FM XI: Direct Messages
Images are as essential to architecture as brick and mortar. What started out as hand drawings, images have rapidly evolved from the static tintypes of the late 1800s to the dynamic digital images of today that transport us to many different places in the blink of an eye. In large part, this is due to the proliferation of image sharing that our cultureis so desperately engulfed in. Image sharing has gradually blurred the lines between real and faux, deceiving our ability to discern between the physical and the photoshopped. These two worlds are colliding at an astounding rate.
The past few years have seen a dramatic shift in how architecture uses and is influenced by image sharing platforms such as Instagram, Pinterest, and ArchDaily. While this surplus of images initially served as passive design inspiration and post-production cataloging, it has now become a catalyst for new work itself. Architects are using the constraints of social media for their designs. The square grid of Instagram is a digital zoning code that a space is unable to break. The platforms are challenging and pushing architects to rethink the boundaries between 2D and 3D. While the typical Instagram user is learning how to create, architects are now challenging the platform by operating in the space between two and three dimensions, a sort of 2.5 dimension. Before social media, space was turned into an image; now, the image has become space itself.
BairBalliet, #theunstableimage
This new medium has provided architects with a fresh mode of exploration - it has connected the architectural discourse with the general public in ways that have never been seen before. These quick, digestible hors d'oeuvres become much more palatable for the average person. Whether it’s drawing people in with an abundance of pop culture references or tapping into society’s love of ASMR, social media has given people outside of the discipline the opportunity to create, curate and participate in the architectural discourse. It has created a preservation of architecture, but a preservation of a very select, limited number of projects and images - some projects are seen ad nauseam, while others are barely on the Internet at all. More people are participating in the discourse, but it often feels recycled and limited. We view the Internet as this limitless entity, which it is in theory, but it can only take us as far as the content actually being posted and widely disseminated.
Mackenzie Muhonen, Low-Fidelity: Four Inquiries into the Post-Digital Image
The Bittertang Farm, Squeeze Me One Last Time
Connectivity by way of the image sharing platforms has brought the architectural world and the world of everything else closer than ever. The space between the two has been shrunk to a swipe of the thumb, cat memes are placed next to Hejduk drawings. Buildings are flattened and experienced through square snapshots while trends are replicated across the globe overnight. With visibility of architecture heightened through consumption and distribution solely through images on a phone, the field is being limited and restricted from inside and out.