ARCH_323B Seminar: ‘Architectural Representation II’

Image Fictions: Realism and the Aesthetics of Doubt

Architects too often “equate realism with reality,” rather than recognizing realism’s capacity to throw reality into question and conflict with it. Instead of deploying photorealistic techniques in an attempt to represent reality as such, students in this course examined the political potential of realism’s aesthetic realm. 

Projects were image-based narratives that confronted a social, political, economic, or ecological issue of a contested urban territory. Students researched and documented an existing city that has already engaged with fiction as an architectural focal point. Additional research addressed how that city might interface with already occurring technological developments, such as systems of artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles, drones, and augmented reality, among others. 

Undertaking a fictional archaeology of possible histories and futures, students produced hyper-articulated totems that recomposed the DNA of the original and deployed it in a new narrative. Operating within their researched technology’s image type, visual vocabulary, and material constraints, students transformed and rendered their selected territory. As such, qualities crossed from the material realm of the image to the implied picture.