Reading 3 / Kallie Sternburgh: Models, Prototypes and Archetypes

Mark Burry discloses his lessons learned and new observations on the role of digital technology and architecture. In building the Sagrada Familia Church Passion Façade, he points out that there are essentially two alternate ways in which technology offers a methodology towards the practice of architecture: (1) Technology used to extend traditional practice, and (2) How technology is forcing us to reconsider our representational paradigms, including the model.

The first account looks in detail in his project where he is using digital technology to accurately cut/extract stone, a rather traditional practice with excavated, raw materials.  However, the stone is cut to a point, where the skill of the stonemason is still required to finish the surface by hand, and he is freed of the responsibility of reduction (A phenomena of “Re-skilling” of the craftsman, rather than completely replacing him with the machine).

The second account looks at the role of the design model, where documentation of Antoni Gaudi’s Glory Façade relies only on two photographs of a scale model to complete his work.  As the convergence of digital design and fabrication facilitates an ever more fluid workflow between “file to factory,” we must re-define the definitions between model and prototype. Can a model, commonly used for traditional means of representation (or abstraction for communicative purposes only) also be used as a prototype, or measured for a course of action? 

It would appear that there is a grey area in how digital models are used throughout a design process today; as digital models are commonly iterative testing grounds for which we can discover architectural invention, there is a point at which the model can become a prototype for which we measure and assess our observations. And then there is a point at which the prototype becomes an accepted source for all subsequent copies and decisions: the archetype.