Scripting Cultures: Architectural Design and Programming

Chapter 7

Composition and form

In this chapter we will continue to look at Gaudí’s nave clerestory window for the Sagrada Família church. At one level Chapter 6 described an operational approach to scripting. By taking known functions from within the software (Boolean operations, for example), a script automates the sequential activation of these functions to creative effect. At another level for the same project, scripting was used to develop a stand-alone program operating both independently as well as in conjunction with proprietary software. In this chapter we will consider the case where the design composition itself is hard-coded into the script. This requires an unusual set of moves for the architect who might otherwise rely on intuition, the sketch, and emergence. Through a study of Gaudí’s sculptured motifs for the clerestory window, a number of further paradoxes and apparent contradictions will be presented. Firstly, even while being explicit about a compositional strategy through scripting, operationally the strategy may yet afford opportunities for intuitive input, sketching and emergence along the way. Secondly, compositional scripting is looked at for its potential inadvertently or deliberately to spawn the monster (teratoid), however much the designer might be endeavouring to engineer beauty.

An architecture of polymorphism and morphogenesis

A tavern waiter, about six feet tall, was discovered by Gaudí and became the Roman soldier for the Massacre of the Innocents ...