Digital Animation for Representing Architectural Design

Since the late Nineties of XX century digital movies have been emerging as one of the main methods for submission of architectural designs at international competitions, public presentations and shares on contemporary masters’ websites, allowing to preview buildings, spaces and urban environments before their eventual construction. The chapter highlights how the ability to access the fourth dimension, through the construction of a sequence of images, constitutes a specific prerogative of the digital representation, which goes beyond the static constraint imposed by conventional methods of representation codified by the Descriptive Geometry in the previous centuries. The great complexity of architectural video production has led to the birth of new professionals who specialize in modelling, rendering, animation, graphics, montage, editing and post production and work in specialist studios. In the past, this had resulted in the generation of specific and recognizable languages: the language of the design was overlaid by that of its narration, and they were not always in harmony one with the other. The author investigates on the methods, techniques and languages of the fourth-dimensional communication of architecture, unexplored area of research thus far, already the subject of previous studies, relating them with the masters’ personal poetics. The chapter provides also analysis and critiques of several case studies collected by the author from the beginning of the phenomenon, and traces an ideal interpretation path, due both to the changing technologies and the emerging specific languages.