Design Education with Computers

This paper summarizes a teaching project carried out by the CAAD Chair in the Department of Architecture at the ETH in Zürich during the last one and a half years. The approach adopted for the design education with computers focuses on two major issues: design representations and design strategies. The alternative representations that computers can provide are discussed in the first part of the paper. The core of this first part is a detailed description of a course in which hierarchical structures were used to teach some of the alternative design representations that are unique to computers. The second part of the paper proposes that understanding design as the interplay of systems is a design strategy which can lead to an effective integration of computers in design. A brief description of the content of another course developed around this concept is included