Transmitting the image of architecture

Each image is a kind of two-faced Janus, in which the expression of an aspect of human thought and behavior is supported by a potential future action. In the field of architecture, this duality is more appreciable as the project, which arises from visual thought, is expressed primarily in the gesture of a quick sign drawn on a support in order to exercise and sustain a relationship of mutual participation.

It is the first act of sharing, of communication projected to change, to the modification of a state.

The communication of the architect is therefore that doing underlying the transformation cloaked in prefiguration, which is entrusted with the ultimate task of seducing, or at least persuading. The drawing is therefore an extension of man, a sort of prosthesis with which to stimulate the other. In the words of Franco Purini: “drawing is thought itself, indeed it is the fundamental thought-form of the architect, the elective place in which form appears”.

The graphic image has always performed this thankless but necessary task, that of soliciting a movement, whether internal or external, in the observer. Because there is always someone on the other side of the drawing. The one who carries it out has an observer in front of him, at times ideal, at other times he is a client, at other times he is an architect. When there is a client, the designer must satisfy his requests, indeed it is these that guide him in the search for proposals and solutions that will be all the more convincing the more appropriate the transmission of his intent is. Thus much importance is given to the forms and languages of immediate communication, which can fulfill the acceptability of the proposed subject. Around the latter, many are moving to find the most appropriate channels and strategies to raise public awareness. And computer science offers a contribution in this sense by enhancing representation. This means having products loaded with information hidden behind the skin of the visualization, a dynamic visualization capable of arousing interaction.

The act of depicting has become a catalyst for obtaining a greater involvement of the observer, and on the other hand strengthens his instrumental strength in connecting the ideation phase to the control phase of the technical project.

Only the designer is allowed to prefigure the non-existent, to visualize the invisible, to give space to an underlying dialectic between objective reality and subjective perception of reality. Only the designer can generate, after the idea, the form, and consequently the exchange and interaction, that is, sustain an effective dialogue between humans through the image.

Pasquale Tunzi.