ESR5 – Alternate Means to Communicate Measure

AUTHOR: Dimitrie A. Stefanescu (@idid)

Digital design tools are now undergoing a transition of application scope, expanding beyond their initial technical domains and leveraging the flexibility of the digital medium.

Digital means of communication are enabling the self-organisation of new cultures as well as decision-making structures revolving around the possibilities inherent to the digital realm. Design tools are slowly catching up – to a certain extent – by building upon the flexibility of parametric design in order to improve the communication channels of the design process, thus signalling the achievement of a certain “digital maturity” of the architectural design community. Unfortunately, the current state of collaborative design software is catering exclusively to the needs of the technical stakeholders involved in the design and building process, namely architects, engineers and builders.

In our contemporary world, where social change and action is not only supported but triggered by digital communication tools, the design disciplines stand to lose credibility if they will not take initiative and tap into the existing expectations of collaboration that today’s society now harbours.

Digital parametric models can go beyond aesthetic and technical exploration: they can embody a narrative and subsequently be the base of collaborative decision making. The flexibility of computational design can and should be used outside the architectural office and its technical collaborators.

(Excerpt from AAE2016 Paper)