Are you a model? A questionable start to a conversation one might think, and yet, architecture does beg the question. What does it mean to call something a model? Which implications, projections or desires are called to the table? Architects do not build buildings, they draw plans, they model structures or produce objects; all practices with a longstanding tradition in architecture—be they analog or digital. As discipline working with substitute media and through displaced methods, we might ask of objects indeed: Are you a model? More than a pickup line, we want to put the model front and center in an assessment of architectural thinking and doing.
In a time of shifting paradigms and increasing digitalization in architecture, a new generation of virtual models promises precision, predictability and easy communication between disciplines and protagonists. Yet rather than placing the model in categories lodged on either side of dichotomies such as analogue vs digital or representational vs conceptual, we want to investigate the role of the model precisely on and between such dividing lines—there is a renewed urgency to discuss this when much hope (and investment) is placed in seemingly perfect simulation models, be it economic, meteorological or medical.
Focus Session 5 by FID Bau: Do we look alike? - On Digital Multiples Twins and Simulation Processes