David Moreno Sperling

Architecture as a Digital Diagram

This paper results from interdisciplinary research about dynamic and transformational processes of conception, representation and spatial construction in Architecture. This work systematizes the common bases of the diagram offered by disciplines that deal with processes of representation, such as Cognitive Science, Logical Semiotics, Mathematical Logic and Philosophy, and of spatial investigation such as Topology and Architecture. It outlines operative components (trans, inter and intra-diagrams) and the diagrams phenomenological variables (thought, space, time) and establishes mutual relationships between it, digital media and Architecture, with the intent of developing the understanding of the digital diagram as an enhanced way of placing information in time and space.

Migratory Movements of Homo Faber: Mapping Fab Labs in Latin America

The present paper is a mapping study of digital fabrication laboratories in Latin America. It presents and discusses results from a survey with 31 universities’ fab labs, studios and independent initiatives in Latin America. The objective of this study is fourfold: firstly, to draw the cultural, social and economic context of implementation of digital fabrication laboratories in the region; secondly, to synthesize relevant data from correlations between organizational structures, facilities and technologies, activities, types of prototypes, uses and areas of application; thirdly, to draw a network of people and institutions, recovering connections and the genealogy of these fab labs; and fourthly, to present some fab labs that are intertwined with local questions. The results obtained indicate a complex “homo faber” network of initiatives that embraces academic investigations, architectural developments, industry applications, artistic propositions and actions in social processes.

Computer-Aided Architectural Design Futures. The Next City - New Technologies and the Future of the Built Environment

Urban futures are typically conceptualized as starting anew; an urban future is usually represented as a quest for an ideal state, replacing the status quo with visionary statement about ‘better’ futures. Repeatedly, propositions reinvent the way we live, work and play. The major urban innovations for the changing cityscape from the last 100 years, however, have opportunistically taken advantage of unprecedented technical developments in infrastructure rather than be drawn from architectural inventions in their right, such as telecommunications, services, utilities, point-to-point rapid transit including the elevator. Howard’s Garden City therefore presaged the suburb, just as Le Corbusier et al. proposed the erasure of significant sections of inner city Barcelona and Paris to replace them with the newly contrived towers; the city reformed as the significantly more mobile and dense ‘Ville Radieuse’. More recently Masdar emerged from virgin sand and Milton Keynes from pristine pasture, serving as counterpoints to the paradigm of erasure and rebuild. Despite all these advances in technology and science, little has changed in the paradigm of urban form; the choices we have today are largely restricted to the suburban house or the apartment in the tower. Should the “next city” offer an alternative vision for the future, and what new design processes are required to realize the next city?

From representational to parametric and algorithmic interactions: A panorama of Digital Architectural Design teaching in Latin America:

This study focuses on the context of graphic representation technologies and digital design on Architectural teaching in Latin America. From categories proposed by Oxman and Kotnik and through a mapping study framed by a systematic review in CumInCAD database, it is presented a panorama of the state-of-art of the digital design on Architectural teaching in the region, between 2006 and 2015. The results suggest a context of coexistence of representational interaction and parametric interaction, as well as a transition from one to another and the emergence of the first experiments in algorithmic interaction. As this mapping shows an ongoing movement toward Digital Architectural Design in Latin America in the last decade, and points out its dynamics in space in time, it could contribute to strengthen a crowdthinking network on this issue in the region and with other continents.