Architecture and the Digital Dimension: Recreating Social and Spatial Relations

Our understanding of an architectural phenomenon is structurally connected with political, social, economic, cultural, scientific or technological instances. Architecture - the building and the city - is a representation of the (real or, on occasion imaginary) conditions created from these instances. Fredrick Jameson - while defining Postmodernism - argues that architecture, ideology, psychoanalysis, digital culture, technology, etc., are connected with each other. Thus, they create a force-field of different practices, actions and events, that if not always competitive with each other, are interrelated and impact each other. In The Origins of Modern Town Planning (1967), L. Benevolo introduced his thesis, by which a general social reform should take place simultaneously with an urban and architectural reform. Today, the rapid digitization process addresses the need for a "reform" of the conditions of the society and its material existence represented by the city and its architecture. In this context, this work deals with the idea that architecture is a metaphor for a language that facilitates communication between urban space and contemporary forms of social development, emphasizing the function of digital technologies in the sustainability of the urban-architectural form and cultural heritage. The theory of architecture, starting from the 1960s with the emergence of postmodern culture, has constantly brought into question the relationship between the social and technological and/or digital dimension. Real and utopian, urban and architectural structures, served to interpret how architecture could represent society, using its techno-aesthetic and techno-artistic strategies to participate in the organization of individual and collective human life. The aim of this work is to set a theoretical framework for discussing the concrete ways in which architecture can use digital tools to create possible scenarios for the future development of the city, using as a case-study the city of Prishtina and its (post-)modern heritage in particular. In doing so, this work extends the discourse on postmodernism in the context of post-socialist states, in South-Eastern Europe, as this discourse is often limited to the contexts of western cultures. Digital tools (e.g. computers using 3D modeling programs or mapping systems based on artificial intelligence) are known to have a distinct impact in creating a deep understanding of the structural and spatial relationships. However, the objective of this work is to question: 1) Whether digitization in architectural practice can stimulate the sustainability of inherited urban forms and building types; 2) How the ever-evolving digital culture affects architecture's function as a representation of political, social, economic, and cultural conditions. To answer these questions, we will use "mapping" as a model to study the space in which people are able to map their own positions or the urban totality in which they find themselves. The mapping process is a representation of both people’s and architects’ imaginary relationship to their real conditions of existence. This work belongs to the field of theory and critique on architecture. The methodological design is based on a mix of methods, such as text and discourse analysis, and morphological and typological analysis. The findings from the research will be utilized in the case study, the city of Prishtina from the 1970s and onwards. To avoid the narrow base of case-study research from its inception, in the course of its development, different examples from the history of architecture will be used for comparative purposes. Considering the im- possibility to study architecture in the digitalization era in Prishtina - or anywhere else - in a linear fashion through the entire period from the 1970s, this work identifies specific buildings and sites to be used as study samples.