By Daniel Cardoso Llach and Theodora Vardouli

During the three decades following the Second World War, and before the advent of personal computers, government investment in university research in North America and the UK funded multidisciplinary projects to investigate the use of computers for manufacturing and design.

Designing the Computational Image, Imagining Computational Design explores this period of remarkable inventiveness, and traces its repercussions on architecture and other creative fields through a selection of computational designers working today.

Documenting an eponymous exhibition, the volume examines the emergence in the twentieth-century of new methods for representation, simulation and manufacturing linked to computers and considers the repercussions of this development across creative fields.

Alongside a compelling visual archive showcasing hundreds of unpublished or lesser-known computational images, drawings, films, and software, the book features essays by architecture, media, and science and technology scholars offering close readings of specific images, as well as conversations and interviews with historical protagonists and contemporary practitioners.

Together, these materials illuminate in unprecedented detail the confluence of technical innovations in software, geometry, and hardware with a fledging technological imaginary of design and creativity, tracing the emergence — and reimagining the potentials — of a vibrant field of interdisciplinary research and practice.

Designed by Operative Space (Berlin, Germany)

Published by Applied Research & Design, 2023

Hardcover, 240 pages, full color, 7.2 × 9.3 inches

ISBN: 978-1-95-408134-5