BLOW-UP

architecture in media

symposium co-curator and coordinator

April 2021

“There are many kinds of architectural realities and interpretations of those realities, which include the major issue of representation or re-presentation. Whatever the medium used…a process is taking place. Some sort of distortion is occurring, a distortion that has to do with the interpretation and reinterpretation of space and all the mysteries the word space encompasses, including its spirit.” 

-John Hejduk, The Flatness of Depth

Media is a conduit for the cultivation of architectural culture. In the context of the discourse and production of architecture, media translates and re-presents ideas, objects, environments, and the spatial dimension. This process takes place before and after a building is realized or a thing is made. Representation that comes before realization is speculative or indexical; in either case, it is an abstraction integral to the materialization of ideas. Media such as written discourse, photography, or a book that is developed after a subject exists, inevitably is a form of interpretation and critique. The representational media of the discipline, then, is a form of criticism that becomes integral to the evolution of architecture culture. As such, the means and methods by which architecture’s representational analogs are conceived warrant investigation.

 Analysis of the relationship between architecture and the mediums that represent it often focus on the reductive capacity of media instead of its reciprocal possibilities for built form, citing its potential to subvert architecture’s spatial integrity and suppress its phenomenological dimension. Recognizing the role that media plays in both documenting and advancing culture, BLOW-UP: architecture in media seeks to explore counterpoints to this condition by bringing together practitioners active in the interpretation and dissemination of discourse and media about architecture.  The exploration will be structured as a series of conversations with professionals operating as writers and editors, photographers and image-makers, and publishers and graphic designers. 

Each conversation will focus on the representation of architecture in media and explore the means and methods by which it embodies and advances culture through reciprocal and synergetic means. 

April 10th 10AM - 2PM

participant list in formation

the symposium is made possible by a faculty development grant from Pratt Institute