The Colors of Black: Digital Computation as a Spectrum of Knowledge

(Introduction) The title refers to the seminar Computation is the new Black. Updating the Making of Architecture organized by Prof. Marco Hemmerling at the School of Architecture Urban Planning Construction Engineering (AUIC) of the Politecnico di Milano in January 2016, and the contents to some issues presented in the public speech prepared for that meeting.Computation has always been an obsession for architects and not only in the digital era. Throughout long history, formulas, ratios, and golden proportions have worked as helpful tools and sometimes even as exorcisms against the fear of failures in building as well as in investigating architecture. Already acting, since the fight of Abacus masters against the apparent contradiction between Euclidean ‘ratios’ and perspectival ‘cross ratios’, computational needs could be also found in the origin of Descriptive Geometry, the first modern operational connector among design, industry, and construction. As Robin Evans argued [7], indeed, this discipline proposed a cross fertilization between analytic (numerical) and synthetic (graphical) approaches, conducting visual representation from the world of Art to the world of Science and Technology. However, only geometrical shapes could be accurately defined and controlled, while strategies and processes remained unrevealed. Black is Black. The revolution of digit, instead, has offered “neutral” units as supportive syllables for any kind of information, manageable through algorithms. Many aspects and categories of parameters could be then incorporated and related in the body of representational models, dynamically developed, and widely shared via network. Therefore, together with spatial data, time, and any other informative dimension could increase the syncretism of the models, paying homage to the Juri Lotman’s idea of semiosphere. Moreover, they could be analytically recalled or re-organized at any time. Colors of Black would then appear, like those of white in a Newton’s light spectrum, that is, a spectrum of knowledge.