Computer Aided Architectural Design
1 month ago(via Bruce Sterling’s Beyond the Beyond blog)
Recently, Bruce Sterling featured Voxopolis (below) on his blog. The project extends Conway’s Game of Life into the 3rd dimension in order to evolve a city design. It is one of six presented in the Helvepolis – Urban Design in Vitro! exhibition, showcasing the work of students at ETH in Zurick, studying Masters of Architectural Studies in Computer Aided Architectural Design:
voxopolis from Dino Rossi on Vimeo.
The ETH Masters program looks at “the use of current information technologies as an augmentation of concepts of architecture. [Exploring] new techniques and methods for design that incorporate scripting and programming languages.” As my interest in the use of computer technology in architecture lie in the areas of understanding inhabitants’ spatial practices to inform design, better engineering, and architectural modeling, I am generally quite cynical towards CAAD projects that look cool, but don’t serve actual human bodies. I have given some personal commentary to a few of the CAAD projects. I’d be curious to hear your views.
Voxopolis(above)
As pointed out, the resulting city looks “kind of weird and implausible”, but beyond looks this project upsets me in it’s approach to architecture. Where is the human body in the simulation? The scales and sizes of the blocks are pre-defined, and there is no interaction between the game rules and the rules of human habitation and scale.
The evolution does not rely on any sort of heuristics (guides to improvement), apart from the abstract rules of the Game of Life, so the evolution is purely a result of these. Also, it looks likely that the street configuration that the game is run on has been set up initially, according to the experimenter’s whim.
Attractive City
AttractiveCity – an interactive City generator from stefanie sixt on Vimeo.
It’s totally abstracted from the experience of being in the city. A city can look fantastic from 10,000 ft above, but how does that help peoples street-level lives?
Himmelstad
Himmelstadt-CAAD ETH from Hua Hao on Vimeo.
Another evolutionary system. This one involves some interaction with a user, who seems to select which designs will survive on the basis of looks. It is a funny approach to an evolutionary system, when you can prune off genes to make it look more like a conventional city and less like an orgy of algae. In all of these, the heuristics/target properties should be explicitly stated. For me, coming up with something cool looking is not enough.
Sandy City
Processing City – Sandy City (HD version) from mjchen on Vimeo.
I really like this project; they are not trying to throw a magical evolutionary algorithm at the problem, and there is no attempt to pretend the choice of archetypes are god-given.
Also, it is so refreshing to see human-eye-views of the created cities, as the viewer moves realistically through the space. Even more refreshing is the attention to sound design, as an important aspect of the architectural experience.
About Play
The computer isn’t a magic box. Just because the computer does something – something emergent – doesn’t mean that the conditions of emergence will be in any way productive of anything useful.
From (collective) experience, some architects seem to treat the CAD process this way. Imagine having a magic wand that you waved at stuff to transform it into something altogether weird-looking and different. We wouldn’t wave it around willy-nilly and put the resulting blob to use as a building, although admittedly the aesthetics of the thing would be exciting and interesting, and might get you some kudos.
I truly believe that the element of unrestricted play can be extremely, creatively productive in most endeavors, architecture included. I also recognize that these projects can be thought of as playful breaks from traditional design. My concern, however, is the assumption of the equation
something + computers = better something
in any situation.
But please let me know if you disagree; I have colleagues who suggest that a computer-based generation of options, coupled with considered selection, is a good design approach.
Edit: This discussion has been posted on Bruce Sterling’s Beyond the Beyond blog as “Generating Cities”, and responded to at “The Authors of Voxopolis speak”. My continued response is in the comments below.
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As one of the three authors of Voxopolis, I’d like to respond to your comments. While we may not even disagree with you completely, we do object to a rash judgment of the projects without understanding the context or the intentions of the authors– especially given that context seems to matter to you. These projects were short exercises for people that had never programmed before. Furthermore, these are abstract experiments not so much to be taken literally as to be gleaned for potential catalysts to deeper research.
That aside, we do have an opinion about computational design and we are far from enamored wide-eyed followers. In fact, we recently wrote a paper abstract reflecting precisely on the shortcomings and potentials of such technology. For us, it holds potential as a tool that augments decision-making processes in design. In a future, more advanced, version the parametric controls would allow for iterative testing on simulated time and therefore allow designers to test ideas before implementation. This means they can begin to integrate performance requirements for ecological, social, infrastructural as well as formal aspects of design. For us, parametric tools are not recipes for automatic cities nor do they absolve architects from dealing with all the exigencies that they normally face. The parameters are just a framework, a set of variables that still need to be defined and still have to be given form. Computation is a powerful tool, but only when understood properly. And we would say that applies to both those who unquestioningly use it as well as to those who categorically dismiss it.
We do not try to make excuses for what we do but we also think that categorical dismissals often close doors on opportunities and innovations that may be discovered in more open engagements. However, we appreciate your invitation to comment and we do think it is a valuable topic for discussion.
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Thank you for your feedback on my commentary, and positive engagement. I’m keen to read your paper on the potentials and dangers of digital technology in design. Maybe you could post the details?
First, I’d like to clear up any confusion over my attitude to digital technology; my research heavily involves the use of emergent digital technologies, and I have a CompSci background. I do feel though that, having been enamoured by psuedo-3D online worlds and the early days of the web, after nearly twenty years some of the lustre of the “hi-tech” has faded for me. In particular, I’d like to point out that I have no problems with Parametric systems, just some concerns around the use of generative computer processes.
Much of your response is defending the use of parametric systems. For the casual reader, parametric tools allow modelling of the complex relationships between disparate parameters of a system. Their use involves the formalising of parameters being considered in design, and allows you to weigh up and test different configurations.
This isn’t necessarily the opposite of Generative; for example an evolutionary algorithm could run through thousands of generations of building, with consideration of the constraints and relations between parameters and effectively solve it for the dips in cost-vs-benefit for parameters such as (as you suggest) “ecological, social, infrastructural”.
However, generative systems are far from transparent. The generative system for Voxopolis did not seem to involve any interplay of parameters.
I understand that these videos are the result of experimentation, and I really think that the room to play should be respected as a serious necessity of creativity. My concerns are not exclusive to the use of digital technology in architectural design – I wasn’t casting judgement on the basis of technical mastery, I don’t think it’s relevant that this is work by new programmers. At issue for me was the nature of the play. As far as I see it this is play in the dual domains of scripting languages, and urban design, which excluded consideration of the body/human/social. It’s my personal feeling that these should be fundamental/inseparable to urban design.
I think that – intended or otherwise – those who watched your video (circulated outside of its original context) were presented with an implicit narrative of emerging urban design approaches. As you say, it was an experiment, and these flashes of experimentation, as they pull across into popular media, have a way of piquing the imagination and defining the cutting edge in peoples minds. The video certainly wasn’t ironic, and having gone back to source and read around the CAAD course pages I did not see anything which challenged my initial impression of the video’s intent. This might be a lesson to us all on the power of sound/video bites!