Evolutionary Tools and the Practice of Architecture: from Appropriated Typology to Becoming the Black Boxes of CAAD

Résumé En

The present research proposes a comprehensive methodology of investigation of algorithmic typologies currently in use in the computational field in architecture, focusing on three elements : practitioners, tools and projects. The methodology has been applied to evolutionary design tools in order to investigate the technical and epistemological optimization bias they entail. The research shows the existence of two approaches to handling the tension between formalization required by algorithms and tacit knowledge required by architectural practice. Whereas one of the approaches displays an intertwinement of explicit and tacit, of qualitative and quantitative, the other prioritizes a rational, performance-based approach. Given the conditions of development of evolutionary tools shown, this latter conception of architectural practice has spread while recent tools enabled a democratization of the resort to evolutionary techniques. By transforming evolutionary algorithms into ready-made tools, or black boxes of CAAD, this process of development prevents the implementation of tacit knowledge within them, potentially impoverishing architectural design.