From shaping to informing matter: computation as design medium

A paradigm shift is occurring in design, from shaping matter to informing it (including living matter, biological and non-biological). We are witnessing the rise of computation as the design medium within which to drive the organization of matter and its formation processes. Scientific research was the first to identify computation as the common field/feature in every process. Inorganic matter computes (for example, a river is a computing system that sorts out material according to density, weight, et cetera); Organisms compute, as do we in our “wetware” bodies; Nature (intended as a system) computes, continuously and everywhere. Paraphrasing Arthur C. Clarke, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from nature. Technology's trend is toward nature, creating increasingly complex and sophisticated systems that ultimately grow out of control through pervasiveness, miniaturization, portability and the diffusion of computation-powered devices. Not only does technology follow the same “continuously and everywhere” trend, but it also enables the aforementioned buffer for intentional active creation and faster adaptation (in pursuit of real-time), thus enhancing/augmenting the sophistication of our interaction with the environment. We are exploring the progressively blurring boundary between biology and technology due to the merging of two of the most rapidly evolving branches of science: programming (or computer science) and biology. Computation is the bridge between them, the common playground—the compass that helps us map these territories.That's why we are interested in exploring the role of computation in all its different forms and meanings: from "standard" digital approaches to bio-computation, from our body wetware computation to how brains compute and process information (and how to distill meaning from these processes). The use of computation as a medium to inform matter will also renew the geography of the territories to which design is applied, because we can act at very different levels and scales: environment, architecture, wearables, body—all the possible steps along the “long journey of perception,” from the mind to what surrounds us. At the same time we want to explore, through our educational and research activity, some of the territories outside the standard architectural discipline; trying to create a common playground for collaborations and contaminations, a platform to investigate and influence each other and to improve our knowledge and competencies through a multidisciplinary approach. If “everything is a Remix,”4 our ability to develop and implement a wider set of notions in terms of theoretical and “hands-on” knowledge is fundamental to enhance the design framework and adapt our skills to the ongoing technological and biological (r)evolutions. "The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers." (E. Fromm