Towards an history of computational tools in automated architectural design: The Seroussi Pavilion Competition as a Case Study

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The present research proposes a method to analyse computational tools at the architect's disposal and the potential technical bias they induce in architectural design. Six case studies will be used as a demonstration of the method's ability to highlight those biases and how architects and designers manipulate those tools to translate their architectural expertise into algorithmic design. Those case studies are the six answers to the Seroussi Pavilion competition, organized in 2007 by Natalie Seroussi, a Parisian gallery owner. Having a keen interest into computational design, she invited six architectural practices specializing in this field. As the six case studies answer the same design brief, it represents a particularly suitable opportunity to analyse the intricate relationship between architectural constraints, their translation into computational data and instructions and the programming tools used to do so. Through the analysis of four different aspects of the project - algorithmic tools/method, computational set-up, organizational chart and architectural design - several issues of the computational turn in architecture are discussed.