Collegial Computation - Processing Architectural Form

This research thesis is an architectural inquiry into how scripting techniques can be used within the conceptual stage of architectural design by architects, students and lay-people as a method to generate and create architectural form. The intention is to create generative procedural programs using Processing, that promote shared agency throughout the design process as a whole. This agency looks at creating an engaging ‘conversation’ between the user and computer, allowing the computer to have an equal share in the design process. By programming a range of varying design tests that experiment with conceptual form finding and massing studies, this research aims to experiment with agency through the development of procedural design processes. Together these act as a vehicle to activate the research question, ‘how can we use scripting techniques within the conceptual design stages of architectural design to generate and create architectural form?’. The results of this research, while provocative, will contribute to understanding how architectural form produced through scripting techniques influences the design outputs, and design process as a whole. The term ‘generative’ is used in this context to define the iterative design process; which involves a program that generates outputs, which meet certain constraints, from a series of input variables, ranges and distributions. This process allows the designer to fine tune the desired region by selecting specific outputs or changing the inputs. Research and discovery through design was used to develop the final generative programs which interpret architectural form. The results show that designing with a digital ‘partner’, and the sharing of design agency throughout the design process; can generate conceptual architectural form from infrequently investigated computational design methods.