Close Up

The SCI-Arc showcases how digital and technological advancements have transformed radically architectural ideas, impacting with the traditions of tectonic expression.

The Southern California Institute of Architecture is presenting the exhibition “Close-up” within its spaces in the SCI-Arc Gallery, examining the impact of digital technologies on the architectural detail and the traditions of tectonic expression associated with it. The exhibition is curated by Hernan Diaz Alonso and David Ruy.

An often overlooked condition of digital design technologies is the ability to design objects through continuous degrees of magnification. The consequences of this very basic fact are more significant than we may realize. The traditional premise that some architectural ideas only reside at standardized scales of magnification at this point is nostalgic. This exhibition proposes that technological advancements have resulted in a transformation of how architectural ideas unfold at different degrees of resolution and that tectonics might mean something very different in the 21st century.