Pareidolia

The materials collected here explore the shifting relationship between proliferation and selection – and the diagrams able to handle it – at various moments of the design reflection, addressing extremely different scales, times, and issues. They are recent works by architects who, since the 1990s, have made the diagram a privileged device of thinking, manipulating, and communicating the architectural project. Comparing these latest declinations can help to shed some light on its operational relevance in an era revolutionized by the developments of information technologies and crossed by conflicting ideological currents. A further leap in scale, and toward a more conceptual level, is the project proposed by Piotr Barbarewicz, Pareidolia. which tinkers with 2D-3D translations provided by digital imaging software. His negotiations between hand-drawn, abstract and their algorithmic interpretation deeply interrogate the most recent boundaries of diagrammatic proliferation and selection issues and the machinic scenarios in which they unfold.