Week 1

Mario Carpo forebodes the ever present stagnation among the architectural profession to a computational design driven practice. Critiquing the financial and egotistical driven want for individual project authorship, where practice is devoid of revolution due to a repression of ideas and technique. “Yet individual authorship has long been such an essential aspect of modern architecture that one can easily understand the mixed feelings of the design professions vis-à-vis a techno-social development that many feel might threaten or diminish the architect’s traditional authorial role.” He laments the days where architects were the pioneers of the digital frontier from Gaudi to Gehry there seems to be a pause since the late 90’s where BIM has become the computation that we can all settle for.

By comparison, Jean-Louis Cohen’s schizophrenic approach to computational design is left unresolved. Driven by the beauties of craft, Cohen forms a critical view towards revolution and architecture, struggling with the established mass; wether that be social hierarchy or city structure, industry or the family. The use of mechanical imagery and metaphor conveys the disjointed, compartmentalised structures of working and family life “What becomes of the family in these conditions?”…”The machine we live in is an old crate of a plane riddled with tuberculosis.” A shift is ever-present in the text where by the downfalls of industry upon society are judged favourably as tools that give humanity the ability to rectify the now. By extension we can stretch these tools quite whimsically, as an ever expanded palate to which a modern and future designer can draw upon to further design. And yes I do speak towards that dropdown menu that is ever fashionable on the software runway. Tools are the new black, and where would we be without them!

Cohen clearly highlights the need for open-source design and toolset to enable a better form of architecture and general productivity, Carpo similarly wishes for a mass migration towards collaborative design through computation, while clearly defining the line between BIM and Computational design as a true form of collaboration. However the root of both essays are very general and clear, ‘there is still more to go’ like computers, both writers realise that technology and humanity is constantly evolving and to never settle for what is the current, or society will bare the shortcomings.