Design, architectural or otherwise, is the an involved process that integrates social and environmental conditions, as well as the designer’s subjective preferences into a set of rules or parameters that guide the formal qualities of the product. Whether or not the design is processed digitally, it is always subordinate to this set of rules, but the recent developments in digital design have allowed these rules to be more than simple problem-solving decisions. If successfully executed, architect’s digital parameters can now theoretically generate spatial experiences and intangible qualities that architecture strives to achieve.
It is important to note that digital software is intended to be used not to design but to help expand the tools architects can use to design. It is also not appropriate for all aspects or kinds of design. In this reading, Therese Tierney focuses only on the generation of form. In digital design, the element that helps generate form is called the solution field, a set of parametric equations that mathematically alter and manipulate form at the will of the designer. The results of these manipulations are most significant when parameters overlap and intersect, producing random occurrences that thereby generate even more parameters, forcing the form to evolve. This process is therefore referred to as evolutionary design.
In evolutionary design, software helps the designer see how parametric manipulations effect form, but first the architect must choose how parameters are set. The tasks that go into this process include defining problems that must be solved architecturally, determining the criteria of how solutions are chosen, and defining rules/parameters regarding form generation. Then, using the software, designers can develop and evaluate models that are produced virtually. The next step using digital technology is to take the 3d forms and animate them across time using 4d modeling.
With regard to designing both form and temporal architecture, Therese Tierney argues that architectural design is inherently virtual, and computer technologies have illustrated that condition. Virtuality is that which is created by actuality, but it also has real existence by the fact that it creates affects. Even before the modern idea of the virtual existed, virtuality always existed in the desire to design experience that is expressive which is what makes architectural design greater than the sum of its parts. Before the Renaissance, the virtual was conceptualized as varied and complex phenomena and cognitive perceptions of space/time. Later on, Einstein’s relativity again raised the question of what was not yet known as the virtual, by claiming that space/time is relative and manipulatible based on the individual and his experience in it relative to its actuality. In 2002, Brian Massumi supposed a new understanding of organic systems that are linked in a kind of virtual matrix. Virtuality as a parametric guide of architecture exists as its own parameter, but also generates new ones in an evolutionary manner.
Because the virtual is an abstract and not a concrete quality, designing in the virtual affords even more opportunity for manipulation than more concretely-defined parameters. It refers to but is not limited to generation of form. Instead, designing within virtual parameters is a way of kind of closing the gap between subjective design decisions and the systematic rules that guide design otherwise.
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