The Active Image

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-x

   PDF

2. Points of Departure: Notes Toward a Reversible History of Architectural Visualization

   • Reinhold Martin

   Pages 1-21

3. Architecture and the Structured Image: Software Simulations as Infrastructures for Building Production

   • Daniel Cardoso Llach

   Pages 23-52

4. Architectural Drawings as Symbols: A Goodmanian Account of Epistemic Practices in the Design Process

   • Remei Capdevila-Werning

   Pages 53-76

5. Manual Sketching: Why Is It Still Relevant?

   • Gabriela Goldschmidt

   Pages 77-97

6. Operative Manufacts: Gestures as Embodied Sketches in the Early Stages of the Design Process

   • Irene Mittelberg, Thomas H. Schmitz, Hannah Groninger

   Pages 99-131

7. The Role of the Image in Digital Design: Processing the Image Versus Imaging the Process

   • Rivka Oxman

   Pages 133-155

8. Visualization Techniques and Computational Design Strategies: Reflecting on the Milieu and Agency of Digital Tools in 1990s Architecture

   • Nathalie Bredella

   Pages 157-176

9. Image-Based Epistemic Strategies in Modeling: Designing Architecture After the Digital Turn

   • Sabine Ammon

   Pages 177-205

10. People-Centered Visuospatial Cognition: Next-Generation Architectural Design Systems and Their Role in Design Conception, Computing, and Communication

    • Mehul Bhatt, Carl Schultz

    Pages 207-232

11. License to Explore: How Images Work in Simulation Modeling

    • Johannes Lenhard

    Pages 233-254

12. On Fuzziness and Relationships: Abstraction and Illustrative Visualization in Snow Avalanche Control Planning

    • Doris Hallama

    Pages 255-285

13. Epilogue: The Rise of Imagery in the Age of Modeling

    • Sabine Ammon

    Pages 287-312

14. Back Matter

    Pages 313-317

    PDF

The “active image” refers to the operative nature of images, thus capturing the vast array of “actions” that images perform. This volume features essays that present a new approach to image theory. It explores the many ways images become active in architecture and engineering design processes and how, in the age of computer-based modeling, images play an indispensable role.

The contributors examine different types of images, be they pictures, sketches, renderings, maps, plans, and photographs; be they analog or digital, planar or three-dimensional, ephemeral, realistic or imaginary. Their essays investigate how images serve as means of representing, as tools for thinking and reasoning, as ways of imagining the inexistent, as means of communicating and conveying information and how images may also perform functions and have an agency in their own.

The essays discuss the role of images from the perspective of philosophy, theory and history of architecture, history of science, media theory, cognitive sciences, design studies, and visual studies, offering a multidisciplinary approach to imagery and showing the various methodologies and interpretations in current research. In addition, they offer valuable insight to better understand how images operate and function in the arts and sciences in general.

• images architecture
• images engineering design
• images computer based modeling
• Image theory
• imagining the inexistnet
• images mathematization
• images computerization
• images modeling
• images simulation
• philosophy of images
• history of images
• media theory images
• cognitive sciences images
• design studies images
• visual studies images
• synchronic images
• diachronic images
• epistemology images
• image modeling digital
• visual thinking and reasoning

• Institute of Vocational Education and Work Studies, Berlin University of Technology, Berlin, Germany

  Sabine Ammon

• Philosophy Department, Oberlin College, Oberlin, USA

  Remei Capdevila-Werning

Sabine Ammon works at the Berlin University of Technology as a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow, funded by the European Union, and acts as spokesperson of the interdisciplinary research group “Dynamics of Knowledge in Engineering Sciences”. She received her Ph.D. from Berlin University of Technology. She works mainly in epistemology, philosophy of engineering science and technology, image theory, and design ethics.



Remei Capdevila-Werning is Director of Education and Public Programs at El Museo del Barrio in New York. She received her Ph.D. from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. She has taught at Fairfield University and the School of Visual Arts. Her research interests include analytical aesthetics and epistemology, philosophy of art, architecture and historic preservation.

Policies and ethics