Dynamic generative systems: Simple parametric strategies for complex architectural objects and spaces

Abstract

In recent decades, international architecture has used complex geometric systems and experimented widely with building form in an attempt to integrate new concepts and technological tools into spatial exploration. These design processes put forward non-linear multiplicity as an alternative to traditional design methods. The forms and spaces conceived arise out of design approaches whose results are more characteristic of the process itself than of the adoption of compositional categories (order, type, element) or functional-rational categories (system, typology, structure). Parametric design is an algorithmic mathematical technique that enables the user to alter determined characteristics of the model at any point in the process without having to recalculate other characteristics that would be affected by such changes. Dynamic generative systems are a vehicle for thought that can be modified and interrelated over time. Their principles are closer to dynamic performance, contextual adaptability and interface and open processes than to the definition of simple finished objects.