Theoretical Notes on the Aesthetics of Architectural Texture Mapping

This paper explores several historical and contemporary examples of architecture that employ graphic texture mapping in their design processes. The technique of texture mapping is outlined as a particular formal relationship between images, geometric scaffolds, and new material explorations. Texture-mapped architecture is a relatively contemporary phenomenon that is distinct from several known genres of image-building hybrids such as media facades, Ganzfeld art installations, building-scale projection experiments, postmodern semiotic billboards, and affective ornamental pattern strategies. Architectural texturing utilizes UV editors in modeling and animation software platforms to place and edit two-dimensional graphics or photographic images on three-dimensional models. UV editors allow an unprecedented degree of precision during the design process; image and geometry can be manipulated in tandem and two-dimensional source material can be edited and live-updated. Material manifestations of this process use commercial printing technologies and one-off processes developed by artists and designers to generate building-grade printed envelopes. The theoretical wager of the paper is that the accessibility/availability of texture mapping techniques, digital printing technologies, and new materials (such as 3M’s vinyl wraps) have triggered a graphic impulse in contemporary experimental architecture culture. Images, color theory, and flat graphics are now central to compositional theory as it is taught in academia and applied in the field.