Protocols, flows and glitches

This special issue of the International Journal of Architectural computing is a rejoinder to the 2017 CAADRIA conference, with the theme of Protocols, Flows and Glitches. Data structures and network protocols now integrate operations of entire industries, and digital workflows encompass virtually all stages of architectural production. Buildings and the processes they undergo are represented by digital building information models, which are shared across disciplines to generate options and support decisions before they are committed to built form. Yet, there are limits to the reach of digital modelling and predictability. The tools and frameworks, within which building information models are created and used, are themselves subject to constraints and forces similar to those that impede architectural production and maintenance, including technical glitches, noise, error, versioning and compatibility issues, limits to quantifiability, questions of cost effectiveness, incomplete ‘information’ and challenges of interpretation and negotiation. The question arises whether more powerful tools resolve challenges, or whether, in doing so, they encourage us to venture deeper into territories where yet more challenges are encountered? However, our field of computer-aided architectural design engages also that which cannot, or cannot yet, be readily described or modelled. We thus negotiate the reach of formal representation, deepening appreciations of human agency and creativity and laying foundations for industry-transforming technologies. The 22nd International Conference on Computer-Aided Architectural Design Research in Asia (CAADRIA 2017) brought together original contributions presenting current computer-aided architectural design research in a general sense, accommodating a broad spectrum of approaches ranging from speculative, informal investigations to conventional scientific research. The conference was held 5–8 April 2017 at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, Suzhou, China. This issue contains a collection of four papers hand-picked from among the best conference papers that have been extended and updated for this special issue. All papers have undergone an additional round of rigorous double-blind review before acceptance to this special issue. The four papers tackle diverse areas of computational design. In the first paper, Blaire Haslop, Marc Aurel Schnabel and Serdar Aydin explore the potential for design emergence based on malfunctions during computational processing of three-dimensional data. The research draws on the broader field of glitch art and describes a series of experiments that transform glitched data into spatial forms with a multitude of possible architectural interpretations. In the second paper, Trevor Patt presents an agent-based planning approach for urban sites, where informal developments make conventional top-down masterplanning ineffectual. The case study is presented for a village in Guangzhou, China. In his proposed method, the redevelopment of a village is guided by a dynamic model consisting of swarms of agents that identify possible urban interventions through localized interactions. These interventions include both modification of selected parcels and modification of the street network. In the third paper, Yufan Miao, Reinhard Koenig, Peter Buš, Mei-Chih Chang, Artem Chirkin and Lukas Treyer present a rapid urban design prototyping method that automatically generates urban layouts including street networks, urban blocks and parcels. In addition, on defining certain parameters, the planners are also able to guide the street network generation by specifying initial street segments. A case study is presented, generating urban layouts for an informal settlement in Cape Town. 798934 JAC0010.1177/1478077118798934International Journal of Architectural ComputingEditorial editorial2018