Instrumental Analogy

The scalar mediation of the object through the space of representation ensures design methodologies based on similitude or procedural techniques must initially work upon appropriated forms. Given that translation ensures that these forms remain as a trace the architectural object is implicitly reliant on the application of analogy. While still bound to the act of drawing in, on or through the digital distinguishes itself from the explicit appropriation of forms and techniques typical of pre-digital design methodologies because analogy is more than re-presention. The interaction of data mining and modelling software to act on qualitative and quantitative data sets offers a different design process because it allows analogy to operate as a primary disciplinary condition. Importantly the tension between the analogy, software and data enables a productive play that doesn’t immediately prescribe or defer to conventional architectural forms. No longer concerned with re-presentation, analogy is subsequently free to explore and test architectural objects where the ‘content’ or value resides in the affect of form and therefore undoing the longstanding binary logic separating form and content. The paper, in reference to specific projects, will discuss the capacity of analogous modes and techniques in translating data into form through modelling software. An argument will be made that the value of this line of design-based research resides in the unique way in which its propositional and procedural opportunities calls into issue the notion of affect.