Quantum architecture: An indeterministic and interactive computational design system

Abstract

The evolution of computational design technique from mere substitution of hand drawing to customised design algorithms exhibiting a certain degree of intelligence, naturally opens up a new research frontier that studies the relationship between designers and customized design algorithms. Most of current customised architecture design algorithm adopts a deterministic paradigm to raise their design questions, that is to say, given the explicit rules and parameters, only one solution is allowed at each discrete computation step. Due to this deterministic nature, an intuitive and efficient communication between design algorithm and designer is hard to achieve, as there is almost no space for designer to step into the running generative process. This lack of progressive communication channels and the inefficiency of translating perceptual judgment into computer language directly results in the unconscious rejection of non-parameterisable design factors like intuition, aesthetic judgment and associational reasoning that are essential to any design activity. This paper introduces the quantum design paradigm as alternative computation paradigm for constructing an interactive and intuitive design system. An algorithm prototype, probability field, will be introduced to illustrate the logic and possible application of the proposed quantum design paradigm. ©2010, Association for Research in Computer-Aided Architectural Research in Asia (CAADRIA).