Designing the Computational Image, Imagining Computational Design

During the three decades following the Second World War, and before the advent of personal computers, government investment in university research in North America and the UK funded multidisciplinary projects to investigate the use of computers for manufacturing and design. Designing the Computational Image, Imagining Computational Design explores this period of remarkable inventiveness, and traces its repercussions on architecture and other creative fields through a selection of computational designers working today. Situating contemporary expressions of design in relation to broader historical, disciplinary, and technical frames, the book showcases the confluence, during the second half of the 20th century, of publicly funded technical innovations in software, geometry, and hardware with a cultural imaginary of design endowing computer-generated images with both geometric plasticity and a new type of agency as operative design artifacts.

Table of Contents:
Materialities 16 Images to Think With Daniel Cardoso Llach 24 On the Surface Theodora Vardouli Archive 36 Servomechanisms Laboratory, MIT, United States 48 Cambridge CAD Group, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom 50 Sperry Gyroscope Co. of Canada Ltd., Canada Works 54 Ben Snell 56 BairBalliet (Kristy Balliet and Kelly Bair) 58 Joseph Choma 61 Vernelle Noel 64 Jonah Marrs 66 Nicolas Reeves 67 Jer Thorp and Diane Thorp Visualities 102 The Computer-Aided Design Project, MIT, United States 114 Cambridge CAD Group, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom 119 University of Utah, United States 120 Bell Labs, United States 126 McGill University, Canada 130 Computer Graphics Group, University of Toronto, Canada 142 Alan Warburton 143 Dana Cupkova 144 Andrew Heumann 146 Zach Lieberman 150 Carl Lostritto 151 Joseph Choma 152 Golan Levin 154 BairBalliet (Kristy Balliet and Kelly Bair) 156 Benedikt Groß 157 Kyuha Shim 158 Ben Snell 160 Shaheer Zazai 161 Jonah Marrs Agencies 240 The Computer-Aided Design Project, MIT, United States 250 The Architecture Machine, MIT, United States 254 Institute for Physical Planning, CMU, United States 260 Centre for Land Use and Built Form Studies, Cambridge University, United Kingdom 261 Centre for Configurational Studies, The Open University, United Kingdom 262 University of Waterloo, Canada 266 Civil Engineering Systems Laboratory, MIT, United States 268 University of Toronto, Canada 270 Harvard Laboratory for Computer Graphics and Spatial Analysis, United States 272 Université de Montréal, Canada 273 Université Laval, Canada 274 Royal Architectural Institute of Canada journal, Canada 280 Madeline Gannon 281 George Stiny 282 Felecia Davis and Delia Dumitrescu 283 Dana Cupkova and Daragh Byrne 284 Jürg Lehni 286 Golan Levin 287 Elizabeth Vander Zaag 289 Daniel Iregui 292 Rafael Lozano-Hemmer 293 Jean Dubois 294 Joanna Berzowska 296 Philip Beesley Materialities Essays 70 Binary Image, Visual Latency Andrés Burbano 74 The Manufacturing Hand: Tactility and Abstraction in Robotics Emek Erdolu 78 Olympic Calculations Sean Keller 82 Processing Models, Modeling Processes for the HfG Ulm ca. 1952 Anna-Maria Meister Conversations 88 Unsmooth Images: A Conversation about the Materialities of Computational Design Kristy Balliet, Sean Keller, Nathalie Bredella, and Jonah Marrs moderated by Molly Wright Steenson 374 Biographies 380 Acknowledgments 382 Exhibition credits 383 Photo credits Visualities 164 Materialities of Shiny Surfacing with Chrome Akshita Sivakumar 170 “Digit Goes to Hawaii” (1976) and “Baby Eyes” (1984) Gabriela Aceves Sepúlveda 176 Depth and Historical Vision in Computer Simulation Jacob Gaboury 180 Topology, Crystals, and A Multitude of Futures David Theodore 184 “Metamorphosis” (1976) by Lillian Schwartz Olga Touloumi 190 Interfaces of the Self: A Conversation about the Structures and Histories of ComputationalImages Joseph Choma, Carl Lostritto, Theodora Vardouli, and Jacob Gaboury moderated byOlga Touloumi 202 Imagination Machines: A Conversation with George Stiny Moderated by Daniel Cardoso Llach and Theodora Vardouli 218 Computer Art and Information Aesthetics: A Conversation with Leslie Mezei and Frieder Nake Moderated by Theodora Vardouli 300 Data for Decision (film, 1967) Moa Carlsson 304 Seeing with a Machine: Notes on Early SpatialComputing Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal 308 Alternative Land-Use Map of a Simulated City Matthew Allen 312 @home Mario Carpo 318 Digital Pantheisms: A Conversation About Computational Agencies across Art and Design Madeline Gannon, Andrew Heumann, Dana Cupkova, and Golan Levin moderated by FeleciaDavis 332 Feminist Embodiments of Interactivity: A Conversation with Elizabeth Vander Zaag Moderated by Gabriela Aceves Sepúlveda 350 Machine Misbehavior and Ethical Interfaces: A Conversation with Rachel Strickland and PaulPangaro Moderated by Daniel Cardoso Llach

About the Author :
Daniel Cardoso Llach, Ph.D., is an associate professor of Architecture at Carnegie Mellon University and the author of Builders of the Vision: Software and the Imagination of Design (Routledge, 2015) and the co-editor of Other Computations (Uniandes, 2020). Theodora Vardouli, Ph.D., is an assistant professor at the Peter Guo-hua Fu School of Architecture, McGill University. She is co-editor of Computer Architectures: Constructing the Common Ground (Routledge, 2020).