Angelos Floros

Presented: Department of Architecture, University of Thessaly, Volos, 2005

Given within an introductory course on CAD/CAM systems, for first-year students

Architecture has become more complicated, and more interesting.

The whole design process is now digital in every one of its phases, from the first sketch to the construction site. Which changes what an architect is for: not someone who uses tools to finish work, but someone who creates systems able to manage every part of the process.

The geometry has changed underneath it. Euclidean geometry has given way to the parabolic and hyperbolic geometries of Riemann and Lobachevsky — and those are not drawable by hand in any practical sense.

So the dependence is structural, not a matter of preference. A person cannot manage the complexity of the structural process without computational power and the tools of computational models.

That is the condition first-year students are entering. Not a new set of programs to learn, but a discipline whose limits are now set by what can be computed.