New trends of digital representation in contemporary Architectural Competitions

In the last years "digital revolution" has pervaded the world of representation and transmission of ideas offering new methods, technologies, tools and strategies for digital representation. Dynamic and hyper-medial representations have burst on the scene of the architectural representation methods - traditionally static -, thanks to the most recent technological developments of computer graphics. Advanced digital media techniques and dynamic representations are establishing as primary emerging modes of architectural representation, using different techniques such as 3D modelling, animation, compositing, virtual and augmented realities and other digitally based techniques. In Architectural Competitions - one of the most significant ways to obtain a professional charge - the new trends of digital representation play a central role as method and tool of communication. The need of synthesizing and demonstrating the design thinking in a fixed and limited number of entry specifications is one of the communication peculiarities in Architectural Competitions. Most announcements of International Architectural Ideas Competitions require today, beside written statements and various presentation materials, - like boards, architectural models, photographs -, the production of a fixed length movie for illustrating the design ideas. In this case 3D digital modelling and animation may represent a powerful tool for increasing evaluation capability by jury members. Architectural movies today are affirming themselves as new method for representing design ideas, offering the chances of exploring the space in continuum, telling a story about the life inside the future buildings and underlining the perceptive effects produced by simulated architectures. The high complexity, not only in creating and animating three-dimensional digital models, but also in compositing and post-producing videos, has to face a separation of jobs and responsibilities between the activities of architectural atelier and the works of rendering and compositing studios. Previous researches, developed by the authors of this abstract, analyzed the meanings of fourth dimension for representing architectural designs (Congress Id&cT09, Milan 2009) and went deep to the history of digital movies for transmitting design ideas in Architectural Competitions (Congress ARCC 2009, San Antonio - TX 2009). In this paper we would present the results of our present research, focused on contemporary Architectural Competitions, about new trends of digital representation, our considerations about use and meanings of different creative languages and visual communication styles and our hypotheses about some possible scenarios for future Architectural Competitions, when the modelling phase and animation will represent only the first step of the representative path. Some case studies, drawn from most recent Architectural Competitions showing the state of the art, will be analyzed and commented. In particular we would contribute to improve knowledge about the potentiality of new digital representation tools for expressing and transmitting architects' design thinking. We would aim also to express some proposals useful to the professionals involved in Architectural Competitions and identify advanced digital media techniques, which could constitute future developments of digital representation useful in the field of architectural competition. They could consist in technologies incorporating interactivity - which allow the juries free explorations of the project -, in navigable dynamic models (real-time), in interactive videos in augmented reality merging 3D model with some footages of the existing urban context, in real-time stereoscopic models.