De.form.are - De.form.ing

Research in the field of digital representation, which began in the 60s and continued to evolve, has developed many tools that today the designer can use to give a shape to hist houghts. The panorama is so vast that it may appear confusing: the creation of a specific form in the virtual digital space can be achieved by moving along different paths. However, even though, apparently, several methods can produce the same formal result, only a few of them are qualitatively significant from the point of viewof the model’s computational versatility and topological quality; these are characteristics that are necessary and indispensable to conduct subsequent trials and elaborations on the model. deFormare was written with the purpose of highlighting the main and most significantdigital modeling techniques, organising the theoretical principles with simplicity,and providing information and examples on their possible applications. The book’stitle expresses a set of concepts that inspired its writing. The echo of the“de” from the Latin language followed by the digital “dot” and then the verb “formare” (to form) stress the desire to talk about “giving shape” to digital objects with the same spirit of application that characterized the ancient treatises on architecture and painting. At the same time, the word in its entirety, which reads as “deforming”, wants to highlight how, in digital sense, the “forming” process is frequently characterised by processing\deforming operations of a pre-existing model. Indirectly, the book is also an image of the teaching experience attained in the courses“Digital Modeling” and “Science of Representation,” which are associated to the degrees in Industrial Drawing and in Architecture and Construction Technology, respectively,at the Department of Architecture “Ludovico Quaroni” of the University of Rome“La Sapienza”. This experience has shaped the logical succession of the presentation of the digital techniques: noting where the theoretical path of the syllabus,which was based on traditional logic, moved away from the autonomous pathssought by the students, who were motivated by a different dynamics of learning; mediating the results of the analysis, and finally establishing a common paththat appears to converge towards operational practices that are similar to buildingin the real world. Therefore,the digital modeling techniques are presented - at least in the initial phase - accordingto a logical path of learning that proceeds from the bottom to the top, and that takes its cue from the needs that each of us would have in the real world if we were tobuild a physical model with traditional tools and techniques. The applications should be interpreted as “easy pieces” of modeling that are useful to understand a certain technique so that that technique can then be systematically applied to objects that are more complex. Wherever possible, the applications refer to forms that can be found indesign objects that can are apt to be described concisely; however, the writer believes that the same applications are equally useful for modeling in Architecture.