The Weight of the Image: Teaching Design and Computing in Architecture: Masterclass NAi 1999

For the first time in history, thanks to computer-aided design, architects have been able to move from a top-down vision to a more organic, bottom-up vision. The ‘insect-view' model developed by the ancient Greeks (projecting a grid onto the face of the earth) is the most enduring example of this top-down order, modified somewhat by Renaissance perspective and then by Modernist collage. Now, in the era of cyber-design, architects at last have the opportunity to devise works in which order is not imposed from above but instead emerges from the ground up (or the inside out). The Weight of the Image documents the fourth Master Class organized at the Netherlands Architecture Institute, where Lars Spuybroek (of NOX) and Bob Lang (Ove Arup) have developed a lucid design methodology--one in which the emerging view and the projected view continually alternate. In this book they explain the procedure in full detail.