The New Technological Paradigm in the Post-digital Era. Three Convergent Paths Between Creative Action and Computational Tools

Abstract

The current evolutionary situation of the post-digital era is influenced by a scientific research based on an almost unconditioned technological positivism and requires a more agile a flexible built environment, adapted to the unpredictable changes and transformations of our planet. The building sector is going through an important evolutionary phase, mainly characterized by the use of new digital technologies which have considerable impact on the organizational dimension of the design and implementation, in order to adopt innovative solutions with the least environmental impact. While the architect is replaced by machines in the worksite, the use of digital technological instruments needs a new approach toward the project and the building procedures. Within this change, the draftsman, besides engaging with multidisciplinary specialized skills ranging from computational engineering to biotechnologies and neuro-sciences, has to be proactively able to control the current space, time, and technological processes which are offered by evolved and complex computerized instruments. These go beyond formality to create new constructive realities, which are being experimented. The inorganic computational instruments of the post-digital era afford the “Total Designer” a new opportunity to rethink composition not only in terms of productivity and efficiency but to also gain a deeper understanding of empathy and experience. It is pertinent in this situation to consider the possible convergence between design thinking and technical thinking based on the development of digital algorithms. With the help of some research and case studies, this contribution analyzes the relationship between creative action and computational instrument through three main directions—representation/simulation, communication/perception, and manufacture/materialization—that encompass the essential elements characterizing the role of the designer, a draftsman that is not only aware but sensitive to modern technology.

1 Introduction

Architectural research has undergone several phases since the arrival of digital technology, which has often questioned the boundaries of such a discipline in the relationship between design and construction and between art and science. Following a period of fideism and inferiority toward digital instruments and techniques, we now witness a shift of the cultural and technological paradigm, which brings mankind back to being the main focus of architecture and design.

As part of this interaction between technology and human activities, the project is described as ‘intelligent,’ ‘flexible,’ ‘interactive,’ and ‘empathetic.’ According to Biraghi «[…] in the era of the digital panoptic—without shape, immaterial and ubiquitous—the Bentham panopticon is unexpectedly brought back» as research of «disciplinary control and demonstration of digital freedom» (Biraghi 2019, p.162).

Having experienced more than 30 years of digital technology, we are in the midst of a “second digital turn,” a new paradigm engendering a new way to rethink the project on a comprehensive level, compared to the current computational instruments «[…] we are learning that computers can work better and faster when we let them follow a different, nonhuman, postscientific method; and we increasingly find it easier to let computers solve problems in their own way—even when we do not understand what they do or how they do it» (Carpo 2017, p 7).

As observed by the Khannas, in this scenario designers experiment with a hybrid approach to the project, where «technologies merge together and with humans», and where «technology transcends a purely instrumental level to reach the existential realm» (Khanna 2013, p 6,8) It is a type of inductive-experimental analytic and compositive process that gathers information around the digital instruments and re-elaborates it in a creative way, where prediction can be based on sheer information retrieval, and form-finding by simulation and optimization can replace deduction from mathematical formulas.

The inorganic computational instruments of the post-digital era afford the “Total Designer” (Ortega 2017) a new opportunity to rethink composition not only in terms of productivity and efficiency (Paris 2021, p 131) but to also gain a deeper understanding of empathy and experience.

It is pertinent in this situation to consider the possible convergence between design thinking and technical thinking based on the development of digital algorithms. With the help of some research and case studies, this contribution analyzes the relationship between creative action and computational instrument through three main directions—representation/simulation, communication/perception, and manufacture/materialization—that encompass the essential elements characterizing the role of the designer, a draftsman that is not only aware but sensitive to modern technology.

2 New Creative Design Approach

The codes of computational language—‘dynamic relationships,’ ‘flow diagrams,’ ‘non-Euclidean geometries,’ ‘the integration of natural models,’ etc.—have often been examined to experiment with new creative approaches to the project, following a new constituent logic that allows a simultaneous, systemic, replicable, variable, precise, and controlled action.

While architects such as Eisenmann, Ghery, Lynn, Cook, and Hadid explored the software’s potential at the dawn of the digital revolution primarily in the abstract language of the neo-organic forms, we have recently been witnessing a new use of the calculation instrument in the process of conception, elaboration, and production of a project where the individual user is the main interest. With the use of modern multi-platform software with ‘user-friendly’ interfaces, it is possible to produce new computational principles of mass personalization of the project which can encourage creative processes enabling the visualization, comprehension, and production of an artifact in its highest ‘forms.’ In the phases of elaboration and production, the designer can simultaneously control the complexity of space in its figurative, dimensional, performant, and management aspects.

The “Total Designer” comes to light with a holistic vision able to: combine artistic creativity and computational science; use digital technology with critical thinking and awareness; manage the softwares’ space, time, and technology processes; recognize the models of access, control, and transmission of data; relate to further ‘specialist’ knowledge; adopt a cooperative and circular process; engender digital models in line with the forms of living. The designer implements an analytic design process, inductive and experimental, sourcing information from the data accessible on the Internet and from digital instruments. They re-elaborate the information through creative action, a constituent device outlining the conceptual approach and the cultural background of the project.

The design process has changed dramatically from the traditional linear sequence of conception, representation, and production to a circular, repetitive, and dynamic process that emerges from continuous feedback between conceptual ideas, models, prototypes, redefinitions, and the perfection of the creative idea. A process ‘loop’ combines the intuitive ability and the experiential knowledge with the automatic digital tools. A system that reduces the gap between conception and production allows the creative invention to extend to the prototype phase where the computational tolerances require a higher level of definition, optimization, and control of morphology, dimension, and performance.

An inclusive constituent process is outlined. As an actor and director, the designer abandons the modernist authorial dimension here and joins a cooperative and collective network of convergent multidisciplinary skills (Fig. 31.1).

Fig. 31.1

Digital era and second digital turn: theories of some protagonists (author’s elaboration)

3 Creative Act and Digital Instrument: Three Axes of Change

The post-digital era offers an opportunity to rethink design through a combination of converging paths between design thinking and technical thinking derived from the elaboration of digital algorithms.

Draftsmen experiment with new action modalities that redefine the relationship between the creative act and the computational tools on three levels: representation/simulation, communication/perception, and manufacture/materialization. As a sensitive draftsman aware of changes, the Total Designer operates along three main axes (Fig. 31.2).

Fig. 31.2

Circular process in the second digital turn. Three main axes of change: representation/simulation, communication/perception, manufacture/materialization (author’s elaboration)

3.1 Representation/Simulation

The new software allows us to achieve unprecedented levels of precision that, through hyper-realistic virtual images, enable the conception, visualization, measurement, and control of space as well as technical and performance parameters in terms of energy consumption and costs.

On the one hand, sophisticated digital models operating with precision and in real time are created in the realms of immaterial abstraction (rendering) and physical material (digital fabrication), while on the other hand, new creative modalities of elaboration and project management are explored.

As well as in the artistic domain, where softwares such as ‘processing’ define original visual languages outlining new writing codes—synthesizing graphic project and systemic materiality—, also in the architectural domain, the latest programs contribute to defining new spatial setups and creative languages, digital programs which combine figurative images and calculation diagrams with the processuality.

An example of this is represented by the Bahrain Pavilion, built in occasion of the 2020 Dubai Expo, whose unprecedented metal filigree characterizing the internal space was inspired by calculation diagrams of the computational softwares. Through new computer tools the Kerez firm simultaneously and interactively conceive, develop, and control the pavilion’s space with technical-performance parameters of the 126 steel standard profiles, with a diameter of only 11 cm and a height of 24 m.

In this design process, the variability of calculation algorithms, whether they are deriving from formal, structural, or energy performance parameters, they define new degrees of figurative transformation and creative interpretation.

Therefore, with the new instruments, the tension between computation solidity and visual image can be analyzed at a range of scales and depths. In the process of creating the artifact, subtle elements (from the software) and solid elements (from the CNC hardware or 3D printer) are represented with optical parameters that reproduce and control brightness, contrast, saturation, reflection, and oscillation between surface and depth.

A series of proto-architectural projects, Projectors, by the firm MILLIØNS explores how image processing and decomposition techniques can be integrated into the numerical material methods of 3D printing, to decrease error tolerance as well as optimize workflow. The process begins by rendering platonic shapes in different planes and with different optical effects and then dissecting the structural basis of the image rendered. The content of the image is then reorganized through algorithmic operations along the three Cartesian axes. Different values and parameters are manipulated in such a way that clusters of pixels can be shuffled and rearranged to draw out a new image. With the help of 3D printing, ideas are transformed into full-scale prototypes from the digital model. Even color acquires a tectonic parameter, in which the colored pigments are obtained through the numeric coding of the composition (Koreitem 2021, p 11).

3.2 Communication/Perception

«A moiré is a figural effect produced by the superposition of two regular fields. […] They shift abruptly in scale, and repeat according to complex mathematical rules» (Allen 1985, p 8). In his definition of moiré, Stan Allen explains how it is possible to perceive a new paradigm shift in the passage from analog to digital: “from mechanical to speculative production.” (ivi, p 8). The diagrams he uses in his studies about “Field Conditions” reveal a new communicative-perceptive digital approach to “modeling program and space” that moves from the “Figure” of “Classical and Modernist Compositions” of the “Mechanical Era Modern” to the “Field/Ground” of the “Field Composition” of the “Digital Era.”

As a result of the ideogram sequence, linked to the generative rules of the digital calculation, a connection is formed between the ‘figure’ and the ‘abstraction,’ establishing a scheme, a pattern, which explains the design concept. A repeating image with multiple combinations and variations of figurative molds, which are effectively sparks of design elaboration—a “productive indeterminacy” (Schumacher 2004). A « “field condition” shifts the focus of attention from the singular to the multiple, from the individual to the collective», where «[…] It recognizes constraints as opportunities» (Ortega 2017, p 26).

At the start of the digital age, architects such as Eisenmann, Tschumi, and Van Berkel used diagrams to represent the abstract language of the project, but in this new era depicting the “field condition,” software-made models have evolved into dynamic images that carry out aspects of conception, communication, perception, and experience, in addition to simplifying and coding the complexity of the design process.

Ensemble uses three-dimensional scanning in its Ca’n Terra project to convey the idea of a new “material” and “experiential” topography of the real world: “Throwing millions of laser points on the wrinkles of the continuous stone surface, we register with millimetric precision the solid structure” (from Ensemble’s project description).

In “Thousand Plateau,” Gilles Deleuze states that diagrams «are not a reenactment of any form, on the other hand, construct a new form of reality» (Deleuze and Guattari 2001).

Beyond its role as a technological medium, the digital instrument articulates an alternative mode of communication and perception simulated through the definition of ‘metalanguage’ that, in contrast to hyper-realistic renderings—which reduce the conceptual dimensions of the project—, still leaves open and open-ended issues in the process of the design’s theoretical synthesis. A paradigm shift occurs when we observe the figurative-communicative-perceptive-experiential process of the project: a ‘new field condition’ that is creative and inductive, founded on a renewed empathetic and multisensory interaction between the draftsman, the device, and the immaterial surfaces of the artifacts, adding to a “new materialism” (Paris 2019, p 12).

3.3 Manufacture/Materialization

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Using the plug-in platforms for dynamic planning and robotics and 3D printing, a creative idea becomes tangible as a result of the steps of ‘manufacturing’ and ‘materializing’ that are comparable to the processes of rapid prototyping and mechanized assembly.

As shown by some recent experiments such as DFAB House, the first house that was digitally designed and built with the help of robots and 3D printers, coding the data processed by the parametric software allows interaction in real time in the realm of creative interpretation directly ‘on-site’ in the steps of installation of the project where «[…] the numerization implicit in digitalization translates all of the information into a common binary code, an abstraction that promotes links and connections between previously unrelated elements» (Ortega 2017, p 25).

With the new digital techniques—where computational design issued by the variability of the algorithms corresponds to flexibility and simultaneity in the building processes carried out by robots—, the creative process is facilitated by a direct intervention during the realization phase, creating architectural works where the design and building phase are always more coherent, synchronic, and integrated with the reference environment.

The simultaneous, accidental, improvised, rapid, and combination aspects of this new ‘creative dimension’ contribute significantly to the definition of a “new standard” (Carpo 2017), which has relevance to the parametric manufacture and materialization processes through concepts such as ‘series’ and ‘repetition’ in terms of ‘versions’ and ‘variations’. In the concept development process, the abstraction created by modeling the algorithms that control the genetic behavior of the project amplifies, simplifies, and optimizes the infinite interpretive variables. The steps of installation as well as the tectonic and syntactic aspects of the artifact are affected by these factors. Thus, they mark a transition from a culture of identity and repetition (mechanical production) to a new “ecology” of multiple and different performances (speculative production).

By using the ‘Superlinear design process,’ Ryuji Fujimura develops the project in a ‘new aesthetics of play’ which performs directly in the manufacture and assembly phase while simultaneously controlling parametric-performant data. Experiments are conducted in an experimental manner and are followed by a prototype that documents the steps. Each of them is the result of the progressive change of a single part of the project. It starts with a simple model that is modified proportionately with subsequent modifications: There is an input (a question or a request), an output (the formal solution), and a time progression describing the development of the artifact materialization traced by the prototype.

The design process, which produces a series of morphological variations that can be represented with the incubation steps of a fish before hatching the egg, can be summarized in the sequence: prototyping (giving an approximate form based on known information and requirements); feedback (removing inconsistencies between the form and the context by adding rules); and the iteration of these first two steps (inferring the original purpose from the derived set of rules, and increasing the certainty of the resulting form).

A ‘Superlinear design process’ is still in experimentation, and it would allow the creation of a new collective creativity, more open to variation and mass digital personalization directly ‘on-site.’

4 Conclusions

The rapid development of computational techniques has profoundly transformed the design process, as well as the approach to design and the role of the draftsman, since the beginning of the digital era.

In the early days of the digital age, Ben Van Berkel wrote in his book “Move,” “Architecture will be the fashion designer of the future” (Van Berkel 1999, p 27). In this phase, the draftsman—a creative artist able to “dress the future”—explores the software’s potential through a neo-organicist abstract language, within a design process that maintains the traditional linear path of conception, representation, and realization.

During the “second digital turning point,” about twenty years after Van Berkel’s statement, Spanish architect Louis Ortega outlines the draftsman with a holistic and inclusive vision, in his book “The Total Designer,” someone able to control creativity and technical performance «[…] who has the ability to work with space while drawing on a profound awareness of its relationship with time in its many dimensions […]» (Ortega 2017, p 7) A draftsman, being part of an inclusive system of convergent multidisciplinary skills, is both director and actor who utilizes the digital potential to satisfy individuals’ real needs. An ongoing ‘as built’ system is being developed via a circular sequential process where creative action and computational instrument exchange dynamic feedback in the stages of representation/simulation, communication/perception, and manufacture/materialization.

As draftsmen, once we observe the ongoing and rapid evolution of software and services around the virtual economy, we can imagine the role of a ‘Meta Designer’ changing as well. An exceptional draftsman who sees beyond the surface appearance of an object to conceive, simulate, perceive, and create in a simultaneous, circular, interactive, immersive, and experimental way a manifold human-sized reality.

Over a short period of time, we went from a “digital” to a “virtual” to an “augmented reality” design, and the distance between the creative act and the finished product has practically vanished in favor of a high level of control and definition.

A dimension of virtual reality, connoted by innovative solutions aiming for the least environmental impact, offers new possibilities and knowledge for design and architecture today as a new kind of sense of space and time between things and objects.

In the post-digital era, we can conclude that the new technological paradigm is represented by actions that sought to redefine, through a holistic and aware approach of the designer, a balance and a parallel dialogue between technical knowledge and humanistic culture. An opportunity to rethink the project’s identity and activity within a new interaction and cooperation between science, art, space, and time, resulting in a reconciliation between creative expression, performance, and individual needs (Fig. 31.3).

Fig. 31.3

Ensamble Studio, Ca’n Terra, Menorca, Spain, 2018. The layout was redefined after a high-precision 3D survey using infrared light