THE SPACE OF PEOPLE IN COMPUTATION

摘要

In his inaugural lecture at the University of Leipzig in 1893, art historian August Schmarsow redefined architecture as a spatial art. This represented a major break from the then dominant architectural thought; since the Renaissance, architecture had almost solely been discussed in terms of style or construction. When computation was introduced to architecture some 60 years later, its potential to provide new representations of processes and forms of occupation were quickly understood, as presented by Christopher Alexander, as a theoretical framework to systemic design processes, or Archigram's speculations on new spatial types. Alas, its more obvious powers to crunch big data, optimise explicit parametric problems and accelerate existing procedures have sidelined most developments that attempt to deal with new representations of space and use. Major contractors such as developers or public planning bodies reinforce this trend by demanding building information modelling (BIM) as standard (reducing the choice of tools to generally two software providers), while parametricism is nowadays perceived as state-of-the-art computation. Both serve the purpose of automating traditional professional deliverables.