Architectural Design Instruments: Conditions of Appearance, Modes of Appropriation and Reconfigurations of Practices

While it is undeniable that architectural practices have been transformed with the advent of digital technologies, they nevertheless continue to occupy an ambiguous or even problematic place within the design process.

The underlying premise of this book on architectural design instruments is not to see them simply as means to an autonomous end, one that is pure and detached from any other technological aspect, but instead to see these instruments and their formative abilities as a different way in which architects can approach design. We maintain that it is through the very act of experimentation with these instruments that their various potentials are revealed and established. It is through such repeated experimentation, which is constantly being revised and consolidated, that practice is successfully and sustainably transformed.

This view is less of a wish than it is an observation, and as such, it can be seen in the various practices that are analyzed in this book.

Sébastien Bourbonnais is an assistant professor at the School of Architecture of Laval University, Canada. He has taught at several Écoles Nationales Supérieures d’Architecture (National Architectural Colleges) in France, is a research consultant at Asynth and a research associate at EVCAU.