Messages sans codes: colossi, laser scans and the form-makers' angst

3D form capturing, using laser scanners, has the potential to impact architectural form-making the way photography once impacted the making of 2D images. To illustrate, it would be possible to take a scan of a particular person's body and face, reformat the scan as a CAD file, then add floors, stairs and lifts to produce a computer model from which CAM technology could then extract information necessary for manufacturing a human-shaped building. In this paper, some cultural factors behind architects' wariness of technology capable of usurping their role as form-makers, are brought into focus through a discussion of the colossus, that type from their own tradition most capable of igniting architects' ire. Factors behind their reticence include: (1) prejudices deeply rooted in Modernism, traceable ultimately to Plato's views on mimesis; (2) pejorative associations with amusement park fixtures and tourist traps; and (3) fears colossi built for profit might diminish those serving more civic functions. The technological capacity to replicate our bodies as buildings, has come just when colossi are deemed to be tasteless. In antiquity, The Colossus of Rhodes emblemised the technological brilliance of its sculptor, Chares of Lindos, while a key Renaissance treatise describing architectural elements that even today would be considered high-tech, lists among them an inhabitable colossus. The liberalness of past eras, in which we can imagine form-capturing technology being readily embraced, invites us to rethink the revolutionary potential laser-scanning could have on the creation of architectural form.