Assemble: d3:dialog, international journal of architecture + design (Volume 1)

Cities and buildings represent temporal manifestations of mass, space, time, and memory. With the advent of digital methodologies--architecture, interior spaces, and designed objects may be conceived more fluidly in terms of information. This shift from analog techniques to digital systems in conceptual design and material production has resulted in more profound interactions between designers and the public. An inability to separate the real from the virtual has emerged, whereby these methods have converged to form part of the same process. How can the development of 21st century urban space and architecture be conceptualized, controlled, and created? How do such environments grow, transition, and transform over time? How does the integration of digital conceptualization tools with physical matter produce increasingly fluid architectural forms, flexible spaces, and transformative assemblies? Over two decades of investment in virtual methods has produced a sea-change in the way that we think about creating our built environment. Since the most provocative virtual explorations must ultimately return to the material world to be relevant, the value of their abstraction is contingent upon an ability to be built. Thus, communicating, composing, drawing, assembling, and building remain inherent to the pursuit of architecture. The first volume of d3's 'dialog' series features work in architectural theory, speculative postulations, and built form that blurs the boundary between the mapping and making of cities, buildings, spaces, and objects. 'Assemble' explores how such fusion occurs and how conventional methods remain relevant.