Abstract
Today computing power and sophisticated digital tools are changing architectural design. Scripting and new design software is becoming ubiquitous and opens new opportunities for tech savvy designers, in turn computation seems set to fundamentally re-structure design practices. In the field of digital architecture , a number of critical voices have emerged from within its own ranks, vitally engaging with its theory and practice. These critiques universally assume that designers are, in fact, facing a new terrain for design thinking and that there consequently is a need to formulate a rationale for digital design research. If this is so, how can we begin to understand this new digital terrain, and what might its impact be on creativity and cognition? We approach these questions through the lens of Material Engagement Theory , exploring how computers and digital design research are changing the stakes for imaginative and creative thinking in architecture. We find that the potential of digital tools for bringing together vastly heterogeneous worlds might indeed extend the creative capacities of savvy designers, but that this relies on much more than a simple understanding of computation and involves materials, transactions and affect at several levels and temporal scales .
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Notes
- 1.
CAD/CAM, Computer-Aided Design and Computer-Aided Manufacture , encompass a growing suite of software used in digital design and manufacture. CAD often use 2D and 3D software environments for the design and documentation of digital products; CAM use software and programming to control production tools, including Computerised Numerical Control (CNC) milling machinery.
- 2.
Within digital design parametric modelling utilises the computer’s ability to synthesise complexity in order to create models that describe explicitly defined relationships between terms in the model (cf. Davis 2013). This can perhaps best be described by an example: Rather than drawing a facade from the top down, so to speak, adding structure, walls, windows, ornament etc. you might instead describe formulas for the distance in-between windows and the size and shape of ornaments that might go there. Once form has been described in purely informational terms in the parametric model, its manipulation becomes much more fluid than anything drawing or traditional CAD can allow.
- 3.
From Greek hyle: matter, and noetic: relating to mind.
- 4.
Traditionally a spline was a long piece of pliable wood or metal whose material composition made it form smooth curves when bended and held in place by a series of ‘ducks’; this allowed for optimisation of curved forms and was particularly valued in shipbuilding and design where their use can be traced back to the early AD Romans. Splines were first described mathematically in 1946, but their material forebears have continued to inspire mathematicians and engineers developing curvature for digital design tools (Farin 2002).
- 5.
Computerised curvature was first developed by Paul De Casteljau (in 1959), a young mathematician at Citroën who were not allowed to publish his results, and subsequently by Pierre Bézier (in the early 1960s), an engineer at Renault. While arriving at similar solutions, they proceeded along quite different paths.
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Poulsgaard, K.S., Malafouris, L. (2017). Models, Mathematics and Materials in Digital Architecture. In: Cowley, S., Vallée-Tourangeau, F. (eds) Cognition Beyond the Brain. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49115-8_14
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