The Architect's Wunderkammer: Aesthetic Pleasure & Engagement in Electronic Spaces

We are currently exploring the design and uses of collaborative computational settings within architectural design and planning. One of our approaches builds on the metaphor of Wunderkammer. The Wunderkammer was imagined (and a first prototype of it is being developed) in talking about architectural practice and the need for ready access to a wide range of inspirational objects in this process (Lainer & Wagner, 1997). In this paper we reflect on the very first stage of developing the concept of Wunderkammer. We look at it as both, a result and object of users’ imaginations, and as an attempt at supporting work practice. This is grasped by the metaphor Wunschmaschine und Welterfindung which alludes to these two aspects of technology, to its visionary potential as an object onto which to project fantasies and desires, and to its power to invent the world: “Technology-based visions are to be seen as mnemotechnical structures that allow to think the un-imaginable, to project an image of the never-before-seen ... Technology as content and medium is in this sense a continuous transgression of boundaries” (Felderer, 1997, p.5). Our main purpose here is to locate the fantasies and imaginations on which the Wunderkammer metaphor builds and to investigate some of the conceptual and technical possibilities of implementing these fantasies in a collaborative multimedia environment. This also requires to envision different scenarios of use of the Wunderkammer. For doing this we draw on ongoing fieldwork within an architectural office and a studio of landscape architects, which is part of an European Research Project DESARTE1. As our current system prototype is still at a rather rudimentary stage, our actual experiences of use are limited.