Digital Architecture AE 461 course -2013- Digital Design Part(1) Digital Architecture AE 461 course -2013-

Digital Design In the digital design process, designers use overlapping physical and virtual artefacts and tools to arrive at a co-operative design resolution. Within collaborative design, these artefacts take on an additional role. As embodiments of design ideas and actions, they become media for communication. Digital design is the intersection and integration of digital technology within the design process. Design media that promoted the non-standard, the antithesis of typologically based normative knowledge, were now being promoted as a major characteristic of digital design. Digital Architecture AE 461 course -2013-

Digital Design The term digital design system, according to our definition implies the digital integration of attributes related to morphology + structure + behaviour of certain morphological-geometric classes of material form. Digital design is defined by design methods that are driven by an occupation with computability, the characterisation of digital design relay on the form of design thinking rather the form of presentation. Digital Architecture AE 461 course -2013-

The history of digital design -During the 1950s (The Situationist city) During the 1950s cybernetic ideas were discussed at the occasional meetings of the Independent Group at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. Also in mainland Europe the disaster of the war provoked some Leftist philosophers and artists to search for socialist Utopias conditioned by personal perception and a kind of playful transcription of architectural space. The Situationists, as they called themselves, created project called New Babylon, whose architect was the artist. Digital Architecture AE 461 course -2013-

The History of Digital Design Furthermore it was an attempt to create a Situationist city. Its design, which commenced in 1957 and ended in 1973, dealt with ambiences and creative play. Essentially the Situationist city occasionally evoked notions of cybernetics and its implied responsiveness as a technological support for his Utopian ideas. Digital Architecture AE 461 course -2013-

The History of Digital Design During the 1960s The founding pioneers of cybernetics had little or no simultaneous affect on the production of architecture. However, during the early 1960s a second generation of cyberneticists especially Gordon Pask began to think of architectural design and its numerous interrelations as a cybernetic system. Digital Architecture AE 461 course -2013-

The History of Digital Design During the 1960s In 1963 Gordon Pask was asked to consult on cybernetic systems in relation to a visionary architecture proposal called Fun Palace, an amusement park for education and play in London's depressed Lea Valley. It was huge, with a footprint of 8 hectares (20 acres), and its architect was Cedric Price. Price designed every system element and process in Fun Palace with time and technology based durations, ideas that are also of much importance to our contemporary digital architectural condition as Fun Palace was a milestone in architectural history. It is a shame that it was never built. Digital Architecture AE 461 course -2013-

The History of Digital Design In 1970s In 1970, the architect Nicholas Negroponte published his team's researches into the creation of such a computational system at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology under the title The Architecture Machine,the idea of a machine of this kind has still not been fully realized, but it is fundamentally about conversation, self-reflection and empathy, all difficult notions belong to the binary world of computer programming. Digital Architecture AE 461 course -2013-

The History of Digital Design In 1970s Price's influential involvement with the field of digital architecture was to manifest itself in another project: Generator, Instigated for the Gilman Paper Company during 1979 on a site in Florida. Digital Architecture AE 461 course -2013-

The History of Digital Design In 1970s Generator consisted of simple 4 by 4 metre (13 by 13 foot) structural cubes, each capable of having its sides bottom and top in filled with a range of panel options. What is remarkable about the proposal is its computational software and its programming intention which was developed by John and Julia Frazer (who were influenced by Pask's cybernetic ideas). As, each cube had embedded chips which told the computer where and in what orientation it was; the computer could then instruct a series of robotic cranes to relocate cubes and built enclosures to meet user‘s demands. Digital Architecture AE 461 course -2013-

The History of Digital Design In 1970s While this in itself was visionary enough, Generator was spatially proactive. If its configuration had not recently been changed, it would dream up new spatial arrangements itself. So it had a sense of its own archaeology. Generator was another critical landmark on architecture but definite progress towards embracing the digital. (Spiller, 2008) Digital Architecture AE 461 course -2013-