Dimension, 306090 Books, Volume 12
Emily Abruzzo, Jonathan D. Solomon, editors
September 2008
ISBN 978-0615182025
224 pages

After over two decades of investment in virtual architecture, it is time to reconsider dimension in architectural theory and practice. There is no more compelling problem in architecture today than that of the real, and the transition from virtual thereto – for it is in this very return to the material world that we see the most eloquent explorations of the virtual. Dimension, a quality that captures both scale and authenticity, is the noun and the verb that drives architecture’s latest engagement in configuring the actual.

Qualities of the real, we find, have always been contingent upon the virtual, or abstract. Scale — in time and space — is relative. Even the very terms of measurement turn out to be constructs, yet our abilities to draw, communicate and build are fundamentally reliant on them. Dimension’s relationship to design is even more vexing when we consider that all the precision that we can generate, all the tabulated data, cannot account for the absolute thrill or feeling of trepidation that a space may inspire in its built form.

The works in this volume respond to our provocation: "What economic, political, and environmental factors influence dimension and its effects?" Witness, the future of tall buildings explored in the narrative format of a graphic novel, walls made of atmosphere, the material distortions that occur as a laser drills through acrylic. In their totality, these projects, articles and definitions break open endemic dualities of contemporary design: the precise yet ambiguous, the specific yet flexible, the ideal yet spiritual. They question and answer, just as the very process of dimensioning does.