Digital Architectures

Abstract

This paper surveys different approaches in contemporary architectural design in which digital media is used not as a representational tool for visualization but as a generative tool for the derivation of form and its transformation. Such approaches are referred to as digital architectures-the computationally based processes of form origination and transformations. The paper examines the digital generative processes based on concepts such as topological space, motion dynamics, para-metric design and genetic algorithms. It emphasizes the possibilities for the "finding of form," which the emergence of various digitally based generative techniques seem to bring about. 1 Introduction The Information Age, like the Industrial Age before it, is not only challenging what we are designing but also how we design. Technological architectures are being replaced by computational, digital architectures of topological, non-Euclidean geometric space, kinetic and dynamic systems, and genetic algorithms. "Architecture is recasting itself, becoming in part an experimental investigation of topological geometries, partly a computational orchestration of robotic material production and partly a generative, kinematic sculpting of space," argues Peter Zellner in "Hybrid Space" (1999).