Scripting Cultures: Architectural Design and Programming

Chapter 2

Contextual summary of computing, scripting and speculative design

At this point we are not at all clear about where we have arrived in the world of practical computing and speculative design and their full value, culturally as well as economically. This chapter considers computer engagement in practice and its assistance in automating practical aspects of office work at one end of the utility spectrum with digital design dreaming at the other. The focus of Scripting Cultures is more dreaming than dealing with immediate workaday practicalities, although in advanced architecture it is hard to separate the two. Design speculation is the primer’s predominant subtext and quite what is meant by this term will unfold throughout the book.

There is tension between the design automation and digital speculation within a context of a residual undercurrent of general resentment over the computer’s arrival in the first place (granted, barely perceptible now, but present all the same). Not only does one still come across ardent critics who perceive as sullying the computer’s incursion into a world of practice uncontaminated for centuries by reprographic machinery of any kind, but there are several levels of nostalgia-based discontent over the choice of tools with which to inscribe our thoughts. At its most fundamental, such critics rue the passing of tracing vellum and pencils, compasses with nibs attached for inscribing circles, ‘T’ squares, French curves, traditional drawing boards, ...