Introduction

Sébastien BOURBONNAIS

Université Laval, Quebec, Canada and Asynth SAS, Lyon, France

I.1. The instruments of architectural design

Digital technologies have undeniably introduced new modalities into architectural design practice. The changes have been multiform, of varying degrees and have occurred progressively according to the rate of appropriation to each architect’s own sensibility. Moreover, it is difficult to consider the digital transition as a homogeneous and coherent whole, since each of the practices has been modified singularly according to the contexts that guide their mutations. It would then be more appropriate to talk about trends that develop, branch out, disperse or even fade away, according to time and context, and sometimes reappear, slightly modified, posing similar questions from another point of view and armed with new tools (both technical and conceptual). In light of the mutations that have occupied practices over the last 30 years, it cannot be denied that these design instruments have introduced new potentialities for projects, or at least modified them in certain aspects. However, the set of elements that are at the origin of these transformations, which have guided and oriented them to give them their present form, obviously cannot be determined clearly. There are in fact a number of factors involved in this appropriation of digital technologies by architects, factors which, moreover, have been intertwined in such a way that it is impossible to dissociate them in order to examine them separately. In fact, the potentialities of these technologies, governed by internal functioning logics, are almost never found in the abstract state, but are always engaged with singular practices that are already more or less defined, and themselves governed by architectural intentions, preoccupations and conceptions that must be understood as a whole. In addition to this already complex intertwining, there are other determinations that exceed the individual practices and are inscribed in the spirit of the times.

It is through these processes of appropriation that different behaviors have been adopted in relation to the types of software used, with certain forms of knowledge and know-how, whose coherence is acquired in the very activity of design, thus being prioritized. Architect-designers must be able to adjust, or even set up their instruments to their ways of doing things, knowing that these are or will be modified in turn by the instruments themselves, by their real as well as fantasized potential. It is thanks to this permanent back and forth that technologies are, little by little, perennially introduced into project practices and are managing to transform the sensibilities of architects. It is in this sense that new normativities are set up and take shape as practices change. These processes of singular appropriation, like those for collective appropriation, are being established thanks to the constitution of suitable new environments for these innovative practices which, especially, enable these to make sense by developing modes of expression coherent with the employed technologies.

The starting point of this discussion on instruments is not to consider them as simple tools, external to the practice of architects, but, on the contrary, to see them as instruments which, through their capacity for structuring, bring about transformations in the architect’s design methods. Digital technologies would not, in any case, be a simple means to reach an autonomous end, pure or detached from any technicality. Rather, we affirm that it is through the act itself, through experimentation with instruments, that their different potentialities are deployed and consolidated. It is also through these repeated, revised and stabilized experiments that practices are transformed. This is not so much a wish as an observation, which, as such, has been identified in the different practices presented in this book.

Our objective is to focus on those moments where, from singular practices, instruments affect, at different levels, thought processes around design and representation. We will see that the computer has introduced new relationships between humans and technologies and has enabled new sensibilities to emerge. More specifically, with regard to project practices, instruments have established new relationships between theory and practice, leading architects to search for concepts or objects capable of supporting, clarifying and propelling the experiments they were carrying out with these emerging technologies. We will also see that the adoption of certain instruments has enabled a reconfiguration of practices, from top to bottom, by shifting the focus of attention away from design. Indeed, while the drawing, or more broadly the notation regime established since the Renaissance (Carpo 2011), is authoritative in design decisions, certain data-driven software and platforms have introduced a reversal of perspective, where attention is no longer focused solely on the drawing, the geometric projection, but on the data that enables it to be generated. This shift also raises the question of what to do with this mode of expression, which is strongly rooted in architectural culture – drawing in particular – if it is no longer the “object” of design. These are the kinds of problems we wanted to address and develop in this book devoted to design and representation instruments.

I.2. Terminology choices

It remains astonishing that despite the years, digital technology, and its technological equipment and software have not found a flagship concept. After a few unsuccessful explorations, the architectural community has turned, in common language at least and in English in particular, to the notion of a “tool”. Software, for many, is called a digital tool. However, the notion of a tool seems somewhat incongruous when examining this complex technological equipment: this is no longer a simple hammer. It is true, however, that notions, far from being fixed once and for all, have the capacity to transform and expand in order to capture a reality that is constantly developing. Nevertheless, because of the practices we wish to put forward, we have chosen the notion of “instrument”, which, at first glance, seems more appropriate, even if, here again, it remains necessary to renew this notion.

This choice is first based on the distinction between “tool” and “instrument” established by the philosopher of techniques, Gilbert Simondon:

[…] if by tool one understands the technical object enabling one to prolong and arm the body in order to accomplish a gesture, and by instrument the technical object that enables one to prolong and adapt the body in order to achieve better perception; the instrument is a tool of perception (Simondon 2017, p. 130).

If the tool refers to the action, we could say that many programs focus on extending the action of the drawing hand, but, as will be shown in more than one chapter, gestures are no longer simply improved, or “armed”; they are now of a different nature. The senso-motor correspondence between the drawing and the hand is erased to the detriment of a decentered and analytical perception. Displacement takes place in the very actions of projecting, designing and even representing. The “algorithm, line and eye” configuration proposes a new arrangement than the one traditionally established between the hand, line and eye. It is no longer the hand that draws the line, but the algorithm that generates an interaction proposing a variety of forms. It is the numerous action and feedback operations that are externalized in software, thus obliging a sensibility also externalized in mediation. It is for this reason that we wanted to use the notion of “instrument”: to underline the radical transformation of gestures and place emphasis on what is perceived via the digital instrument. Indeed, these different instruments have the capacity to shift points of view, offering new ways of understanding the objects of design as much as their generative processes.

We will develop the “enlargements” that we wish to bring to the instrument notion, but let us take a few moments to examine some of the notions that may have been appropriate to grasp the technological reality of contemporary architectural practices. Let us start with the notion of a technical object, developed by Simondon (2017), that was moreover possible to position within the distinction established between “tool” and “instrument”. It is important to remember that the philosopher elaborated this expression in opposition to other types of object, principally works of art, for which culture acknowledges a superior value in them, whereas technical objects are mainly considered as simple utensils. This work of technique revalorization, through an awareness of the sense of its objects, shifted the attention specifically onto the objects themselves and their processes of concretization. This revalorization included, among other things, a displacement, which consisted not only of concentrating on their usage value – how are they useful? – but on placing the emphasis on their internal functioning and relationship/coupling/association with their “milieu”. In spite of the richness of this position, this notion remains strongly attached to the objects studied by the philosopher (diode, triode, telephone, Guimbal’s machine and so on) and consequently bears little...