Program Matters : From Drawing to Code

Sammanfattning: Whether on paper, on site or mediating between both, means for reading and writing geometry have been central to architecture: the use of compasses and rulers, strings, pins, stakes or plumb-lines enabled the analysis and reproduction of congruent figures on different surfaces since antiquity, and from the renaissance onwards, the consistent planar representation of three-dimensional shapes by means of projective geometry. Tacitly through practice, or explicitly encoded in classical geometry, the operational syntaxes of drawing instruments, real or imaginary, have determined the geometric literacies regulating the production and instruction of architecture. But making marks on the surfaces of paper, stone or the ground has recently given way to the fundamentally different sequential operations of computers as the material basis of architectural inscription. Practices which have dominated architecture since antiquity make little sense in its current reading and writing systems. This thesis examines technologies of digital inscription in a search for literacies equivalent to those of drawn geometry. It particularly looks at programming as a form of notation in close correspondence with its material basis as a technology, and its effects on architecture. It includes prototypes and experiments, graphics, algorithms and software, together with their descriptions and theoretical analyses. While the artefacts and texts respond to the different forms, styles, interests and objectives specific to the fields and contexts in which they have originated, their fundamental purpose is always to critique and propose ways of writing and reading architecture through programming, the rationale of the research and practice they stem from.