In present day architectural discourse, the mouse, the keyboard, hardware and software have become the main tools in the design process. These tools guide us in conscious and unconscious ways, influencing our way of working and thinking, therefore our design. In recent years, technological developments have started to close the gap between digital design and its realization. For example, kinematic systems like robots and 3d printers have become an intrinsic part of materializing digital and parametric ideas in architecture, making the fabrication of these shapes easier. Nevertheless, becoming a constraint, the geometry you input is the geometry you get.
We want to rethink this new paradigm, by developing and creating tools for invention and conceptualization, rather than for manufacturing only, giving new possibilities of designing a feedback loop.
First on a small scale, by developing generative drawing, sound or phenomena machines tools. As we cannot work with you hands-on on building actual kinetic models, the interface of these tools become crucial. This interface should be designed as a virtual console and should aim at providing us with information to be used as part of the design itself. Architects always used methods of representation to be able to communicate their ideas. These methods always supported but also limited what could be conceived and realized. The virtual console should be already part of represented spatial reality.
The input of the machine will come from sensors live streams of weather stations or hourly climate files, collecting live environmental data which will be re-interpreted, digested, and will become drivers of spatial elements and
“Work and play are words used to describe the same thing under differing conditions.”
Mark Twain