Introduction: Generative Architecture: Making a Critical Practice

摘要

A comprehensive history of generative architecture has yet to be written, but many of the featured designers and architects in this issue of a+u have made substantial contributions to its more recent history over the last 20 years. Has a critical project around generative architecture emerged? In his book, The Alphabet and the Algorithm, Mario Carpo unfolds how digital technology has altered the role of authorship in architecture and, in turn, how this has opened up existing notation systems -our tools for drawing - through parametric functions and the possibility of variability. As Carpo points out, the pioneering thinkers at the onset of digital architecture in the 1990s focused primarily upon variation as afforded through simple manipulations of parametric functions and animation software. One of the more interesting early practices at the forefront of form and algorithm and computer-aided manufacturing was led by structural engineer and pioneer, Cecil Balmond and his Advanced Geometry Group (AGU) at Arup in London, U.K. Through collaborations with architects such as Toyo I to, the AGL broke new ground in the integration of complex geometries generated through sophisticated scripts and digital tools with new trajectories in digital fabrication, construction logics, and advanced engineering. For a number of years at the turn of the 21st century in schools of architecture and emerging practices, digital techniques took over in favor of developing digital dexterity and a facility with the tools, thus overriding any coherent critical project and discourse around computational design and digital architecture. Perhaps this investment of time and technological navel-gazing was absolutely essential to progress. However, there were costs. I think about economist, architect, designer, and writer Bernard Cache, who very purposefully "left the conversation because he was so frustrated by where early innovators in digital fabrication took things. What happened?