Critical Computational Relations in Design, Architecture and the Built Environment

Yana Boeva is Junior Research Group Leader and Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institute for Social Sciences and the Cluster of Excellence “Integrative Computational Design and Construction for Architecture (IntCDC)” at the University of Stuttgart, Germany. Her research interests include the critical studies of computation, digital infrastructure, knowledge and skill requirements in the digital transformation, epistemic cultures and practices of design and engineering, and their sociocultural context. Her latest co-edited book Algorithmic Regimes: Methods, Interactions, and Politics (2024) explores how algorithms have become a central technology for producing, circulating, and evaluating knowledge in multiple societal arenas. Vernelle A. A. Noel, Ph.D. is Assistant Professor of Computational Design at Carnegie Mellon University , Pittsburgh, USA, and Director of the Situated Computation + Design Lab. She investigates craft traditions, embodied and technological practices, the built environment, and their societal intersections to build new frameworks and methodologies. She builds novel tools and methods to explore social, cultural, and political aspects of computation and emerging technologies for new reconfigurations of practice, pedagogy, and publics. Her work has been supported by the Graham Foundation, the Mozilla Foundation, and ideas2innovation (i2i), among others. She is a recipient of the DigitalFUTURES Young Award for exceptional research and scholarship in the field of critical computational design, and has a TEDx Talk titled, “The Power of Making: Craft, Computation, and Carnival.”

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