Teaching Creativity with Computers

Using computers as an aid to architectural design promotes efficiency - of that there is no doubt - but its real merit must surely lie in provoking inventiveness. The medium makes possible the speedy creation and manipulation of images, a holistic, integrational approach to design, the exploration of virtual environments, the real time collaboration in design by individuals at remote sites and so on - these all fall under my heading of “efficiencyi, since more or less the same ends can be achieved, albeit much more slowly and tediously, by traditional methods. But inventiveness, thatis something different. For comparison, think of the advent of reinforced concrete. In the early years, the new medium was used, roughly speaking, as a substitute for timber beams, but the genius of Le Corbusier was required to appreciate that concrete had fluid qualities which afforded completely different kinds of design opportunities. Can computers likewise revolutionise design? Will new kinds of building get constructed as a result of the advent of computers into the design arena