What is it about?

The study presents digital architectural form existing solely in the digital realm, as an architectural interpretation of computational glitches through both its design process and aesthetic outcome. Thus, this research intends to bring a level of authenticity to the field through three-dimensional interpretations of glitch in an architectural form.

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Why is it important?

Architectural designs are visualised on computer screens through arrays of pixels and vectors. These representations differ from the reality of buildings, which over time will unavoidably age and decay. How, then, do digital designs age over time? Do we interpret glitching as a sudden malfunction or fault in the computation of the design’s underlying data, or as digital decay resulting not from the wear and tear of tangible materials but from the decomposition of the binary code, or from system changes that cannot appropriately interpret the data? By exploring a series of experimental design practices for deployments and understandings that are the consequence of malfunctions during computational processing, glitches are reinterpreted.

Perspectives

We have explored a research methodology that extends the current material in the field of glitch from 2D representational images to 3D multidimensional architectural explorations. It contributes towards computational architectural design in the way it uses glitch as a core design interaction element in a systematic design setting. We have advanced current research from its 2D representational expressions into 3D spatial interpretations. Subsequently, the discovery of the inevitable decay of the digital aligns with previous investigations arguing that a glitch exist within virtuality in its own dimension. The study presents digital architectural form existing solely in the digital realm, as an architectural interpretation of computational glitches through both its design process and aesthetic outcome.

Professor Marc Aurel Schnabel
Xi'an Jiaotong Liverpool University

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This page is a summary of: Glitch architecture, International Journal of Architectural Computing, September 2018, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/1478077118792376.
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