Computer-Oriented Design Methods in the Digital Design Studio

In opposition to the common condition in the architectural office, the digital design studio in academic environments is free of market and commercial constraints and allows exploring and experimenting with software in architecture. The studio proposes an ideal environment in which boundaries can be stretched and software can be exploited to examine the changes in the design process induced by the introduction of computer. The design studio culture allows developing new digital design procedures and methods, intervening in software trough writing code or scripting in order to articulate a new type of architecture.
T_CODE1 (Technion_Computer Oriented DEsign) is an experimental computer oriented
design research laboratory based at the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. The laboratory offers an environment for advanced research in design, architecture and urbanism. Its main explorative platform is a final project studio, which includes academic research and extracurricular activities.
In the studio, students are guided to develop digital design methods that would reflect, intervene and transform existing architectural conditions. To that end, the underlying perception of the studio maintains a tight connection between the design method and the end product. The means to conceive architecture necessarily influences the features of the end product.
In that fashion, the digital tools were considered as what Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari termed "abstract machines" – a complex operation that trespasses a phenomenon into a new and singular condition of consistency.
The article will present the possibilities of examining digital tools exiting in the design laboratory. It will concentrate on the contribution of computer tools in developing new design methods and their potential for the academic and professorial realms.