“The house was still throbbing, but a moment later it locked and became rigid. I leaned against the dented wall and let the spray pour across my face from the sprinkler jets. Around me, its wings torn and disarrayed, the house reared up like a tortured flower. Standing in the trampled flower beds, Stamers gazed at the house, an expression of awe and bewilderment on his face. It was just after six o’clock. The last of the three police cars had driven away, the lieutenant in charge finally conceding defeat. ‘Dammit, I can’t arrest a house for attempted homicide, can I?’ ”

The Thousand Dreams of Stellavista, JG Ballard, 1962

Digital Embodiment in Architecture

The studio “Psychotropic topologies” displaces our traditional understanding of the body as an isolated and physically delimited site of perception and experience. The aim of the studio is to develop novel strategies for cyber-physical transfers, merging the digital realm of data with the realm of the body and matter.

A global pandemic such as COVID19, shows us the urgency to develop new tools for digital embodiment, remoteness and digital communities. Until now physical spaces and digital spaces remained ontologically and spatially separated. However, current technologies allow a broader range of possible transmissions that can expand our presence and experience. Embodiment is the body’s ability to sense, feel and interact with the environment.

This studio uses digital embodiment as a mode to expand beyond the purely physical body to the digital one. This digital embodiment connects us to our digital avatar and enables the creation of a personalized digital environment. This space has the ability to feel, perceive and act while being limited, created and expanded by the physical body.

Tutors:
Daniela Mitterberger, Tiziano Derme with Andrea Reni
Students:
Madeline Bosaid, Hongrun Che, Daniel Fielding, Joyce Huang, Shijin Liu, Gaby Miegeville-Little, Mason Mo, Yaonan Xiong, Luyao Zhang, Xuan Lin Li

Mutation

Madeline Bosaid & Mason Mo
The project is a manifestation of the encounter between a digital creature and human being. The assimilator and assimilated interact through the catalyst of technology, powering the engine of transformation.
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PostMemoriam

Xiong Yaonan, Liu Shijin & Che Hongrun
The project re-imagines memories and emotions as concept of mourning through design. It embodies digital memories of a person into a space and materials, forcing space by emotions during grieving, constructing a dialogue with the deceased.
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Anamorphica

Gaby Miegeville-Little, Daniel Fielding & Luyao Zhang
Anamorphica reflects on the sudden debasement sensed on exiting a zoom call. It is the embodiment of metamorphosis; a designed process to sooth the user’s rapid ejection from digital inhabitance.
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Prying Eyes

Joyce Huang & Xuanlin Li
“This is the house of you, not for you, but from you.”
In the project Prying Eyes, we empower architecture to observe its inhabitants. In a virtual space, you always thought you had absolute navigation. But not in this case, the creature gradually evolves by observing you. The uncanny transition of the observed and observer is hereby explored.
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