Rates of Change: Computation and the Geometry of Material Organization in Architecture

In this paper I discuss the potential of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) as a mathematical device through which to rethink the material organization of architecture in relation to the problem of continuity. Although design software is generally headed towards more and more sophisticated forms of simulation, this paper suggests that the potential for computation in architecture, from the point of view of technique, depends less on its representational capacities and more on its ability to generate geometrical systems of pattern. In this paper I engage the question of geometry’s instrumentality in architecture from the viewpoint of advances in scientific computing, in particular, CFD. The problem of geometry in relation to fluid dynamics raises the issue of media and architecture (the title for this session) in two ways: the media of design techniques and the performative capacities of architecture as a medium of functions and relations. Throughout the discussion, I constantly return to one of the central thematics that haunts architectural history: the problem of geometry as the ideality of form, on the one hand, and as the conceptualized ground of architectural continuity, on the other.

Volume Editors
Marilys R. Nepomechie & Robert Gonzalez

ISBN
0-935502-54-8