Conceptual Content of Digital Design

Abstract

Concepts related to digital architecture have begun to occupy a central role in current architectural discourse. Design concepts that have been the conceptual content of this discourse are now becoming integrated into the general architectural discourse. The research reports on this process of the emergence, migration, and crystallization of a new conceptual structure over the past decade under the infl uence of digital design and its emerging conceptual structure. The research presented in this paper examines the emergence of new ideas in architectural thinking that are related to digital architecture since 1990 until today. In order to demonstrate this shift, we have selected a representative architectural building type that is strongly and directly infl uenced by the conceptual content of the cultural discourse in architecture. A museum type was selected to represent features of the expression that refl ects the changes and evolution of conceptual structures that underlie digital design. The research methodology is based on a method known as “content analysis”. Content analysis in our research was defi ned as including textual material in books, book chapters, essays, articles, and historical documents. A new approach for Design Content Analysis was accomplished employing the ICF analytical framework. In order to conduct a content analysis the text was coded and was broken down into categories on a variety of theoretical design themes. Our fi ndings demonstrate that certain expressions related to digital technology have moved up from a low level descriptive function to a signifi cant conceptual role in formulating the design content of architectural design. In our paper we describe the research, methodology fi ndings and contribution to the defi nition of the conceptual content of contemporary architectural discourse on digital architecture.