TOOLS OF DESIGN

Final conference of the Research fellow program "Tools of Drafting" at
the IKKM, Internationales Kolleg für Kulturtechnikforschung und
Medienphilosophie, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar (15-16 November 2012)

Since its founding in spring 2010 the Research fellow program has been
concerned with the history and theory of design tools in architecture,
art, technology and the sciences. Its work and discussions concern not
only the mediality and functionality of instruments, but especially
the procedures that are developed in the use of these instruments. As
Robin Evans and Bernhard Siegert have pointed out, the modern
definition of drafting as a method of dealing with the unknown is
based on the early modern identification of the medium of drawing with
various projection techniques. The projection of spaces, images or
objects was manifestly bound up with a variety of techniques of
drawing in the early modern era. Some of these, like central
perspective, were invented in the Renaissance; others, like parallel
projection, were described for the first time during this period. Ever
since then the term “drafting”, like the Romance word family of
“disegno” and “dessin”, has been used to designate not only the
technical or artistic process, but also a cognitive process (in the
sense of “designing conceptually” or “drawing up plans”). For many
years the literature on art and architectural theory tended to
undervalue the impact of design tools, expressing them as mere
auxiliary instruments for the mind. The Research fellow program is
attempting to counter this “cerebralisation” of tools by looking in
greater detail at the question – most recently posed by actor-network
theory – of the power of non-human agents to act, and, accordingly, of
the exteriority of drafting, forming and thinking.

The final conference will thus pick up on the discussion about the
history and theory of projection techniques and investigate the
complex relations between subjects and objects upon which these
techniques are based. When addressing processes of developing designs
for three-dimensional objects like buildings, sculptures and machines,
the first question that arises is the one that presented the point of
departure for Robin Evans’s study of projection techniques in the
history of architecture: “How architectural spaces arose out of the
deployment of depthless designs, and how architectural space was drawn
into depthless designs.” It can be presumed that projection techniques
in the strict sense play just as great a role in the translation from
flat figures into geometric solids (and vice versa), as did the
methods of indexical tracing and imprinting, of geometric or pictorial
equivalence, and of notation. The degree to which these techniques
contributed to the genesis of spaces, images and objects is to be
investigated, as well as the importance of three-dimensional and
digital models for design processes.

PROGRAM

November 15, 2012

SESSION 1: CONCEPTS OF DESIGN

14:30 Barbara Wittmann (Weimar): Welcome Address and Introduction

15:00 Michael Cuntz (Weimar): The Tool, the Instrument and the Milieu
of Invention. On Simondon’s Posthuman Genealogy of Technical
Operations

16:00 Coffee Break

16:15 Ulrich Richtmeyer (Weimar): Within the Possible. Wittgenstein on
the Logic of Technical Drawings in the Periphery of his Tractatus

17:15 Coffee Break

SESSION 2: DIAGRAMMATICS. TOOLS OF NOTATION (Chair: Lutz Robbers)

17:45 Sybille Krämer (Berlin): The “Construction of Concepts“ and the
Role Intuition Plays in this Process. On Immanuel Kant’s Discussion of
the Peculiarity of Mathematical Knowledge in Light of Diagrammatology

18:45 Gabu Heindl / Drehli Robnik (Vienna): Where Is Outside, Who
Stays Outside? Theories, Practices and Critique of the Diagram in
Deleuze and in Contemporary Architecture

November 16, 2012

SESSION 3: MODELS. TOOLS OF (DE-)MATERIALIZATION (Chair: Peter Jahn)

9:30 Stefanie Klamm (Berlin): Creating from Absence – Reconstructions
of Archeological Excavations as Research Instruments

10:30 Thomas Brandstetter (Basel): Crystalline Life Designs: Models as
Virtualization of Life

11:30 Coffee Break

12:00 Eva Maria Froschauer (Weimar): On “Collecting Procedures” in
Architectural Designs

13:00 Lunch Break

SESSION 4: COMPUTATIONAL DESIGN. TOOLS OF GENERATION (Chair: Nicole
Stöcklmayr)

14:30 Nathalie Bredella (Berlin): Modeling Techniques and Changes in
Architectural Practice

15:30 Mario Carpo (New Haven): Digital Darwinism. Form-Finding,
Digital Craftsmanship and the Dissolution of Authorship in
Contemporary Digital Design Theory

16:30 Coffee Break

17:00 George Barnett Johnston (Atlanta): Standards

18:00 Coffee Break

18:30 WRAP-UP SESSION

Wolfram Pichler (Vienna): Commentary

Final Discussion (Chair: Ulrich Richtmeyer)

The conference is funded by the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung and the program
„ProExzellenz“, Thuringian Ministry of Education, Science and Culture,
Erfurt.

All presentations are in English.?The conference is open to the
public. No fees and no registration required.

Contact: Dr. Ulrich Richtmeyer, email:
ulrich.richtmeyeruni-weimar.de

Venue: IKKM, former Palais Dürckheim, Cranachstr. 47, 99423 Weimar