Movement in Architecture: Disciplining the Digital Diagram

The digital processing of three-dimensional movement data often leads to instrumental design methods. This problem-solution design paradigm limits spatial design practices because they do more than solve singular problems. The question is whether spatial design practice can exploit the mediating effects of hardware and software. Robin Evans' essay ‘Translations from Drawing to Building' argues that architecture needs to embrace the mediating effects of the drawing. To this end digital motion capture systems open numerous new mapping and diagramming techniques. The unique condition sponsored by movement data is that architecture must find new ways of drawing the relationship between drawing, data and experience. These new drawings also open numerous issues around the representational and formal opportunities raised by movement capture technologies. Accordingly, the architectural exploration of movement data needs to assess the basis by which all design disciplines can approach movement data through generative rather than instrumental design acts.