Postdigital Neobaroque
in Contemporary Cutting Edge Architectural Design
Paradigm shifts in architecture are not only reactive to changes in society but are proactive towards the production of cultural transformations such as the way we design, produce and place buildings into the environment. The project Post-Digital Neo-Baroque is an endeavour to provide evidence for the impact of a Neo-Baroque mentality and style across various disciplines that have reached a Post-Digital state of affairs.
By drawing inspiration from, and founding its research on, both Heinrich Wölfflin’s seminal work Principles of Art History and Omar Calabrese’s hypothesis outlined in Neo-Baroque: A Sign of Our Time, the team embark on a transdisciplinary, transcultural and transhistorical investigation in theory and design of the spirit of our age that pervades many of today’s cultural phenomena in all fields of knowledge. One of the most intriguing questions of the current architectural and artistic discourse is in fact the potential reconciliation of two seeming opposites in the contemporary architectural discourse – digital design and the physical environment of traditional technology, crafts and aesthetics.
By additionally including the Baroque notion of “Gesamtkunstwerk”, the project aims to converge the digital, the physical and the virtual to generate innovative artistic and architectural design output. The findings will be showcased in a public exhibition, discussed in an international symposium and published in a three-volume compendium including a reader documenting theoretical findings, an exhibition catalogue and the conference proceedings.