Description
The relationship between architecture and representation is, as much as anything, a matter of necessity. The substantial commitment of resources that architecture entails— typically made by clients unfamiliar with architecture and its abstractions—requires persuasive artifacts that allow the client to visualize or, at least, to have the impression that they are visualizing, the final work beforehand. However, beyond the Realpolitik of commissions and public taste, the linking of architecture to representation has often created an interplay between emerging sensibilities and creative production. The nature of creative production is such that it sometimes leads us to see something before we can make it and sometimes to make something before we even sense it. When a new form of representation is developed it is often, at first, illegible. For some new forms, this difficulty is trivial and easily overcome; for others, it takes years or even a generation for it to be assimilated.
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