Sang Lee | Delft University of Technology (original) (raw)
Books by Sang Lee
Architecture in the Age of Mediatizing Technologies, 2025
This book offers a novel perspective on contemporary architecture, exploring its position in medi... more This book offers a novel perspective on contemporary architecture, exploring its position in mediatization, attained through technological apparatuses. It introduces the novel concepts of apparatus-centricity and mediatization of architecture, which have significant disciplinary and cultural ramifications.
Highlighting key technological and theoretical developments, the book’s narrative traces the transformation of architecture from the modernist era to the present, digital age. En route, it reflects on how architecture becomes a crucial element of shifting dispositives through its confluence with technologies of aestheticization and virtualization, and by emblematizing ecological ideals. It also illuminates the reconfiguring of architectural practice through examining surprising interactions and analogies between architecture and music, whose developments in notation and codification continually change the relationship between composer and performer. The book explores how architecture is reshaped by broader theory and practice in media and ultimately serves as a cognitive agent. It underscores that architecture profoundly influences our phantasmagoric, image-driven affective world through its increasingly apparatus-centric approach to conception, design, production, and mediatization.
Architecture in the Age of Mediatizing Technologies brings into focus the behavior of architecture in mediatization for researchers and advanced students in architectural design, theory, and history. As an investigation into the interdisciplinary impact of architecture in a mediatized culture at large, it also provides a valuable resource for cultural and media studies.
For centuries, across nations, dialogue between the domestic and the foreign has affected and tra... more For centuries, across nations, dialogue between the domestic and the foreign has affected and transformed architecture. Today these dialogues have become highly intensified. The Domestic and the Foreign in Architecture examines how these exchanges manifest themselves in contemporary architecture, in terms of its aesthetic potential and its practice, which, in turn, are impacted by broad economic, cultural and political issues. This book traces how diverse cultural encounters inevitably modify conventional categories, standards and codes of architecture, such as domestic identity, its political and economic representations and the negotiations with what is deemed foreign. Theoretical reflections by distinguished scholars are accompanied by interviews with some of the most influential architects practicing today, as well as stunning visual presentations by professional photographers.
"A book such as 'The Domestic and the Foreign in Architecture' hasn’t been published for the past thirty years. This interesting collection poses questions about what constitutes the 'general' and the 'specific' in architecture today, a treacherous and slippery terrain on which the stars of contemporary architecture as well as everyday professionals frequently lose their footing. In 1974 Charles Jencks and George Baird published a similar book entitled 'The Meaning in Architecture.' […] Today, with our pulverised geography and fairly standardised anthropological framework, where can we anchor the 'meaning' in architecture? The latest book examines this complex question with essays (focused on theory) and conversations (design-oriented). Sections of photoessays supplement the in-depth investigation of the theme, in which pictures speak at all latitudes, showing a tangled Babel of technical culture that casts our means in a less certain light."
Manolo de Giorgi
Book Review
Domus 922, Feb. 2009
<http://www.nai010.com/en/component/zoo/item/the-domestic-and-the-foreign-in-architecture?Itemid=452>
Book Chapters by Sang Lee
The Routledge Companion to Criticality in Art, Architecture, and Design, 2018
In this chapter, I hypothesize “performance-criticality” as a keystone that conjoins technologica... more In this chapter, I hypothesize “performance-criticality” as a keystone that conjoins technological advances, environmental sustainability, and culturally conducive aesthetics. I first explore how architecture should exemplify the causalities of performance: the congruity in materiality, construction, efficiency, and purpose. I then explore what performance-criticality means to aesthetic qualifications of architecture. On the flip side, I will also critique “performance-redundancy” in architecture that no longer appears tenable. In the end, I tackle how the concept of performance-criticality should conflate technology and aesthetics in equal measure toward culturally situated purposiveness.
Digital modeling and imaging technologies since the 1990s have greatly enhanced the conception, design, and production of architectural work in precision and quality, as well as the performance of buildings. They enable experimental work previously considered impractical and/or technically impossible. As significantly, virtualization enabled by such technologies brings into question the role of architecture as embodiment of idea, expression, and meaning in contrast to the historically privileged position of culture as milieu that shapes subjectivity. Relentless commodification of digital formalism has also come to problematize architectural work by fabricating and valorizing the allure of image-making rather than tangible purpose in actualization.
Aestheticized technologies and technologized aesthetics have been explored independently for decades. Architects frequently treat such conjunction in analogical as well as stylizing ways. In the so-called “green” architecture, the discord between technological innovation, conservation and aesthetics appears especially acute. One can hardly ignore the branding headlines pitching green-something – both literally and figuratively – as the hallmark of “sustainability.” However, whether such iconized, image-driven pitches live up to the claim of environmental responsibility and sustainability often proves tenuous. We should clearly identify what “sustainability” actually means: the unity of efficiency, durability, and conservation practiced in a culturally productive way that we can maintain and continue into the foreseeable future, ideally forever. Against such a backdrop, this chapter hypothesizes “performance-criticality” as a key concept in the discourse of material human culture and its sustainability: how to maximize performance with minimal resource load employing efficient technics, and in a culturally constructive way.
Technological measures alone cannot mitigate our environmental problems stemming from our worldview and so-called lifestyle. It is a question of aesthetic choice. We may speak of how effectively various bits and pieces of technologies (e.g. photovoltaics, wind-turbines, geothermal, passive house, advanced composites and alloys, etc.) increase the performance of architecture in consideration of dwindling resources. But we must also address cultural and aesthetic appropriations that eventually determine the distribution and scope of use. Ultimately, the battle unfolds at the cultural front that is essentially aesthetic. We may ask: Does form indeed follow emotion as Hartmut Esslinger once declared? Does emotion override utility? Or should utility outweigh emotion? How does technology contribute to aesthetic sublime? Is the aesthetics of a given material culture fundamentally symptomatic of its architecture and the human-centric environment? Has architecture indeed become an operative of the cognitive capitalism and noopolitics?
This chapter is dedicated to the discourse of architectural and environmental aesthetics in how we employ what kind of materials and technics for what purpose in human-specific ecologies. Performance-critical architecture no longer represents a category separate from aesthetic qualifications. Architecture as a part of human ecology articulates the necessity to maximize materials and techniques in a purposive way. Such architecture provides a compelling aesthetic position that arises from performance-criticality.
This chapter aims to discuss the current regime of techné by way of dispositif. Michel Foucauld d... more This chapter aims to discuss the current regime of techné by way of dispositif. Michel Foucauld describes that the dispositif is the system of relations that opens up a new field of rationality and performs a dominant strategic function. The idea of techné today directly points to making and exercising such systems of relations, practices, and mechanisms: it has indeed opened up a new field of rationality. I begin the chapter by juxtaposing techné with dispositif.
In "Building Envelope as Surface," Sang Lee and Stefanie Holzheu first trace the role that buildi... more In "Building Envelope as Surface," Sang Lee and Stefanie Holzheu first trace the role that building envelopes play in terms of their functional and presentational qualities, while drawing from a deep historical perspective of what enclosure has meant from the earliest times. They cite three models of building envelopes, namely, the modernist, the Venturian and the mimetic as examples of how the notion of building envelopes has evolved over time, with changes in the architectural discourse. Next, they propose a conceptual construct of building envelopes as surface. This discussion is based on the Leonardo Surface, a concept proposed by the analytical philosopher Avrum Stroll along with the theory of direct perception by the ecological psychologist James Jerome Gibson.
Subsequently, Lee and Holzheu discuss the philosophical and theoretical dimensions of surface as a concept in relation to Hans-Georg Gadamer and Jacques Derrida. Here, they introduce the notions of mimesis presented by the two philosophers as exemplary in considering the sustainability of architecture, while at the same time, analyzing and critiquing the current mechanistic practice of mimetics in architecture. They propose that being sustainable is, in essence, being mimetic of nature's mediations and relations, while the concept of surface provides a way to establish intimate relations between nature and built environment."
Conference Papers by Sang Lee
eCAADE 2016: Complexity & Simplexity, 2016
With the work-in-progress research project ColorTracker we explore color as a formal design tool.... more With the work-in-progress research project ColorTracker we explore color as a formal design tool. This project-based paper describes a novel software application that processes color composition of a place and transcribes the data into three-dimensional geometries for architectural design. The research comprises two parallel trajectories: a theoretical survey and the software application design. The theoretical survey presents the historical background of color. The project-based research seeks to develop digital methods and techniques that analyze the color compositions of the environment. Subsequently the objective is a novel application software for smart mobile devices in order to demonstrate the potentials of examining the color composition and chromatic parameters of a given environment and how it can contribute to the design.
eCAADe 2016: Complexity & Simplicity, 2016
This paper focuses on the conception and design of architecture as the work of producing media ab... more This paper focuses on the conception and design of architecture as the work of producing media about buildings and other environmental artifacts. I approach the questions regarding simplicity and complexity through "interdependence" and "intermodality." I believe the two concepts offer more precise frames of relations and contexts involving simplicity and complexity. I will first discuss the complexity as a condition of interdependences and how today's interdependences may provide a framework to understand complexity. I will then propose that intermodality adds to interdependence a notion that specifically pertains to today's media-driven culture and its complexity. I will next discuss how dependences and modalities are interconnected at various levels and eventually producing a new kind of semiosis that results from the disjunction between the medium and the content. I will in conclusion propose a new concept "apparatization" driven by interdependence and intermodality and how it changes shape and remain fluid, rather than scaling between simplicity and complexity, without a specific physical locus.
eCAADe 36, 2018
This paper discusses by way of the authors' recent projects how improvised live dance performance... more This paper discusses by way of the authors' recent projects how improvised live dance performance, architectonic composition, and sensing technology converge and inform new opportunities in architectural experimentation. We first lay out the theoretical basis of technology in architectural experimentation in "new rationalities" of technologically augmented aesthetic work. We then briefly describe two projects, X-Change Room and RaumSubsTANZ and the motives behind them. X-Change Room deals with /non-verbal/ ambient display of information and interaction through envelope threshold. RaumSubsTANZ, a short interactive dance composition that highlights the ephemerality of architectural composition augmented by interaction devices. Through the two small projects we attempt to explore a specific technological milieu and reflect on the potentials and challenges of experimentation in architectural composition. The paper presents design methods and techniques that incorporate theories of perception and semiotics by way of an umbrella concept, "ambient displays" and interactive composition. Ultimately, we explore non-verbal communication and theatrical performance as architectural informant that augments semiosis and cognition that pertains to the role of technology at the intersection of primordial senses, cerebral technology, and place-making.
This paper originates from inquiries into how sound recording and reproduction technologies have ... more This paper originates from inquiries into how sound recording and reproduction technologies have transformed music and its compositional techniques , and into how such apparatus driven processes have become as dominant a feature in the composition and production of contemporary architecture . The conventions of composition and representation in both music and architecture have been challenged since the advent of digital modelling and simulation and reproduction of music from the time of the phonograph's invention. These challenges are largely brought on by the formation of today’s apparatus-centric processes and their codification systems. Within the context of technological advances in design, modelling, and simulation in the last four decades, today’s architectural compositions and design exercises are deeply influenced and dependent on the apparatuses and their codification deployed in the practice. My primary intent is to trace and highlight such influences and challenges in architecture by means of specific historical instances in both disciplines. I will first take a position that music and architecture share certain similarities in conception and composition in that they are both projective in their aims and dependent on the agents of representation and signification. Secondly, I will construct my arguments surrounding those similarities specifically around the notions of apparatus and codification rather than a literal comparison of the two disciplines. Here I will expound the ways in which the notion of apparatus is distinguished from that of instrumentality or instrumental thinking and examine what makes such a notion unique in relation to the concept of codification. In order to clarify my arguments, I will employ the term, apparatisation: a condition in which existing technological instruments are reconstituted and resituated in an evolutionary manner that is radically different from the historical notion of instrumentality. By following seminal precedents in history, I will adopt a view in architecture that is analogous to the role of sound recording and reproduction in music. And by focusing on the ramifications on the practice of the discipline, I will present and speculate on the comparable effects on architecture in an apparatus-centric culture. Finally, I will attempt to draw a proposition on how episteme and techné could be perceived as one practice in the context of today’s technology- that of codification.
Conference Presentations by Sang Lee
With the work-in-progress research project ColorTracker we explore color as a formal design tool.... more With the work-in-progress research project ColorTracker we explore color as a formal design tool. This project-based paper describes a novel software application that processes color composition of a place and transcribes the data into three-dimensional geometries for architectural design. The research comprises two parallel trajectories: a theoretical survey and the software application design. The theoretical survey presents the historical background of color. The project-based research seeks to develop digital methods and techniques that analyze the color compositions of the environment. Subsequently the objective is a novel application software for smart mobile devices in order to demonstrate the potentials of examining the color composition and chromatic parameters of a given environment and how it can contribute to the design.
This paper focuses on the conception and design of architecture as the work of producing media ab... more This paper focuses on the conception and design of architecture as the work of producing media about buildings and other environmental artifacts. I approach the questions regarding simplicity and complexity through "interdependence" and "intermodality." I believe the two concepts offer more precise frames of relations and contexts involving simplicity and complexity. I will first discuss the complexity as a condition of interdependences and how today's interdependences may provide a framework to understand complexity. I will then propose that intermodality adds to interdependence a notion that specifically pertains to today's media-driven culture and its complexity. I will next discuss how dependences and modalities are interconnected at various levels and eventually producing a new kind of semiosis that results from the disjunction between the medium and the content. I will in conclusion propose a new concept "apparatization" driven by interdependence and intermodality and how it changes shape and remain fluid, rather than scaling between simplicity and complexity, without a specific physical locus.
Architecture in the Age of Mediatizing Technologies, 2025
This book offers a novel perspective on contemporary architecture, exploring its position in medi... more This book offers a novel perspective on contemporary architecture, exploring its position in mediatization, attained through technological apparatuses. It introduces the novel concepts of apparatus-centricity and mediatization of architecture, which have significant disciplinary and cultural ramifications.
Highlighting key technological and theoretical developments, the book’s narrative traces the transformation of architecture from the modernist era to the present, digital age. En route, it reflects on how architecture becomes a crucial element of shifting dispositives through its confluence with technologies of aestheticization and virtualization, and by emblematizing ecological ideals. It also illuminates the reconfiguring of architectural practice through examining surprising interactions and analogies between architecture and music, whose developments in notation and codification continually change the relationship between composer and performer. The book explores how architecture is reshaped by broader theory and practice in media and ultimately serves as a cognitive agent. It underscores that architecture profoundly influences our phantasmagoric, image-driven affective world through its increasingly apparatus-centric approach to conception, design, production, and mediatization.
Architecture in the Age of Mediatizing Technologies brings into focus the behavior of architecture in mediatization for researchers and advanced students in architectural design, theory, and history. As an investigation into the interdisciplinary impact of architecture in a mediatized culture at large, it also provides a valuable resource for cultural and media studies.
For centuries, across nations, dialogue between the domestic and the foreign has affected and tra... more For centuries, across nations, dialogue between the domestic and the foreign has affected and transformed architecture. Today these dialogues have become highly intensified. The Domestic and the Foreign in Architecture examines how these exchanges manifest themselves in contemporary architecture, in terms of its aesthetic potential and its practice, which, in turn, are impacted by broad economic, cultural and political issues. This book traces how diverse cultural encounters inevitably modify conventional categories, standards and codes of architecture, such as domestic identity, its political and economic representations and the negotiations with what is deemed foreign. Theoretical reflections by distinguished scholars are accompanied by interviews with some of the most influential architects practicing today, as well as stunning visual presentations by professional photographers.
"A book such as 'The Domestic and the Foreign in Architecture' hasn’t been published for the past thirty years. This interesting collection poses questions about what constitutes the 'general' and the 'specific' in architecture today, a treacherous and slippery terrain on which the stars of contemporary architecture as well as everyday professionals frequently lose their footing. In 1974 Charles Jencks and George Baird published a similar book entitled 'The Meaning in Architecture.' […] Today, with our pulverised geography and fairly standardised anthropological framework, where can we anchor the 'meaning' in architecture? The latest book examines this complex question with essays (focused on theory) and conversations (design-oriented). Sections of photoessays supplement the in-depth investigation of the theme, in which pictures speak at all latitudes, showing a tangled Babel of technical culture that casts our means in a less certain light."
Manolo de Giorgi
Book Review
Domus 922, Feb. 2009
<http://www.nai010.com/en/component/zoo/item/the-domestic-and-the-foreign-in-architecture?Itemid=452>
The Routledge Companion to Criticality in Art, Architecture, and Design, 2018
In this chapter, I hypothesize “performance-criticality” as a keystone that conjoins technologica... more In this chapter, I hypothesize “performance-criticality” as a keystone that conjoins technological advances, environmental sustainability, and culturally conducive aesthetics. I first explore how architecture should exemplify the causalities of performance: the congruity in materiality, construction, efficiency, and purpose. I then explore what performance-criticality means to aesthetic qualifications of architecture. On the flip side, I will also critique “performance-redundancy” in architecture that no longer appears tenable. In the end, I tackle how the concept of performance-criticality should conflate technology and aesthetics in equal measure toward culturally situated purposiveness.
Digital modeling and imaging technologies since the 1990s have greatly enhanced the conception, design, and production of architectural work in precision and quality, as well as the performance of buildings. They enable experimental work previously considered impractical and/or technically impossible. As significantly, virtualization enabled by such technologies brings into question the role of architecture as embodiment of idea, expression, and meaning in contrast to the historically privileged position of culture as milieu that shapes subjectivity. Relentless commodification of digital formalism has also come to problematize architectural work by fabricating and valorizing the allure of image-making rather than tangible purpose in actualization.
Aestheticized technologies and technologized aesthetics have been explored independently for decades. Architects frequently treat such conjunction in analogical as well as stylizing ways. In the so-called “green” architecture, the discord between technological innovation, conservation and aesthetics appears especially acute. One can hardly ignore the branding headlines pitching green-something – both literally and figuratively – as the hallmark of “sustainability.” However, whether such iconized, image-driven pitches live up to the claim of environmental responsibility and sustainability often proves tenuous. We should clearly identify what “sustainability” actually means: the unity of efficiency, durability, and conservation practiced in a culturally productive way that we can maintain and continue into the foreseeable future, ideally forever. Against such a backdrop, this chapter hypothesizes “performance-criticality” as a key concept in the discourse of material human culture and its sustainability: how to maximize performance with minimal resource load employing efficient technics, and in a culturally constructive way.
Technological measures alone cannot mitigate our environmental problems stemming from our worldview and so-called lifestyle. It is a question of aesthetic choice. We may speak of how effectively various bits and pieces of technologies (e.g. photovoltaics, wind-turbines, geothermal, passive house, advanced composites and alloys, etc.) increase the performance of architecture in consideration of dwindling resources. But we must also address cultural and aesthetic appropriations that eventually determine the distribution and scope of use. Ultimately, the battle unfolds at the cultural front that is essentially aesthetic. We may ask: Does form indeed follow emotion as Hartmut Esslinger once declared? Does emotion override utility? Or should utility outweigh emotion? How does technology contribute to aesthetic sublime? Is the aesthetics of a given material culture fundamentally symptomatic of its architecture and the human-centric environment? Has architecture indeed become an operative of the cognitive capitalism and noopolitics?
This chapter is dedicated to the discourse of architectural and environmental aesthetics in how we employ what kind of materials and technics for what purpose in human-specific ecologies. Performance-critical architecture no longer represents a category separate from aesthetic qualifications. Architecture as a part of human ecology articulates the necessity to maximize materials and techniques in a purposive way. Such architecture provides a compelling aesthetic position that arises from performance-criticality.
This chapter aims to discuss the current regime of techné by way of dispositif. Michel Foucauld d... more This chapter aims to discuss the current regime of techné by way of dispositif. Michel Foucauld describes that the dispositif is the system of relations that opens up a new field of rationality and performs a dominant strategic function. The idea of techné today directly points to making and exercising such systems of relations, practices, and mechanisms: it has indeed opened up a new field of rationality. I begin the chapter by juxtaposing techné with dispositif.
In "Building Envelope as Surface," Sang Lee and Stefanie Holzheu first trace the role that buildi... more In "Building Envelope as Surface," Sang Lee and Stefanie Holzheu first trace the role that building envelopes play in terms of their functional and presentational qualities, while drawing from a deep historical perspective of what enclosure has meant from the earliest times. They cite three models of building envelopes, namely, the modernist, the Venturian and the mimetic as examples of how the notion of building envelopes has evolved over time, with changes in the architectural discourse. Next, they propose a conceptual construct of building envelopes as surface. This discussion is based on the Leonardo Surface, a concept proposed by the analytical philosopher Avrum Stroll along with the theory of direct perception by the ecological psychologist James Jerome Gibson.
Subsequently, Lee and Holzheu discuss the philosophical and theoretical dimensions of surface as a concept in relation to Hans-Georg Gadamer and Jacques Derrida. Here, they introduce the notions of mimesis presented by the two philosophers as exemplary in considering the sustainability of architecture, while at the same time, analyzing and critiquing the current mechanistic practice of mimetics in architecture. They propose that being sustainable is, in essence, being mimetic of nature's mediations and relations, while the concept of surface provides a way to establish intimate relations between nature and built environment."
eCAADE 2016: Complexity & Simplexity, 2016
With the work-in-progress research project ColorTracker we explore color as a formal design tool.... more With the work-in-progress research project ColorTracker we explore color as a formal design tool. This project-based paper describes a novel software application that processes color composition of a place and transcribes the data into three-dimensional geometries for architectural design. The research comprises two parallel trajectories: a theoretical survey and the software application design. The theoretical survey presents the historical background of color. The project-based research seeks to develop digital methods and techniques that analyze the color compositions of the environment. Subsequently the objective is a novel application software for smart mobile devices in order to demonstrate the potentials of examining the color composition and chromatic parameters of a given environment and how it can contribute to the design.
eCAADe 2016: Complexity & Simplicity, 2016
This paper focuses on the conception and design of architecture as the work of producing media ab... more This paper focuses on the conception and design of architecture as the work of producing media about buildings and other environmental artifacts. I approach the questions regarding simplicity and complexity through "interdependence" and "intermodality." I believe the two concepts offer more precise frames of relations and contexts involving simplicity and complexity. I will first discuss the complexity as a condition of interdependences and how today's interdependences may provide a framework to understand complexity. I will then propose that intermodality adds to interdependence a notion that specifically pertains to today's media-driven culture and its complexity. I will next discuss how dependences and modalities are interconnected at various levels and eventually producing a new kind of semiosis that results from the disjunction between the medium and the content. I will in conclusion propose a new concept "apparatization" driven by interdependence and intermodality and how it changes shape and remain fluid, rather than scaling between simplicity and complexity, without a specific physical locus.
eCAADe 36, 2018
This paper discusses by way of the authors' recent projects how improvised live dance performance... more This paper discusses by way of the authors' recent projects how improvised live dance performance, architectonic composition, and sensing technology converge and inform new opportunities in architectural experimentation. We first lay out the theoretical basis of technology in architectural experimentation in "new rationalities" of technologically augmented aesthetic work. We then briefly describe two projects, X-Change Room and RaumSubsTANZ and the motives behind them. X-Change Room deals with /non-verbal/ ambient display of information and interaction through envelope threshold. RaumSubsTANZ, a short interactive dance composition that highlights the ephemerality of architectural composition augmented by interaction devices. Through the two small projects we attempt to explore a specific technological milieu and reflect on the potentials and challenges of experimentation in architectural composition. The paper presents design methods and techniques that incorporate theories of perception and semiotics by way of an umbrella concept, "ambient displays" and interactive composition. Ultimately, we explore non-verbal communication and theatrical performance as architectural informant that augments semiosis and cognition that pertains to the role of technology at the intersection of primordial senses, cerebral technology, and place-making.
This paper originates from inquiries into how sound recording and reproduction technologies have ... more This paper originates from inquiries into how sound recording and reproduction technologies have transformed music and its compositional techniques , and into how such apparatus driven processes have become as dominant a feature in the composition and production of contemporary architecture . The conventions of composition and representation in both music and architecture have been challenged since the advent of digital modelling and simulation and reproduction of music from the time of the phonograph's invention. These challenges are largely brought on by the formation of today’s apparatus-centric processes and their codification systems. Within the context of technological advances in design, modelling, and simulation in the last four decades, today’s architectural compositions and design exercises are deeply influenced and dependent on the apparatuses and their codification deployed in the practice. My primary intent is to trace and highlight such influences and challenges in architecture by means of specific historical instances in both disciplines. I will first take a position that music and architecture share certain similarities in conception and composition in that they are both projective in their aims and dependent on the agents of representation and signification. Secondly, I will construct my arguments surrounding those similarities specifically around the notions of apparatus and codification rather than a literal comparison of the two disciplines. Here I will expound the ways in which the notion of apparatus is distinguished from that of instrumentality or instrumental thinking and examine what makes such a notion unique in relation to the concept of codification. In order to clarify my arguments, I will employ the term, apparatisation: a condition in which existing technological instruments are reconstituted and resituated in an evolutionary manner that is radically different from the historical notion of instrumentality. By following seminal precedents in history, I will adopt a view in architecture that is analogous to the role of sound recording and reproduction in music. And by focusing on the ramifications on the practice of the discipline, I will present and speculate on the comparable effects on architecture in an apparatus-centric culture. Finally, I will attempt to draw a proposition on how episteme and techné could be perceived as one practice in the context of today’s technology- that of codification.
With the work-in-progress research project ColorTracker we explore color as a formal design tool.... more With the work-in-progress research project ColorTracker we explore color as a formal design tool. This project-based paper describes a novel software application that processes color composition of a place and transcribes the data into three-dimensional geometries for architectural design. The research comprises two parallel trajectories: a theoretical survey and the software application design. The theoretical survey presents the historical background of color. The project-based research seeks to develop digital methods and techniques that analyze the color compositions of the environment. Subsequently the objective is a novel application software for smart mobile devices in order to demonstrate the potentials of examining the color composition and chromatic parameters of a given environment and how it can contribute to the design.
This paper focuses on the conception and design of architecture as the work of producing media ab... more This paper focuses on the conception and design of architecture as the work of producing media about buildings and other environmental artifacts. I approach the questions regarding simplicity and complexity through "interdependence" and "intermodality." I believe the two concepts offer more precise frames of relations and contexts involving simplicity and complexity. I will first discuss the complexity as a condition of interdependences and how today's interdependences may provide a framework to understand complexity. I will then propose that intermodality adds to interdependence a notion that specifically pertains to today's media-driven culture and its complexity. I will next discuss how dependences and modalities are interconnected at various levels and eventually producing a new kind of semiosis that results from the disjunction between the medium and the content. I will in conclusion propose a new concept "apparatization" driven by interdependence and intermodality and how it changes shape and remain fluid, rather than scaling between simplicity and complexity, without a specific physical locus.