SAC Journal 6: Breaking Glass

SPATIAL FABULATIONS
AND OTHER TALES OF REPRESENTATION IN VIRTUAL REALITY Within a relatively short time, Augmented and Virtual Reality have emerged centre stage in architecture and the arts. While promis- ing to upend the way image-based experiences are mediated and consumed, the technological media also teases the disciplines with novel creative opportunities for creating critical and meaningful experiences. Yet, the rise of these media in various industries, the architecture and the arts present a staggering number of acute questions.
These questions include those about the nature and ownership of our personal, social, cultural as well as political lives. They must also be understood in relation to the histories of the disciplines and how they may fundamentally challenge established ways of think- ing and making. The nature of creative work must be re-examined, and the idea of reality itself becomes re-shuffled. Corporeal exis- tences are thrown on the scale with virtual ones as the boundaries for how we understand perceptional dynamics are shifting.
With Spatial Fabulations and Other Tales of Representation in Virtual Reality, the sixth publications in the series of the Städel- schule Architecture Class, select topics central to Augmented and Virtual Reality in architecture and the arts are addressed.
The publication includes texts by, amongst other, Michael Young, Space Popular and Curtis Roth as well as a conversation between Sanford Kwinter and Daniel Birnbaum. A series of visual portfolios presents works in Virtual Reality that expound on the thematic interest of this issue of SAC THEMES.
The issue has been edited by Yara Feghali and Johan Bettum and is published in connection with Breaking Glass III - Virtual Space, the last in a series of three annual conferences on architecture, art, and Virtual Reality hosted by the Städelschule Architecture Class. It also features the award winning projects of Städelschule Architecture Class' AIV Master Thesis Prize 2019.
SAC THEMES presents practical and theoretical work at the fore- front of contemporary interests in architectural design. The con- tent in each publication is produced by invited contributors and the Städelschule Architecture Class.