The digital capture of architecture: theory, history, archeology

L'architecture saisie par le numérique : théorie, histoire, archéologie

Antoine Picon (1)

1 LATTS - Laboratoire Techniques, Territoires et Sociétés

Between the mid-1990s and today, architecture has undergone a transformation both rapid and profund as a result of computer technology. For the past several years, architectural theoreticians and historians have tried to give an account of this fundamental change. This article proposes a panorama, of necessity provisional, of the results of the research and above all of the questions it generates. Among these questions figure that of the timetable of an ensemble of transformations whose distant beginnings go back to the emergence of a society founded on the utilization of increasing volumes of information at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. This survey includes the evocation of the places, the figures, the institutions and the knowledge that played a role in the emergence of a new way of conceiving and of practicing architecture by means of digital tools. It continues by evoking a certain number of emblematic architectural projects captured digitally. Finally it calls for a re-examination of architectural history of the second half of the 20th century in light of this "digital perspective" which marked not only Modernism as it was ending, but Postmodernism as well.

Domaines: Histoire; Architecture, aménagement de l'espace

Antoine Picon. L'architecture saisie par le numérique : théorie, histoire, archéologie. Revue de l'Art, 2014, 186, pp.83-89. ⟨hal-01175502⟩