2. Non-linearity and indeterminacy

By now, it will be evident that digital technologies have been transformative in the design process of architecture and present a number of new paradigms for generating and fabricating creative ideas. Core to these changes in the behaviour and approach of the designer using such technologies are the notions of ‘indeterminancy’ and ‘non-linearity’. In this book’s first section, we encountered the concept of ‘emergence’ through the process of morphogenesis, and how this characteristic is being embraced by some designers seeking to develop sophisticated, though not necessarily predictable, results. Because of the willing acceptance by these designers of this unknown nature and its respective outcomes, exciting, unforeseeable and novel concept developments become manifest. The determinism previously endemic in traditional design methods has, through engagement with digital technologies, given way to a ‘release’ analogous to the creative mental leaps a designer experiences. However, this does not presage a completely random and uncontrollable approach. Instead, what is being developed may be referred to as ‘precise indeterminancy’. Seemingly contradictory, this term describes a design process that allows a generative system to run independently but within clearly defined rules or constraints specified by the designer via the information entered into the system. As a direct result of this type of system, the designer’s behaviour shifts from ‘maker’ to ‘editor’ as preferences are used to decide which emergent forms are appropriate in relation to the desired technical criteria. If this sounds disconnected and clinical, then we might consider Branko Kolarevic’s description: ‘The generative role of new digital techniques is accomplished through the designer’s simultaneous interpretation and manipulation of a computational construct in a complex discourse that is continuously reconstituting itself – a “self-reflexive” discourse in which graphics actively shape the designer’s thinking process.’21

Digital technologies therefore provide dynamic, critical and analytical modes of inquiry rather than open-ended, ill-defined and simply explorative tools and techniques. The process of form finding intrinsic to this approach reflects the inherently non-linear nature of such design systems as they search through multiple variations. Such methods are not cumulative in the conventional sense, nor are they easily discernible through their various components since they are directed by a complex set of relations and mutual dependencies.

Digital making does not merely provide an expanded ‘toolkit’ for architects, but may represent a complete methodological approach to practice. The highly innovative, engaging projects by Studio Gang Architects, such as their design for South Pond at Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago, demonstrate the capability of a digital approach and its application. Inspired by tortoise shells, the pavilion has a laminated structure of prefabricated, bentwood members and a series of interconnected fibreglass pods that provide surface curvature.