Mental modelling - CAAD for translating verbal scientific hypotheses about architecture

Abstract

Reconsidering CAAD, it can be stated that the technical possibilities are no longer an obstacle to accomplishing what one wants to achieve. The reflection and the discourse now concern rather the product that is produced with its aid. The second digital turn is thus one back to the matter. The digital is ubiquitous. But this does not apply to its teaching by a long shot. Here, it is essential to continueto reflect on the specifics of the digital, above all the danger of automatisms. Nevertheless, at the core of the research on the use of the CAAD is the content, and here the authors have developed a method for visualising uncertainty in the knowledge of archaeology, historical building research and art history. It is a translation of vague verbal hypotheses into the visual. This is obviously done via CAAD, since the hypotheses are statements about space, about architecture. What is special about this method is the balance between scientificity and vividness. Usually, a great adherence to scientificity leads to schematic diagrams, far from any architectural expression, informative but not immersive. Vivid visualisations, on the other hand, are usually speculatively charged life pictures, based in a scientific statement, but enriched by pure fantasy to such an extent that the scientific content is either drowned out or even distorted. The way in which the authors translate scientific statements into the visual therefore utilises two traditional and genuine sub-disciplines of architecture, model building and photography. While the CAAD model follows the scientific hypothesis in its abstraction, it is the rules of architectural photography that create a vivid and thus architecturally interpretable vision from this abstract geometry. The distinctive characteristic is that CAAD is not used to construct or simulate architecture, but to translate verbal hypotheses, so basically it is Computer Aided Mental Modelling.