DIGITAL conception(s)

DIGITAL conception(s) is a retrospective exhibition of architectural digital design media exploration conducted by undergraduate and graduate students of architecture involved in the research and teaching activities of Assistant Professor Michael A. Ambrose within the architecture program at the University of Maryland School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation. The work, while often less than architecture, it is explicitly architectural in thought, word and deed. The ideas and techniques interrogated in the work of the exhibit are designed to develop and expose critical skills in the conception(s) of architecture. The ability to think and make through digital and computational processes is the new imperative in architectural design, practice and education.

The exhibition comes out of intellectual culture of experimentation, applied research and iterative processes developed and promoted in the academic courses taught by Assistant Professor Michael A. Ambrose. The work showcases digital media techniques, methods and processes with broad reaching collateral effects (academic papers, design awards, prizes and honors) throughout both the undergraduate and graduate programs in architecture. The three primary areas of work involve animation, conceptualization and fabrication. Student work from digital media seminars, independent study projects, individual research, design studios, and thesis projects are used to demonstrate various digital processes and techniques. The work oscillates between digital and physical artifacts that intertwine digital/physical/digital workflows while simultaneously engaging temporal issues of time based media through motion graphics and animate representational investigations.

The exhibition seeks to trace the intellectual constellation of ideas spawned from the research and teaching of Prof. Ambrose. The applied design research, academic papers, theses, independent study projects that have come from or are nested within the digital design media work are mapped within the exhibition. The ideas probed and promoted in the areas of computational design methods, representational systems, and digital fabrication are made evidence in the works contained in the exhibition. The works are hybrid media conditions of a digital|physical and static|animate nature.

Michael A. Ambrose Curator
Christine Arnold Student Director, Linear Gallery

Contributors
Michael A. Ambrose, Assistant Professor of Architecture
Jimena Amaral, Christine Arnold, Benjamin Callam, Kira Canon, Beret Dickson, Allie Ditzel, Michael Fischer, James Han, Jonathan Healey, Marek Hnizda, Joseph Kunkel, Peter Leung, Lisa LaCharité-Lostritto, Carl Lostritto, Tony Maiolatesi, Stanley Mathurin, Jayanath Ranaweera, Claudia Santos-Cortes, Sandra Schwartz, Marcela Trice, Carolina Uechi, Luc Wilson, Farzam Yazdanseta