Author(s)

J. Cockeram

Abstract

Nonsense building is, I believe, what we are all engaged in, with and by. I am using the word nonsense to indicate two meanings of what might be being learned. The first is in the Victorian nonsense writing of not completely understood sentences and the second to mean that it doesn’t make sense to me. This is an argument from the subjective point of view. It looks at the computing work done by a group of mid education students in the Architecture School, University of Auckland, in New Zealand. The intuitive learning of an architect is one of the reasons the education takes five years. We keep them going over and over things till they get an automatic response they can’t identify as having been thought about. They come to a place they just know about and they (fingers crossed) are articulate about it. This contextual value of about right will be analysed as the place of discovery of the unknown elements of Architecture. The computer is enabling students to visualise but also it starts them to see the way in which the information contained in the database of the 3D model leads to other ways of using, and translating the information. These ways include shifting the information to another machine and its language. The work also covers finding out what is available in our kiwi culture to build, create and generate Architecture. Sight, sound, colour and the on going bilingual exchanges between the work of shadows, drawings and the work of light, computing are programming the students of Architecture. The unseen defaults, the greys of gloominess, and the brilliant response and reaction of the high contrast values or broad tonal values, are all influencing the aesthetics, as a sensual perception, of current architectural practise. Keywords: computing, thinking, designing, environmental stimulation, talking.

Keywords

computing, thinking, designing, environmental stimulation, talking.