In order to retain its importance for people architecture must remain in retroguardia. In the wake of all forces and processes that shape the contemporary world - digitalization, facebookisation etc..These processes are too much rooted in the contemporary societies. Architecture in many of it's aspects has lost meaning. To become self acclaimed as a discipline it must point to the issues and qualities. It must not be visual, it must be shearly connected to the human body and human physicality.
The Bird's Nest has been a turning point. The cost of the building (400 million dollars) was equal to the cost of the whole opening ceremony of the Olympics. Most of the people around the world have seen both the building and the event only in the digital. Will it be possible one day to actually have the opening ceremony only in digital without ever spending money for real event as well as for stadium. The budget for a rendering company could be ten times smaller but in the end most of the people would never feel the difference. Preparing renderings has shifted from being mearly a service to architects to a discipline on its own.
The way the work proceeds at major architectural companies bases mostly if not entirely on a digitally generated images. Most of the implications how a building could be done in terms of interesting structure are just put aside.
The same processes don't concern only the iconic architecture and particular event (insert remarks from Sennet and the density). Internet has such a profound impact on our daily lives that, our social life is there, life of a nomad.
Yet we are still longing for something more than an image, for a true presence of space, another person and a story. Therefore should architecture continue this insane competition or marriage with the digital pretension of being important? What is my personal response?..
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