“Technology, Technique, Techné: Creation vs. Contingency in Computational Design”

This book chapter / essay presents work by Alvin Huang and appears in Instabilities and Potentialities: Notes on the Nature of Knowledge in Digital Architecture.

Author: Alvin Huang
Publication: Instabilities and Potentialities: Notes on the Nature of Knowledge in Digital Architecture
Editors: Chandler Ahrens and Aaron Sprecher
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2019
Type: Book chapter / essay

Abstract

This chapter reframes computational design as techné: an embodied form of knowledge produced through the interaction of technologies, methods, and contingencies. Rather than treating technology as an answer, Alvin Huang argues for its use as a provocation that expands architecture’s capacity to imagine alternatives. Through SDA projects including the Durotaxis Chair, La Burbuja Lamp, Data Moiré, and Pure Tension Pavilion, the essay explores digital craft, performative patterning, and informed form as reciprocal processes joining representation, material behavior, fabrication, and architectural possibility.

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