Close-up

Close-up examines the impact of digital technologies on the architectural detail and the traditions of tectonic expression associated with it. An often overlooked condition of digital design technologies is the ability to design objects through continuous degrees of magnification. The consequences of this very basic fact are more significant than we may realize. The traditional premise that some architectural ideas only reside at standardized scales of magnification at this point is nostalgic.

This exhibition proposes that technological advancements have resulted in a transformation of how architectural ideas unfold at different degrees of resolution and that tectonics might mean something very different in the 21st century. Related to this new power of computer assisted observation for both the author and the audience of architecture is the blurring of the boundaries between the virtual and the real and the mutual imbrications of concepts with materials. Ranging from the cinematic to the clinical, the transition from the architectural detail to the architectural close-up implies new formal logics and new modes of reception. This exhibition will survey some of the pioneers of this way of thinking about architecture after the digital and examine recent work by emerging architects that are continuing this important investigation.