CITA Complex Modelling

Edited by Thomsen, Tamke, Nicholas & Ayres

CITA Complex Modelling investigates the infrastructures of architectural design models. By questioning the tools for integrating information across the expanded digital design chain, the book asks how to support feedback between different scales of design engagement moving from material design, across design, simulation and analysis to specification and fabrication. The book conveys the findings of the Complex Modelling research project a five-year framing project supported by the Independent Research Fund Denmark. Undertaken at CITA, the Centre for Information Technology and Architecture, The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture, Complex Modelling asks how new interdisciplinary methods for adaptive parametrisation, advanced simulation, machine learning and robotic fabrication can be orchestrated within novel workflows that expand the agency of architecture. CITA Complex Modelling privileges the ‘how to’ of research and the maker-based inquisitiveness of design creation and gives insight into the nature and depth of considerations incorporated into the bespoke workflows developed in each project. By foregrounding deeper design-based explanations of the underlying computational and material methods, the book reveals the complex network of processes that merge design agency with analysis, simulation with prediction, parametrisation with open topological modelling and the practices of physical prototyping, fabrication testing and troubleshooting that form the projects.

Edited by Mette Ramsgaard Thomsen, Martin Tamke, Phil Ayres, Paul Nicholas
Riverside Architectural Press
Hardcover, 427pp, 2020
978-1-98836627-2