Estranging Digital Design Research : Architectural Making with William Gibson.
Abstract
This paper describes a design research methodology which combines Research through Design (RtD) with science fiction (SF) studies as both a projective and critical making practice in a novel contribution to architecture’s growing fascination and engagement with SF. This research methodology is aimed at the integration of digital design and fabrication tools with the disciplinary knowledge and future imaginaries of architectural practice through the vehicle of SF literature, a mature cultural phenomenon that probes the future implications of many technological practices. Engaging with digital making through the critical lens of SF estrangement opens up a discursive territory for the synthesis of aesthetic, social, and ethical considerations with the technological futures imagined and implied in digital practices in architecture. This paper describes a reading of William Gibson’s “The Peripheral”(2014) and the author’s Bridge Trilogy: “Virtual Light”(1993), “Idoru” (1996) and “All Tomorrow’s Parties”(1999). These novels’ respective conflicts are articulated and elaborated in architectural terms, centring on the technical culture of 3D printing, material ecologies, and building agencies of enclaves resisting capitalist hegemony. The research project described by this paper goes beyond articulating the speculative or theoretical potentials of the text in order to introduce a method of making architecture with the text. In this case, the world of the text becomes a “site” for critical experimentation with digital fabrication technology, using the estrangement produced by the text as a counterpoint to contemporary practices in architectural technology, introducing different ideological, technical, and ethical demands. A confrontation between ‘real-world’ fabrication practices and the world-building of Gibson’s texts results in tools and building experiments as exercises in both SF storytelling and architectural speculation.
Info
Conference Paper, 2020
UN SDG Classification
DK Main Research Area
Science/Technology
