3D

3D

When most people talk about 3D, it's about depth perception, about combining two pictures of a scene (as we do with our two eyes) to actually see rather than infer the distance and relative position of objects. In architecture, when we talk about 3D, it's about the height of objects, the Z axis in our representations. This is arguably typical of architecture: we don't look at the world, we look at our own tools and conventions. Perhaps the saddest thing is that we don't appear to celebrate the ingenuity of these tools: 2D representations aren't boring, stupid means to be replaced by 3D representations as soon as possible; at least some of them are great ways of describing aspects of the real world, making them accessible and manageable.

No, I'm wrong: the saddest thing was that many years ago, when I was pushing for 3D and making people work towards it by putting floor plans on top of each other and cross sections at the right places, discrepancies of even 50 cm between floors were not uncommon. Of course, at the same time, when we put floor plans of adjacent buildings next to each other we discovered gaps of up to fifteen degrees. That's the saddest: not being able to use one's tools properly - and this won't improve with 3D.