Joanna Wlaszyn École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture Paris-Malaquais /ENSAPM in Paris Université Paris-Est
Abstract
The primary purpose of this paper is to explore the phenomenological nature and aesthetic interpretations of contemporary architecture as a representation. Technological progress influences the experiments in architecture embracing new aesthetics and thereby the emotive and sensorial aspect of representation. New technologies are shaping the formal and material possibilities of creation by introducing the “digital” into the physical environment. “New” seems to become the paradigmatic condition towards the projection of technological meanings about architectural representation. In the context of technological development and its transitory aspect, this paper intends to evaluate how technological advances affect the dichotomy between the subject of representation (architectural space) and the object represented (architectural tectonics).
As “buildings have turned into image products” (Pallasma 1996, 30), it is paramount to go beyond the image of architecture rooted in its purely formal and/or material representation and to explore the immaterial potentialities of architecture. Digital technologies reconfigure architectural thresholds by emphasizing the phenomenological properties of architectural space (senses of the invisible). The concept of representation takes here a very particular direction by seeking to liberate the perceptible potentiality of architecture rather than be encased as a new technological standard of conception and production.
The manner in which one apprehends the novel logics of architectural representations entails a radical change in perception and understanding of physical space – hence an aesthetic experience of architecture that flags the issue of the temporality of architectural representation. Referring to the generative phenomenology framework this research will raise the following questions:
Are digital technologies providing the new potentiality about the representing rather than the represented? How does “new” and technological architecture exemplify the ability of perception? If architecture creates the environments of instantaneous perceptions, does Hursserl’s “back to the things themselves” entail re-thinking temporality and intersubjectivity of architectural space? From a phenomenological perspective, does architecture then become a permanent experimentation of subjective representation?As a case study, this paper will conduct a comparative analysis of the works of: Elizabeth Diller & Ricardo Scofidio, François Roche, Lars Spuybroek, Tadao Ando, Toyo Ito and Louis I. Kahn.
Author biography
Joanna Wlaszyn is an architect and researcher, member of ACS Laboratory (Architecture, Culture et Société) at École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture Paris-Malaquais / ENSAPM in Paris. Currently enrolled in the PhD program, her research fields include: the phenomenological approach to contemporary architecture, the aesthetic relationship between art, architecture and technology, with a particular focus on the experimental architecture and its technological modes of , reception and representation.