Low fidelity

Abstract

Today, architectural images and their reproductions serve as stand-ins for firsthand experiences of buildings. Buildings are valued in fragments known as images. The layers of information and esoteric specificity intrinsic to design are excluded in the production of these images. This thesis names this condition Low Fidelity. It is a condition in which the image of the building supersedes the value of the building for which it speaks. This thesis is an essay on maneuvering within the context of Low Fidelity. It is a four-part essay on image-making within this contemporary condition. The four probes of the essay mine the contemporary state of image culture within architecture. Each of the probes engages a facet of image culture--namely, the mediums through which images are disseminated, consumed, curated, collected, uploaded, and downloaded. In doing so, the probes perform twofold. They respond to and feed content back into the networks influencing both digital and analogue access to architectural information and the design process. The architect, then, is positioned as the author of new, or perhaps recast, labors in Low Fidelity. The architect scripts the link between divergent and infinitely accessible architectural content by designing the indexes, or table of contents, that seam spatial fragments together. Architectural images and their reproductions become compositions of built up layers of information, which are detached from their original context to gain new meaning. In Low Fidelity, then, architecture becomes a quasi-object that shifts scales, materials, and context. The labors of the architect are disembodied from the building, and repositioned onto the indexes of information to destabilize the building's image.