Algorithmic Design and Architectural Machines

Abstract

What is our relationship with technology? As designers, we sit on the precipice between the abstract and the alien; between meaningful imagination and reductive otherness. With the permeation of algorithmic software in the architectural profession, are we able to design algorithmically with meaning? How can digital means aid poetic architecture? This thesis opens a less examined side of algorithmic thinking within the dialogue between designers and the technology we use. Language, humor, and pataphors become building materials in this architectural translation of ‘Pataphysics, a rebel, absurdist science created by playwright Alfred Jarry. A dense prospection and oscillation through philosophy, history, art, and architecture all work to consider this design of a playful memory machine. Enter, the Urban Maker’s Studio and Artist Workshop. This story of machines, in both a fictional and a literal context, brings humans back into the fold through the linguistic dimension of algorithmic storytelling. It values the historical and cultural memory latent in ourselves over abstracted, generalized and reductive information. The project is situated in contention and alliance with the AT&T Long Lines Building, a foreboding idol of modern technology, in upper Tribeca New York.