Between Accident and Control: Contrasting Traditions of Computational Design

Daniel Cardoso-Llach, Essay, expanding design practices, No Density, Technology and fabrication, WWW Drawing

Algorithms, Analysis, Architecture, Automation, Challenge, Comfort, Communication, Computation, Design process, Design thinking, Digital era, Drawing tool, Engineering, Essay, History, Mapping, New technologies, Research, Simulation, Smart tool, Technology, Transformation

This essay is an excerpt of WWW Drawing by Jaorg Abrams and Mehrdad Hadighi, published by Actar Publishers and Pennsylvania State University’s Department of Architecture, Stuckeman School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture.

Since architects began to flirt with computers in the 1960s, debates about the role of computation in architecture have often been framed antagonistically – as arenas for technophobes and technophiles to clash, each staking a claim on the unique value, or promise, of their respective practices. This dichotomy is tempting. On the one hand, images of automated design systems – offering creative freedom, managerial efficiency, or ‘personalized’ design solutions – abound in architecture’s six-decades romance with computation. Seductive and often reductive, these images outlined the contours of a computationally augmented practice of architecture, and captured the imagination of many architects in academia and industry, effectively ushering an entire academic sub-field.