The Algorithmic Extension of Architecture

With the integration of digital technologies into architectural offices the computer has developed into a ubiquitous machine of form-generation. However, it is not the avant-garde and their utilization of the digital that determines the everyday life in an architectural office but the use of CAD-software as an ordinary drawing tool. Using methods of computability theory it is argued that already this unspecific application of the computer is inevitable an algorithmic one and, moreover, that the algorithmic development of form is inherent to the use of computers in architecture. In addition, the formal perspective onto architecture enables a systematic investigation into the design process which will be exemplified by an algorithmic solution of the so-called Pausendach-Problem, the design of a roof system through the variation of the flow of water along individual panels.