Abstract
This study attempts to clarify inter-relationship between design expression in the surface of contemporary multi-family housing and physical trends in this digital age. The study examines characteristics of housing design influenced from new digital technology in the forms of metaphor such as dematerialization, fluidity and mobility. Currently constructed multi-family housing in Europe after 1990 has been analyzed to find digital reflections in the surfaces. As a conclusion, findings are as follows; In this digital age, a house is considered as a base in the forms of boxes and containers to network to outer worlds. In a complex of multi-family housing, public spaces move to the inside and become parts of private domain. Therefore, a house directly faces a street/outer world without transitional areas and devices. The facades of housing become delicate skins to control private domain in the inside and the world in the outside. In this digital age, the surfaces of housing are designed by ways of wrapping and screening. Printing and mapping methods are used to surface design because they are manipulative and flexible methods in design like graphic design. Screening devices using louvers and shutters are powerful tools to make random and unpredictable images. If units of a louver and a shutter were pixels, a whole surface would be a digital screen. In such assumption, the facade of buildings reflects digital screen to interface while the louvers in operation reflect clicking to network. As a conclusion, design expression in surfaces in-between of multi-family housing is a metaphor of digital mechanism.