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SoA - Computational Design Lecture Series

Formulations: Practices of Design Mathematics

Andrew Witt
Associate Professor, Harvard Graduate School of Design

Introduced by Prof. Eddy Man Kim

Since the Renaissance, and particularly since the advent of computation, mathematics has served as a dynamic engine for striking new forms and ways of designing. In this lecture Andrew Witt will consider the past and future of mathematized design as a creative and visual practice, through the work of his design office Certain Measures and through his new book Formulations: Architecture, Mathematics, Culture. First, he will show how a contemporary design practice might embrace mathematical processes as a core dimension of creative process, through a series of projects ranging from extreme material reuse to morphological classification of the world’s buildings. Second, through case studies drawn from Formulations, he will reflect on the transdisciplinary past of design mathematics and uncover how mathematical techniques inflected the ways architecture was seen, drawn, modeled, and imagined in the predigital period. Trained in both architecture and mathematics, Witt argues that a fusion of design and scientific processes can open new possibilities for the nature of design itself.

Apr 14, 2022 05:00 PM in Eastern Time (US and Canada)