the theatre until it discovered The discussion on the nature of algorithms in relation
its own medium specificity – montage and movable to architecture becomes possible only when algorithms
camera.4 Importantly, a change comes to the old medium become visible – that is, only when an interface is
as well. After cinema took over some of the classical involved. This is precisely why the computational question
representational and, in that sense, political responsibilities in architecture should never be equated with its numerical
of theatre, the focus of theatrical production shifted more basis, i.e. the quantities, but with how these quantities
and more towards the participatory and the situational firstly become manifest optically and then as visual and
elements, retaining and honing the literary component semiotic qualities. Code is the basic interface, and yet
while moving away from the visual. Eventually, these architectural design is a visual, cultural practice defined
Fig. 2: Superstudio’s Supersurface project (1971) posits the inhabitation of the flat ground grid
developments gave rise to modernist theatre and other by its focus on compositional issues. Design procedures as the ultimate architecture of our lives. “MAXXI Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo, Roma”.
complex forms. The specificity of theatre was rediscovered in the digital age are computational inasmuch as they Collections MAXXI Architecture Archive Superstudio.
in focusing on the living presence of an actor’s body and depend on functions of language as code and code as
voice. In another example, with the introduction of a representation of space in the forms of design software. obfuscation stemming from confusing a visual, cultural always already political. Hence, the true value of software
photography, painting was introduced to a new specificity In other words, the conditions of a medium become practice such as architecture with a scientific practice in architecture is that it constructs new modes of projection
in the form of abstraction. important only when a question of composition comes such as chemistry, a simple rule can be applied: if a and new modes of vision, as well as that it enables new
to the fore, and only if the conditions themselves can procedure is not available for forms of reading in relation models of grids.
What happens when a medium contains all other mediums? be shown as being composed and composing. to composition (here understood in the broadest sense
Everything changes, yet the issue of software’s specificity as the act of combining parts to form a whole), it is Of all the sub-mediums architects usually work with, only
is rarely addressed. In response, Clement Greenberg’s For instance, there is no point in looking into the chemical not relevant. As with any medium, in the case of design renderings convey a degree of complexity in terms of
notion of medium specificity can be reintroduced with processes of film in order to understand the film’s software there exist conditions that operate as ambience, mood and atmosphere. Architects are content
regard to the problem of architectural design understood meaning, yet the film stock properties leave a definitive composers of space well before any input from the user. in making only the necessary documents that their
as a software practice. The question becomes: what is imprint on the composition of an image, already working Hence, what does software, understood in these terms, discipline demands, thus leaving the whole world of new,
it that software can do that no other medium can? towards an image composition long prior to the film’s mean for architecture? virtual and interactive spatiality to others. The enormous
treatment in post-production. To avoid the pitfalls and size, complexity, richness and attention to detail of some
Firstly, it is important to make a distinction between the Architecture relies on its traditional modes of representation contemporary computer game worlds exemplify what
conditions for and the effects of mediums. In the case for design, which mostly comprise various projection- this new spatiality can be. The overwhelming feeling of
of cinema, the technical conditions of the medium involve based imagery, either orthographic or perspectival. immersion and saturation within these worlds is the result
employing a number of discrete units (images) to create As a concept, projection lies at the core of architectural of spatial design. Hence, as far as design methodology
an illusion of movement as an effect. The fact that film design and continues to do so with software as well. is concerned, architects may have as much to learn from
operates with discrete units does not prevent its effect Yet software introduces other modes of projection, computer game and software designers as from the
from being perceived as continuous. The same goes of which active projection is by far the most important, histories of architecture or the vast majority of contemp-
for software. Its dependence on hardware that currently since it enables interactivity. Every projection is coupled orary practices. Yet it is not only that the architectural
operates in binary states (since we still do not have with a gaze, and every projection operates on grids, discipline will find itself in an era where humanity will
quantum computers), tells us nothing of the vast field which are the primary design objects. More importantly, inhabit and experience artificial worlds in a way not at all
of sensorial effects that it engenders. Similarly, abstract the algorithmic nature of software enables these different to how it experiences ‘real life’, but that the very
data, infinities and random values may be at the core of projections to be populated with new and unforeseen conditions in which the new architectural additions to
computation, but computation only becomes available grids. Principally, a grid is any digital object that has ‘real life’ are being produced, organised and disseminated
Fig. 1: A screenshot from the author’s game-like design software called
as a problem in design methodology once its conditions The Other Method, which utilizes the first person view as the only view become visible as an interface. In this sense, any are already completely set in the virtuality of digital and
and effects are coded in such a way as to be readable. available for design. projection is always already compositional, and in turn algorithmic worlds.

28 Augmentations Papers 29
The dominance of design software packages that come information for building construction has ensured that The role of orthographic representations is to ensure
out of the legacy of Computer Aided Design maintains orthographic projections rule the architectural design the preservation of dimensions, but an unseen
traditional architectural design methodology and ensures process. This implies that there is such a thing as an consequence is that they impose the flat organisational
the endless reproduction of traditional design notations orthographic gaze as well as a perspectival gaze. As with and compositional principles on the model space, thus
and their elements, some of which have already become any other tool, orthographic projections are not devoid saturating the outcomes with abstraction.
almost obsolete (scale, for example). The latest iteration of aesthetic and political implications. They produce very
of the CAD paradigm is BIM, which may yet prove to be specific spatial outcomes, as they depend on a very Perspectives are a different concept, as they are usually
the greatest threat to the discipline as a design practice specific set of presumptions. Historically, the architectural made after the fact of design to add atmosphere and
– since the BIM paradigm is principally about project discipline has been identified with a special skill set that an illusion of life. Perspectival projection hints at the
management rather than design. It is no wonder, then, relies heavily on planar thinking. The word plan testifies idea of subjective space where the vanishing point is
that the most interesting design work today comes from to this; it has both the meaning of a plan and planning. inverted into the eye of the observer. One of its effects
the use of exotic and custom-made software or software To plan in architecture is to partake in a political practice is that it enables a specific reading of a picture plane.
whose original area of application is not architecture enabled by the medium of a plan. More specifically, this It not only organises the space but reorganises the
– Maya, ZBrush, Softimage, Houdini, Unity – or directly political practice is engendered by the gaze that this observer as well and engenders a specific form of
from programming languages like Processing. medium affords. This gaze can generically be identified relationship between the two that can be conceptualised
as a top view in the case of plans, and as a side view in as entanglement. The notion of gaze arises in the form
Hence, the role of software in architecture has been cases of sections and elevations. A top view implies the of a mutual gaze facilitated through an abstract grid
largely misunderstood: firstly, by disregarding software idea of total control of the model space and is particularly diagram. There is evidence that perspectival projection
specificity and focusing on simulations of the traditional good at enabling any idea that has to do with a central has been used as a design tool as well, for example,
design medium in software in an attempt to preserve hierarchy and centralised political authority, as exemplified in the Renaissance,8 but perspectives have historically
the discipline as it was historically, and out of necessity, by Roman city planning (Cardo and Decumanus); centrally been understood as ‘too subjective’ and, more importantly,
defined; secondly, by amplifying the incidental and planned temples; the ideal villa of Palladio; the nine square imprecise to be used as design tools. Modernism
non-disciplinary effects of software, through using it Fig. 3: A comparison between the default interfaces of Maya, one of the and the four square grids. Here, symmetry is particularly introduced parallel projection-based representations
as a tool for simulation of natural processes. What is most common design software packages, and Stingray, a new game important since it is producible exclusively in the planar as an assumed objective mode of looking at the model
needed is a radical embrace of software specificity engine made by Autodesk. In Maya, the largest part of the interface mode. The ground is another important notion: in the space. The gaze embedded in parallel projection
is devoted to the model space, represented with a flat grid observed
understood as a new visuality – that is, a radically new from above, whereas in Stingray, the gaze is changed and the flat ground
planar top view, the ground becomes abstracted into promoted another variant of the totalising ‘god mode’
vision system for architecture – and as a new ground grid becomes inhabitable. a background (which is the original meaning of ‘ground’ look that preserved the dimensions of the plan while
for architectural fictions.5 in a figure-ground problem in perception), and this simulating three-dimensionality.
vocabulary and tropes (balloons, children, vegetation becomes clear with the introduction of the Nolli map.
A SPECULATIVE HISTORY OF DESIGN MEDIA on roofs, cherry blossom trees…). When, in rare cases, In sections and elevations, another kind of relationship It follows that the compositional problems in architecture
an office uses a video presentation of its architecture, becomes apparent: the hierarchical dependence on are inescapably governed by the mediums: planar
Historically, the medium specificity of paper was given this still retains the passivity of an image. The use of the ground datum. In other words, the disciplinary and volumetric representations. These are not merely
by its flatness and expendable nature, which provided a VR platform6 allows the clients the joy of inhabitation problem of the figure-ground relationship is twofold representations in the usual sense of the words; they
the perfect conditions for the rise of very specific where the ‘body’ of a possible architecture participates since it originates both in the top and side views but are themselves projective systems, systems that
architectural sub-mediums: orthographic projection- through telepresence. Although virtual reality might has different implications in each. generate a spatial outcome instead of just recording one.
based plans, sections, elevations, perspectives and eventually replace renders as the primary means of
iso- and axonometric drawings. Since Alberti, architects representation of an architectural space, it will change
have dealt with forms of representation without having architecture as a discipline only if a similar environment
to worry whether or not representations will take becomes available as a design medium as well.
command and trounce ‘reality’. Architects use software
principally as a simulation tool, which is particularly The chronic delay of fabrication and building technologies
apparent in the practice of rendering. Rendering is simply in comparison to design technologies presents an
perspectival drawing made on a computer. Insofar as incredible bottleneck for the discipline. This paradox is
Alberti was right in saying that architects do not build shown by the fact that architects do not build yet are
but make representations of buildings, renders can obsessed with the imperative of buildability. The Albertian
be seen as the key product of an architectural practice. ideal of an architect as a pure maker of spatial ideas will
Renders are images that trace their lineage to the rules be fully actuated when this paradox is resolved through
of perspective and come out of the long tradition of the flattening of design space with the real space, either
mimetic representation that characterised pre-modern by 3D printing or the utility fog7 or a similar idea.
painting. They are the perfect example of a purely
software-based phenomenon used and regarded as THE GAZE AND THE GRID
if it has nothing to do with software.
Spatial visual media can be analysed based on two
Contemporary layer-based digital image making (which is concepts which both have to do with projections:
the basis of software like Photoshop) forms the basis of the gaze and the grid. The gaze is our visual access to
architectural representation today, and yet even when it the model space, which in turn depends on projection.
draws lessons from twentieth-century cinematography, The gaze is never objective, far from disinterested and
by design it remains locked firmly in the tradition of always intentional.
passive representation, that of a photo collage. Renders
Fig. 4: A collection of screenshots of the author’s custom-made, game logic-based design software,
are expected to be nothing more than idealised images Traditionally, the need for notating the space for the Platform Sandbox, as customised by the student Yara Feghali. This software was used as a design tool,
of a new architectural reality; they come with their own purpose of preserving the design intention as well as and as a means of design speculation for the first year students at Staedelshule Architecture Class in 2016.

30 Augmentations Papers 31
This relationship is an interesting inversion of the actuated, interactive projection of total immersion. software that the grid finally takes over. Ultimately, This notion of obstructing prevalent, established, rational
Renaissance invention of drawing as ray casting; This means that, for the first time in the history of the image of the digital is the image of an endless grid and positivistic methods through employing game-like
it could be said that any act of design is ray casting architecture, there is the possibility of visually inhabiting accommodating other grids, manipulated by an omniscient scenarios and practices is not new. It was used
in reverse. If so, Alberti’s and Dürer’s ‘prince of rays’ a design space. and omnipresent designer. In recent years, another extensively by the Surrealists as a means of disestablishing
has been conflated with a reverse-direction ‘god ray’ metaphor, that of a cloud, has come to represent the the aesthetic and political implications of well-known
of the designer’s gaze. Historically, the grid has undergone a series of transform- digital regime, almost as an attempted escape from this models. In surrealist games such as the Exquisite Corpse,10
ations, and this history can be found in software in a perceived artificiality. Yet maybe it is the case that these any notion of systematic, rational form-making is erased.
Interactivity in software starts with the gaze – in other compressed and accelerated version. The orthographic, two ideal images are collapsed: it is as if somehow, in a The games were derived as a means of freeing the
words, with a specific visual access to the model. perspectival and isometric grids have been replaced perfect union between the natural and artificial, the world creative process of conscious control.
Unlike traditional perspective or axonometry, the by the active and volumetric grids of software. From has become an endless, reflective grid mirroring the
software ‘perspective view’ imposes a fully actuated, the traditional grids of early 2D CAD packages to the clouded sky above. In this sense, and seeing the rise of In August 2015, Autodesk presented a new software
fully accessible model space. Though still restricted to contemporary high-resolution (aka high-poly) grids of planetary-scale computation in hindsight, Superstudio’s package that will allow architects to finally inhabit the
the two-dimensional plane of a screen, it is an interactive various sculpting and procedural-based software, design Supersurface of 1972, a project that has been understood spaces before they are actually built. Named Stingray,
projection that liberates spatial outcomes from the is not the design of objects, but of grids, in grids and as a conceptual, ironic utopia which projects an endless, the software is actually a game engine, in the tradition
constraints of fixed projection systems. The user can on grids. Any model designed in software is a grid: a mesh- isotropic grid taking over the world, can now be actually of Unity 3D and Unreal. Exactly like those 3D applications
move and orbit around, zoom in and out of the model or NURBS-based, low- or high-resolution, uniform or read as the realist project for the twenty-first century. as well as others, Stingray employs a grid as a ground and
space and thus gain access to every aspect of its spatiality. deformed grid. And every model is instantiated on another affords a gaze, yet this time a very specific one. Its default
Plans and sections are restrictive because they do not grid, the ubiquitous ground grid. GAMES view is that of an endless, walkable grid, observed from
afford this access. The move to software is a move from first person, enclosed by an endless, clouded sky.
the flat organisational diagram into a volumetric diagram. THE GROUND GRID Software flattens the field of visual effects and enables
This implies a more fluid relationship with the underlying messy encounters between drawing, painting, video
organisation and a less rigid set of rules. Perhaps the history of ground grids is the most interesting, and games. As a direct descendant of traditional design
as they have been present since at least the Renaissance. mediums, design software prescribes a very specific role
In contemporary practice and due to the use of software, This ground as flat grid is first found in the so-called to the user: that of a disinterested, disembodied subject
plans and sections are increasingly made after the Prevedari engraving of 1481, made by Bernandino that has full access to any projection space that operates
design, and practically no design is ever done only from Prevedari after Donato Bramante and named Interior on a spectrum of full visibility and full zoom-in. This approach
a plan. The model space enabled by software collapses of a Temple with Figures. It, or its variations, are always continues and vastly expands a specific subjectivity of
the different projection spaces into a volumetric diagram. found in the depictions of ideal places, such as in an architect operating in the ‘god mode’ of the traditional
This engenders very specific spatial outcomes; for Raphael’s The Marriage of The Virgin. These places are discipline. An architect is now an omnipresent and
example, the traditional relationship between the plan and never simple landscapes; they are the originators of omniscient entity with full control over the design space,
the façade becomes obscured and the façade becomes urbanity, yet they always have an atmosphere of an ideal which supposedly ensures that his authorship is visibly
either an intentional cut through the volume or is literally nature. A flat grid indicates a perfect balance between imprinted. This notion of total visual empowerment is
a three-dimensional envelope. This unification of model tamed, lived-in nature and enlightened city dwelling a heritage of the military roots of the digital regime,9
space enables a different outcome than what was – a negotiation between opposites and a sign of harmony. and leads ultimately to very problematic and unexamined
possible in a time when space was modelled in separate It is a utopian sign par excellence, and it is no wonder political outcomes of design processes, best witnessed
orthographic views. For one thing, it does away with the that it comes back in modernity with such force. It is this in totalising fictions like Parametricism.
idea that unidirectionality is a compositional and organisa- inescapability of the grid that has haunted architecture
tional default. The traditional, orthographic space can in the late twentieth century. In this sense, deconstruction Unlike other software, computer games tend to problem-
thus be described as a disassociated, fragmented space was primarily a move against the isotropic grid, featuring atise the notion of subjective agency either through
that had to be stitched together, and it is precisely in instead fractured, broken grids supposed to engender exposing and putting into question the ability of a player
this stitching that the traditional practice found its modus new, non-privileged subjectivities. or by disturbing the mere notion of a goal. Because of
operandi. The modernist grid is a perfect example: an their full spectrum deployment of interactivity, games
endless, equal potential space that only actually functions The flat grid has since become ubiquitous, its latest could be thought of as the most medium-specific type 1
M  ario Carpo, in The Alphabet and the Algorithm, (Cambridge, MA:
in two dimensions and makes stacking a solution to every iterations being equated with popular depictions of the of software. Play does not have to be always goal- MIT Press, 2011).
height problem. The Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris by digital realm, such as the one found in the Tron films oriented, and although most games do have a goal (the 2
‘Media’ and ‘mediums’ are optional terms. Here ‘mediums’ is used
Frank Gehry is a building that has been designed solely on of 1982 and 2010. However, it is precisely in 3D design ‘win’ state), more and more the inherent specificity of to ensure difference from broadcasting.
3
Lev Manovich, Software Takes Command, (London: Bloomsbury, 2013).
the basis of a volumetric diagram. The plan is no longer experience leads to the player being content with merely 4
“A new medium is never an addition to an old one, nor does it leave the
a generator; it is merely generated. Hence, orthographic ‘existing’ within a game. Immersion does not depend old one in peace. It never ceases to oppress the older media until it
mediums are exposed as ultimate abstractions of living on, and is more likely even disturbed by, direct calls for finds new shapes and positions for them”, in Essential McLuhan, Edited
by Eric McLuhan & Frank Zingrone (London: Routledge, 1997), 278.
space that have become misidentified as guarantors for action towards reaching a goal. The notions of agency 5
The notion of formats – a project or a building becomes just one
disciplinary specificity. and authorship are thus perceived in a different manner, format in a flat ontology of formats, where software is the medium.
which enables loosening up the idea of control. It is See David Joselit, After Art, (Princeton University Press, 2013), 55.
6
For example, Oculus Rift and HTC Vive offer unparalleled possibilities of
Still, when the traditional and contemporary mediums precisely the notion of loose control that can be postulated immersion.
do not share the same type of gaze any more, they as a new authorial model. Rather than depending on 7
The utility fog (coined by Dr. John Storrs Hall in 1993) is a hypothetical
have a common base for their spatial models: the grid. guaranteed outcomes that come either out of total collection of tiny robots that can replicate a physical structure.
As such, it is a form of self-reconfiguring modular robotics. Source:
The base of every modelling software is the grid, just as control of the medium or out of a system-based logic
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_fog
it has always been for any graphic procedure based on of computation, this notion puts the possibility of a 8
Erwin Panofsky, Perspective as Symbolic Form, (MIT Press,
projection. If software is still dependent on projection, its new subject first. A subject that is aware of his own Zone Books, 1996).
grid is now separated from the gaze. In other words, the entanglement with other, non-human forms of agency
9
Friedrich Kittler, “Computer Graphics: A Semi-Technical Introduction”,
Fig.5: A screenshot from the author’s upcoming game software Grey Room (2001), 31.
projection is interactive and does not restrict the model called Supersurface that recreates the Superstudio project, and is willing to explore new configurations coming out 10
Alastair Brotchie and Mel Gooding, The Book of Surrealist Games
space to a two-dimensional space but engenders a fully thus finally enabling the inhabitation. of this flat, non-hierarchical relationship. (Shambhala, 1995), 25.

32 Augmentations Papers 33