Rethinking the Architecture of the Dwelling in the Digital Age

Abstract

Footprint 32 looks into the many ways the digital turn has impacted the architecture of dwelling. The issue originates from a simple observation: After the digital turn, the house as a paradigm for the discipline seemed to have gone missing from architecture debates. Recent theorisations of the digital in architecture have almost exclusively focused on new methods of production and notions of materiality alongside profound changes to the urban and social dimensions of the built environment. The question of dwelling after the digital turn leads to scrutiny of the history of the digitisation of the house and the shifting nature of domesticity, and to an exploration of involved motivations and values, oscillating between a techno-utopianism to a techno-capitalism. While the boundaries between real and virtual realms are blurred, the house and dwelling find a reconceptualisation in ecological and relational terms, thereby dissolving the house as a discrete object or entity. Privacy, autonomy, and physicality are in need of a rebalancing.