Short description:

This book delves into the power relations between computational practices, technology infrastructures, knowledge, and their reproductions of bias in design, at multiple scales. It provides critical perspectives and insights on how computation intersects with architecture, design, the built environment, and society.

Long description:

This book delves into the power relations between computational practices, technology infrastructures, knowledge, and their reproductions of bias in design at multiple scales. It provides critical perspectives and insights on how computation intersects with architecture, design, the built environment, and society.

Computational practices, tools and methods in design, architecture, and the built environment, frequently offer technocentric solutions to design problems. Portrayed as mere tools that are "neutral" and "optimized", these technological infrastructures mask social, political, and environmental entanglements involved in their creation and expansion as well as the power of software monopolies and technology providers.

The six contributions to this volume provide critical perspectives and insights on how computation intersects with architecture, design, the built environment, and society. The chapters cover diverse topics such as data practices for design simulations, machine learning (ML) and digital humanities methods for digital heritage, a computationally-aided exploration of ideologies of digital architecture, embodied and craft practice for digital fabrication, feminist hacking practices challenging heteronormative values in digital urban design, and post-disciplinary pedagogies for computational design.

The book will be of interest to researchers, students and practitioners in the fields of architecture, built environment, computational design, science and technology studies, and sociology. The chapters in this book were originally published in Digital Creativity.

Table of Contents:

Introduction: Critical computational relations in design, architecture and the built environment 1. Techno-optimism and optimization in media architecture practice and theory 2. Form data as a resource in architectural analysis: an architectural distant reading of wooden churches from the Carpathian Mountain regions of Eastern Europe 3. Tracing (in)visibilising practices: engaging with simulations for architecture and spatial planning 4. Digital tufting bee: expanding computational design boundaries through collective material practice and social play 5. We build this city on rocks and (feminist) code: hacking corporate computational designs of cities to come 6. Cultivating the critical imagination: post-disciplinary pedagogy in a computational design laboratory