Digital Architecture Beyond Computers: Fragments of a Cultural History of Computational Design

Digital Architecture Beyond Computers explores the deep history of digital architecture, tracing design concepts as far back as the Renaissance and connecting them with today's latest software. It develops a critical account of how the tools and techniques of digital design have emerged, allowing designers to deepen their understanding of the digital tools they use every day.

What aesthetic, spatial, and philosophical concepts converge within the digital tools architects employ? What is their history? And what kinds of techniques and designs have they given rise to? This book explores these questions, showing how digital architecture brings together complex ideas - from networks to parametrics, to pixels, voxels and maxels - which span several domains and have evolved over many centuries. It sets out to unpack these ideas and trace their permeation into architecture, in the search for new analytical and critical ways to conceptualise contemporary digital design and its software.

Roberto Bottazzi is an architect, researcher, and educator based in London. He is Research Co-ordinator, Master Tutor and Master Lecturer at the Royal College of Art, UK.