Plug-in wind: Software and logistics of elemental media

Abstract

This article focuses on the role of computational fluid dynamics (CFDs) in architectural and design software. Among other uses, CFDs concern the modeling and simulation of wind that this article approaches as an example of elemental media and as a computationally managed entity implemented into design of environments including different kinds of digital twin platforms. Thus, the article argues that wind and other fluids are moved as software and data in the logistical circuit that underpins design and digital twinning. However, this take on logistics of wind emerges at the back of a longer history of visual cultures of wind—including such takes as Harun Farocki’s Parallel video essay on computer graphics and software modeling of elemental media—while focusing more on the past decades of software plug-ins as well as game engines. Digital twinning is contextualized in broader software cultures and logistics of environmental data.