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, parametric 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.