Profile : IMD Institute of Media and Design

Exploring the information space

The institute of media and design deals with crossmedia interdependence of designing and diagramming processes, both analog and digital. Engagement in architecture on computer-based information is at the center of the institute's profile. Due to proceeding mediatization and digitalization of nearly all aspects of living, architecture, too, will growingly have to cope with the process-related and inscenatorical dimensions of design spanning from simulation of any form of behavior, whether social or physical, up to conceiving of virtual and hybrid worlds.

Therefore research and proving in the field of computer-based methods take a key role, since digital media is especially capable of processing and organizing affluently growing amounts of information in egalitarian ways. The conventional, solely object-related, diagramming and hence also analysis of buildings owes its privileged position solely to the fact that dynamic aspects such as movement, climate, light, acoustics, varying usages and such were just planable to a certain extent.

Computer programs do not only combine these aspects but complete each other vice versa. During the design process information alters the output, which again changes the input. Thus the design process is constantly subject to transformation. Diagramming of this process loses its representative function and becomes part of a serial time-space exploration. So far familiar plan drawings can hardly mirror the distinguished architectural systems leaping between 2D, 3D and 4D.

Integration of dynamic, alterable aspects demands new diagramming instruments which are to be ascertained and systemized. This incorporates two-dimensional notations, charts, scores etc. as well as three-dimensional models and four-dimensional 'time-based' simulations, animations, VR scenarios and all imaginable hybrid modes. All-embracing adoption of computer-based technologies goes far beyond the topic of architectural diagramming. It will also increasingly make a difference to the occupational image and fields of employment for future architects. New topics and fields of agitation will arise detaching from the traditional occupational image of the sole construction building architect.

These are:

• ORGANISATION AND DESIGN OF THE INFORMATION SPACE

• INTERACTIVE ARCHITECTURE

• VIRTUAL REALITIES | AUGMENTED REALITIES | HYBRID REALITIES

• THE SUSTAINABLE CITY OF THE THE FUTURE

• DESIGN OF EVENTS - SOCIAL, PHYSICAL, STATISTICAL…

• SCENIC SPATIAL DESIGN

• GENERATIVE DESIGN PROCESSES

• DIGITAL FABRICATION - DIGITAL MANUFACTURING