Architectural atmospheres: affect and agency of mobile digital images in the material transformation of the urban landscape in Doha

This paper explores how the hybrid making of Computer Generated Images on the Msheireb urban redevelopment project in Doha may be understood as a distributed and networked craft practice within the discipline of architecture and design, which is effecting the material transformation of the urban landscape and everyday urban life in Doha. We suggest that the evocation of ‘atmosphere’ through the digitalised production of these images mobilises ideas and aspirations for the construction of a ‘new kind of place’ and urban lifestyle, both as an imaginary and a reality, in the Islamic and Arab context, and that, as crafted images, CGIs should be seen as objects with social agency which are central to the construction of the project as a technological and social reality during its production phases as well as to its translation into the social reality of built form and urban life.

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