GENERATIVE PROCESSES IN ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN
ing to, and affecting, external meaning. This tendency is naturally related to a critical non-instrumental agency within contemporary digital design.
One commonality that certainly spans all of these practices is a profound interest in
advancing the discipline of architecture by looking beyond it. In order to develop ap-
propriate techniques a trans-disciplinary focus is always assumed linking architectural activities to fields and topics unfamiliar to a standard practice. Generative architecture utilizes computer scientific abstractions from biological morphogenetic processes and
other natural phenomena; material digital practices are, as already mentioned, seen to
reproduce material behaviour by means of biomimetic principles, but naturally also informed by material sciences in general; and recent trends in realization look amongst
others towards the aerospace and automobile industry for the development of complex information models. The Cultural reflexive trajectory can be seen as an attempt to at-
tach a broader significance and meaning precisely by means of the interdisciplinary within the interdisciplinary. A good example is Greg Lynn’s ‘Animate Form’ in which techniques borrowed from 3D animation software, combined with the mathematics
of topology and a Deleuzian philosophy challenges the concepts of stasis and permanence in architectural culture (Lynn 1999).
From the perspective of this field of tendencies, I will in the following direct attention
to the specific aspects within these tendencies that has significance for the project. My
method in doing so will be to exemplify concrete discourses followed by architects or theoreticians operating in relation to these. Consequently designating a more specific
context to which I seek to contribute. The examples are therefore not intended to describe tendencies exhaustively, but to define points of importance within each. In this I assume a certain perspective, in that a necessity exists to accentuate that the present
project is placed in proximity of the generative tendency sketched out above. Conse-
quently, this means that I observe and delimit the other tendencies from this position. The Generative as a Design Approach
The generative will be a recurring theme throughout the rest of the chapter, as it is also
within the thesis as a whole. As such I will add to the context of the generative while discussing the other tendencies as well. With this in mind I will in the following take
the opportunity to assume a broad perspective by which to observe how the generative
can be seen to define a certain procedural approach to design. That is, I choose to look
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