Scripting temporality in contemporary architecture: physical, perceptual and virtual time

This paper advances a critical approach to temporality in architecture by treating time as a design parameter rather than a background condition. It distinguishes three interrelated registers: physical time (measurable environmental and material cycles), perceptual time (lived duration and sequential experience), and virtual time (temporality produced through computational modelling and informational or interactive systems that mediate, simulate, or adapt architectural conditions). Synthesising philosophical and architectural debates on time and feeling with digital design discourse, the paper proposes a tripartite typology that connects embodied experience to the operative logics of contemporary workflows and media-rich environments. Methodologically, it develops a structured comparative analysis of two widely documented cultural buildings: the Heydar Aliyev Centre (Zaha Hadid Architects, 2012) and the Louvre Abu Dhabi (Jean Nouvel, 2017), selected for their contrasting formal operations and lighting strategies. Evidence is drawn from published drawings, curated photographic documentation, and reported simulation-based daylight design narratives, and is analysed through an explicit mapping procedure that links observable features to the three registers. The comparison demonstrates how the typology differentiates distinct temporal ‘scripts’ in contemporary practice — environmental cadence, embodied sequencing, and computational/mediated governance — and offers an analytic lens transferable to other digitally informed design contexts.