Inês Salpico University of Lusiada, School of Architecture, Lisbon, Portugal 333
doing is just not enough; action must be sustained by a will to think over the way
correspondent objects/images position themselves within this change and frame
these ill defined concepts.
Media and Technology as Physical Structures
The operative individual hegemony is often referred to as a consequence of the
emergence and spread of technological equipments and media. The multiple and
simultaneous scales in which we know experience citizenship and structure our iden-
tity has obviously been amplified by this technological possibilities and autonomy of
discourse has been greatly supported by the new media supports. However, looking
at technological breakthroughs from a simply instrumental point of view is undoubt-
edly a great sophism. Technology has not merely introduced new tools and working
methods; media didn’t simply bring a different speed and scale of communication and
information flow; what we are dealing with is the structuring of new languages alto-
gether, requiring different systematic approaches and assessment criteria. Moreover,
we can’t consider these new languages as purely visual or formal when they in fact
shape a new understanding of the real both from a structural and symbolic perspec-
tive, mutating the way in which concepts are formed and interrelated and, ultimately,
the way thought is articulated.
It is difficult not to recognise that such a mutation is taking place and the deep
level at which it lies, when it implicates so directly with the use of body and mind
(about to have, some authors say, biological translation on the medium term), with
social dynamics, with relationship management and, most importantly in the context
of this discussion, with space understanding and interaction. Technology has brought
a reconfiguration of perception and experience with direct consequences in spatial
and formal interpretation, at the light of new mediating concepts and structures.
The role of media and technology in architecture teaching processes cannot be that
of a mere operational, technical and visual instrument. If it is, it will indulge with
superficiality and give way to that instrumentation architecture is so vulnerable to. It
cannot be addressed as a plastic resource otherwise becoming a pretext of arbitrari-
ness and producing nothing more than flat meaningless objects and images. One of
the central issues within this problematic is the matter of image and the role visuality
plays in the working processes and in the identity of the work itself. The answer might
be in what king of content does each image bear: a coherent autonomous process or
the coating for a past-referenced frame of thought. Paradox and inconsistency are
bound to emerge from works in which new communication supports don’t effectively
Tools
Program
Use
Perception
Responses
...Systems
Content
Experience
Interaction
Processes
...