The external expert

Sabine Müller from SMAQ architects has accepted to be the external expert followwing this diploma. Having had her as a teacher (with William Veerbeek from Din architects ) already in Delft while researching Madrid in the Urban Body studio, I'm very pleased she agreed to be a part of this.

Her insights then were very relevant, especially concerning the implication of computation in urban planning, as well as in architecture. During the studio, it became out that the use of computation in architecture, changed the role of the architect and city planner, while making him more of a policy designer. Indeed, the approach was so made, that the reactions to the feedbacks of the computation forced the architect / hacker to "limit" himself in building rules that would generate the desired outcome. This result would then take very various forms, but all be responding to the set rules.

The tools developed at that moment were more about verifying possible outcomes of different sets of rules, than actually generating shapes. They could then be used in such situation as to verify a programmatic distribution, a shading law, or a maximum density regulation. This shall clarify how computation is seen in this thesis, more as a scenario verification tool than a shaping device. Thus helping to have a more rational approach to design and city planning.