Afterlife of the Grande Arche: Re-materializing Digital Artifacts

Abstract

The thesis project envisions how architecture is being transformed and represented in a hyper-digital age. It is quite fascinating to me that today we have found numerous ways to digitally access and interact with architecture, without the need to physically enter the space. It seems that we’ve only been focusing on how our experience with architecture is shaped by digital technologies, but there’s very little discussion around how existing architecture is being altered through digital operations. With the evolution of cyberspace and the digitization of material culture, architecture becomes liquified, ambiguous and multitudinous. Using the iconic Grande Arche de la Defense in Paris as its site, the thesis project questions what constitutes the preconceived permanence and endurance of monumental built structures, and whether these assumptions still remain valid in a digital environment. The project begins with speculative propositions that undermine existing assumptions about monuments. It follows an iterative process that constantly goes back and forth between digitization and re-materialization of architecture. It is essentially a provocation about a future scenario, an architectural imagination on how monuments survive physical death in the form of digital reincarnation.