Space-non-Space and the Role of Computational Design

Abstract

This paper questions the context and meaning of space or the ‘spatial’ within the current architectural and urban rhetoric as suggested by Vidler (2011) in his essay Transparency and Utopia: Constructing the void from Pascal to Foucault. As a case in point this paper further introduces the context of ‘non-space’ as supposedly introduced by Le Corbusier in his Potato Building typology studies conducted during the early 1960s. In both the above instances the concept of ‘enlightment space’ or a geometrical, rational gridded and above all transparent space is contrived and skewed to accommodate alternate determinates – space in this instance, according to Vidler; no longer operates as an instrument of monumental construction but rather as an agent of monumental dissolution. Given the above definition, the paper critically evaluates the role of computational design within this spatial decomposition.