DOI: 10.5176/2251-3701_2.1.52
Authors: Yan Gao and Yunsheng Su
Abstract:
Computation has become a strong force to push the boundary in architectural design. It is moving from the experimental lab to the mainstream lobby. It has been celebrated most for its power of processing a large number of data and control complex form for final constructions, whereas it is also criticized by many from the established generation due to its little contribution to the architectural concepts considering social, cultural, political and economic dimensions beyond architectural autonomy in formation.
In my view, computation is a new kind of soil nourishes architectural intentions and operations. Computation in architectural design shouldn’t sacrifice the pursuit of a humanoriented built environment. The technological applications should be evaluated by objectives and motivations in multiple dimensions including the social and cultural interests. The intelligence and creativity owe to the people in front of the computer, but not the computational programs, which in fact, facilitate, empower, validate and extend designers’ visions, instead of only pleasing our eyes. It shouldn’t replace designers’ authorship to computers, but more displace designers’ role from creators to more discoverers.
Based upon our computational research for high density social housing in China (Fig. 1), this article presents the alternative applications of computation which engage with the systematic complexity in reality instead of the formal complexity in vision. The computational housing research challenges the conventional standard design for large scale social housing, and reflects our exploration for innovative, multi-disciplinary, systematic and synthetic design in the new paradigm of computation. It also argues to shift the privilege of cutting edge design techniques from the “High (end) Architecture” to the ordinary architecture. Architectural design should have no discrimination between
Olympic stadiums and social housing, “as they both can be innovative and meaningful through systematical, synthetic and intelligent design” 1 .The design research outputs address sustainable transformation initiated by the residents during thewhole life span of the housing. The human factor (including stakeholders, users, designers and builders) should be even more important in architectural design while computation is pervading.
Keywords:
Mass customization; Indemnificatory housing in China, Synthetic computational design, Sustainable transformation, Abstract architecture, Genetic inheritance, Emerging evolution, Ecological simulation, Innovative design, Intelligent design, Interdisciplinary design, Information modeling, Whole life-span cycle, Building upgrade, Population design strategies, Future uncertainties, Express construction
LinkOut: The University of Hong Kong
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