ANNE JAMES Architectonics of Multimedia

Multimedia has emerged in recent years as a viable component in shaping built environments, where media, such as audio, visual and interactive content take on spatial significance. This has spurred multidisciplinary ventures exploring potential applications of multiple media in habitable spaces. Particularly relevant are the progressive insights emerging from works of multimedia installation art and interactive spaces. From a case study analysis of twenty-five such works, eleven were selected for discussion in this paper, which aims to discern the key mechanisms that enable media content formats to take on spatial significance and address their relevance to architectural practice. Key mechanisms identified took the form of transformative, interactive and temporal influences exerted by multimedia in the space of analysed works. Furthermore, from an understanding of the effect of transformative, interactive and temporal influences on the tectonics, topos and typos that define any built work, a theoretical basis was established to discern the architectonic significance of multimedia that could inform future practical applications in architecture.