Algorithmic Architecture by Kostas Terzidis
"While the future of computers appears to include a variety of possible roles, it is worth exploring these roles in the context provided by the question: 'Who designs?' If one takes the position that designing is not exclusively a human activity and that ideas exist independently of human beings, then it would be possible to design a computational mechanism which would associate those ideas" (61).
This chapter takes a freewheeling look at the role of technology in design by tackling both the design process and scientific method. At times comments like, "once a design idea is agreed upon, the architects move into the production phases" seem to miss the importance of existing, however convoluted, integration of design and production (read science) methods at all phases. Nonetheless, the larger argument towards a unified strategy to mediate scientific and design methodologies resonates quite loudly with the current state of architecture. I would modify the author's final statement seen above to not imply that the machine is in any way a designer. I find this mysticizes the determinism of computation. I would argue that the algorithmic machine allows the designer to work at a different scale: at the scale of the rule and the system rather than only at the scale of the result. The algorithmic machine extracts results from the rules and systems, and no matter how impossible they are to imagine relating to the ruleset, the human is still the sole point of design in the process.