Digital temples: a shape grammar to generate sacred buildings according to Alberti’s theory

摘要

The research presented further is part of the Digital Alberti research project, which aims to determinethe influence of Alberti’s treatise on Architecture, De re aedificatoria, on the Portuguese Renaissancearchitecture, through the use of a computational framework. One of the project tasks entailed thetranslation of the treatise’s textual descriptions concerning the morphological, proportional andalgorithmic principles of the sacred buildings into a shape grammar. Subsequently a computationalmodel was developed, in order to proceed to the derivation of examples of the same language. Thisarticle discusses the use of analytical shape grammars to undertake an architectural analysis, as wellas the fact of the source of this grammar and correspondent architectural language to be a text insteadof a set of buildings and designs. It reviews the methodology to implement the shape grammar anddescribes the several stages of development, following the interpretation of treatise into a consistentset of shape rules, by defining their spatial relations, parameters and conditions. It also reviews theimplementation of this knowledge into a generative parametric computer program through visualprogramming language Grasshopper.