Re:Toward a Theory of Design as Computation
by twelvechairs on Monday July 14, 2014 @05:37PM
(#8033413)
This is basically 'systems theory', which was all the rage in the 60s and 70s, and Christopher Alexander's work was linked to. There's a reason it didn't take off as much as expected - not because the overarching premise is wrong (that its possible to describe all things, even design, in a systematic way), but just that its incredibly difficult to the point of impossible for people to do so.
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Notes on the Synthesis of Form is a lot more systems-theoretic. The algorithm is more or less recursive min-cut partitioning which is now well-researched.
There is, however, a real logistical problem is getting the input requirements, massaging them to identical conceptual scope, and then connecting them together so you can perform said decomposition. That is a massive, massive bottleneck.
That's why it's so telling that Alexander abandoned the technique in his thesis in favour of using the building site itself, in effect, as a computational medium.