A.2 Design Computation
‘SCRIPTED, ITERATIVE, AND INDEXICAL ARCHITECTURE’6
Design computing can be defined as a thriving new form of art that based on cutting-edge technologies. With the popularising of computers, which has become an indispensable machine in our daily life, the fusion of art and computer science just naturally happened. It is similar to the art and craft movement, but in a more contemporary context and with more up-to-date media. Digitalising design tools and theories not only contributes to the emergence of unprecedented forms and expressions in numerous realms of art, but also leads to innovations in the design process. Both technical capacities and design concepts are crucial factors to the rethinking and reforming of traditional design processes and practices. Computer, as a powerful design tool, is able to understand, translate, analysis and even visualise inputs of design intents into various forms of outputs highly effectively. Computers seem to be intelligent for the fact that it can do extremely complex calculations and multitasking in a way and speed that human brains are not capable of. Incorporating digital tools allows considerably more achievable geometrical forms and better preciseness in details, both virtually in design process and physically in fabrication. It provides us with new ways to envision a design proposal and the future possibilities of its performance in different environmental conditions. Moreover, computation along with Internet applied in design also helps to destruct barriers of communication, spread information and ideas globally. There is growing discussion on the shifting of roles computer is playing in design process. Computer was initially introduced into design realm simply as a tool of digitalising preconceived design concept, which described as the term ‘computerisation’. But the trend seems to be turing the opposite, as more designers are trying to transfer more authority to computer, let computers analysis information and develop the design concept via parametric algorithms the wrote. This is described as ‘computation’. However it should be clarified that no matter how ‘clever’ they seem to be and how much they participated in the design process, computer is still a machine, which cannot be initiated without an input and cannot work without an instruction. It is still the designers behind the computers that ultimately controls. 6 A. Ali and C. A. Brebbia, Digital Architecture And Construction (Sydney: University of Technology) p. 51- 54. 14