Copying, Cutting and Pasting Social Spheres

Abstract

In architecture, projects are developed through a series of graphic productions. This space of representation can be accessed using visual effects. Among the documents (plans, sections, details, etc.) used to give shape to a building, so-called ‘perspective drawings’ play a decisive role, as they make a whole world come alive and, at the same time, act to convince a multiple audience of this world’s ability to function. Created using computer-aided design (CAD), perspective drawings aim to ‘render’ space by projecting potential uses, light, and intangible things such as atmosphere. These drawings provide architects and designers with an opportunity to redefine the nature of beings and act on the peculiarity of their relationships, and constitute an interesting support to consider the projection of new cosmologies, anticipating the cohabitation of such diverse things as human beings, buildings, roads, trees, skies, cars and their respective ways of existing. This paper is based on ethnographic fieldwork in a Japanese architect’s office and a computer designer’s studio, and focuses on the architectural setting of the Japanese World Fair, Aichi 2005.

Design and the Polysemy of Value: On a problem within the language of valuation studies

“…One expression of this trend is its recurrent effort to appeal to the experimental (cf. Bogusz 2018), as well as to continue the traditional laboratory studies at the design studio (Yaneva 2005(Yaneva , 2009a(Yaneva , 2013Houdart 2008;Houdart and Minato 2009;Farías and Wilkie 2015;Potthast 2017). Both places, i.e.…”

Transfer ethnography: the recording of a heritage building

“…Farías (2015, p. 273), in his fieldwork conducted in three architectural practices in Chile referred to the engagement with images, rendering and visual means among other actors to argue that alternatives in design are never final and are always subject for discussion to give rise to new options “brought into existence by means of socio-material practices”. Similarly, Houdart (2008), with the example of the image rendering of an exhibition space by Kuma Kengo, referred to different versions of design that are continuously updated according to the anticipated interactions between the human and the non-human. Students in this case acted and made each other act to produce their alternatives and versions of the façade design.…”

“…Examples of ANT-inspired ethnographic studies are the monographs of Houdart (2008), Loukissas (2012) and Yaneva (2009aYaneva ( , b, c, 2013, who drew on Callon's work. The importance of their approach is that they followed the design process within the design practice.…”

‘Concrete Drawing’: An Ethnographical Study of Design, Matter and Affect

“…Research has also focused on how the material space of the studio has an impact on the design (Telier et al, 2011) including the atmospheres of studios (Ash, 2016) where artefacts and spaces have agency in the design process (Moore, Wilson, 2014). From a similar perspective, scholars have also considered the techniques and tools of designers such as scaling as a way that knowledge in architectural practice is brought into existence (Yaneva, 2005, p. 869); or perspectives as a technique where new design is imagined to create a common space for humans and non-humans to cohabitate (Houdart, 2008); and, tools such as simulations support and mediate engineers professional relationships (Loukissas, 2012). Through this brief overview what is apparent is how design is mediated by techniques, tools, materials and is fundamentally collaborative, offering a far more complex view of architectural design than that offered by the myth of the individual genius architect.…”