Gelassenheit: Dilemma of computational thinking in architecture

Abstract

Computational design technologies and tools though operate on a very high level of decisiveness and precision, have a common goal to provide further possibilities of setting free. The terms of rule-based systems, algorithmic thinking processes, parametric design data-bases though drag us to a distant place deepin digital environment, are all there for a better dwelling on earth and a better understanding of world. How architects relate themselves to their environment of design and realization is a problem of how they relate themselves to the world in the larger frame. Representational thinking initiated by modern science and technology which bases itself on the object quality of being by “enframing” things through their measurable aspects, causes modern age to be an age of “pictures”; where the touch with being is “in oblivion”. Martin Heidegger’s concept of gelassenheit (letting-be, releasement and calmness) reminds the essential nature of thinking as not moving towards and forward with a willto-power but by stepping back to offer the required offenheit (openness) to the coming-into-being of anything that is with a will-not-to-will. It is about beingin-the-world and dwelling on earth as a part of it. According to this paper, for a further understanding of architectural thinking, space, and production, and the changing paradigms of architecture in the computational era, Heidegger’s concept of gelassenheit both provides a basis and surprisingly encounters us as a recent and future architectural condition.