Impact

This issue of AD explores the working discipline of architecture as it impacts the material culture within which it is always embedded. An architecture of impact uses advanced digital techniques in such a way that its material assembly supersedes its use of the digital. Until now, this type of architecture has been formally and materially bound by restrictive conventional methodologies, which the digital project has moved from the scale of installations to three-dimensional building-sized fabrications. Unless architects turn to a new culture of making, architecture shaped by even innovative digital technology will become irrelevant. Architectural projects that are more subversive in how they are created and that lose their digital signature have greater potential to be at the forefront of the discipline’s new materialisations. This issue illustrates these ideas and their architectural impact. Contributors: Kutan Ayata, Ben van Berkel, Hernan Diaz Alonso, David Goldblatt, Thomas Heatherwick, Ferda Kolatan, Ascan Mergenthaler, Antoine Picon, Casey Rehm, Patrik Schumacher, and Philip F Yuan. Featured architects: Archi-Union, Contemporary Architecture Practice, HDA-X, Heatherwick Studio, Herzog & de Meuron, Ishida Rehm Studio, Pininfarina, SHoP Architects, SU-11, UNStudio, and Young & Ayata, and Zaha Hadid Architects.

About the Guest-Editors 05 Ali Rahim and Hina Jamelle Introduction Architectural Impact After the Digital 06 Ali Rahim and Hina Jamelle Other Experts: Disciplinary and Aesthetic Impacts of Artificial Intelligence 14 M Casey Rehm Novel Bricks: A Scenario of Human–Machine Collaboration 22 Philip F Yuan and Keke Li Tech’s Teaching Moment: The Shape of Culture in the Post-Blob Era 30 Philip Nobel Genuine Hybrids: Towards an Architecture with No Origin 40 Ferda Kolatan Impactful Disruption: Gathered Thoughts of a Distracted Mind 50 Hernán Díaz Alonso An Estranged Type: Old Techniques, Familiar Materials and Peculiar Outcomes 58 Kutan Ayata The Impact of Automobile Design on Architecture 66 Paolo Pininfarina and Paolo Trevisan The Mega-Void: Unleashing the Communicative Impact of Tall Buildings 72 Patrik Schumacher Aesthetics, Narrative and the Materials of Architecture 82 David Goldblatt Shanghai Bund: The Impact of Context 92 Thomas Heatherwick Disjunctive Continuity and the Aesthetics of the Seam 100 Ali Rahim and Hina Jamelle Material Intricacy 110 Ascan Mergenthaler Beyond Digital Avant-Gardes: The Materiality of Architecture and Its Impact 118 Antoine Picon Architecture and the Impact of the Fourth Industrial Revolution 126 Ben van Berkel From Another Perspective The Impact of the Digital on Bigg-ness 134 Neil Spiller Contributors 142