ABSTRACT
In order to generate a feedback loop between matter and force, a generation of digital designers (those typically described as proponents of technique) have become expert at distributing linework as a medium for speculations on structure, surface and ornament. While not the central subject of this text, this area of research was the rst to coalesce around the power of digital representation to condition the architectural atmosphere with its materiality. is design approach was a reaction to the immaterial eects of early digital experiments. In the early to mid-1990s, digital renderings depicted highly reective, slightly transparent surfaces set against black backgrounds and without additional material or tectonic articulation. Space was rendered ethereal, surfaces intangible, and both projected an atmosphere absent of material, weight, or force. e designers of these surfaces, however, saw other representations of these surfaces and the spaces they dened. e digital environment within which they took shape was full of materiality in the form of linework used to make visible the mathematical description of the surfaces. is representational material became increasingly tangible as matter to be organized and sensed. As these experiments evolved and interest in digital fabrication grew, designers turned to surface as the primary site of their research. By the late 1990s, an interest in surface had rmly taken hold in professional practices both as an organizational and cosmetic device. Rather than view these as separate devices, this chapter attempts to draw the organizational and the cosmetic together by dening the design framework of sheet logics. e term surface is replaced by sheet because it refers both to topology and substance, to geometry and material. Surface, on the other hand, refers to the exterior boundary of an object. It is dened as part of a whole. Sheets contain parts but can expand and respond to contingency without losing their organizational coherence. e following speculations argue for the use value of sheet logics in opening up disciplinary research that is at once organizational and cosmetic.
