System agency for bottom-up design: The use of computational design systems for Middle Eastern architecture

Top-down approach to design and planning has been dominant starting from the beginning of the 20th century as the main way of master-planning the modern city. The increasing area of urban sprawls left to be designed by a limited number of participants, or designers, creates more centralized decisions. This forces repetition and standardization as the only rational solution which, in turn, leads to the boredom, banality, and sameness that characterize modernist top-down approach to design and planning. With the continuous need for large-scale residential developments in different parts of the world and the ongoing urbanization, it becomes more important to find alternatives to the 20th century modernist approach and its mass housing. This is sought within the analysis of the vernacular bottom-up approach. The bottom-up approach in the vernacular examples is based on the use of unwritten rules, each applied locally and repeatedly by large number of people intervening in their immediate environment, the aggregation result of this wide application of small interventions creates complex and holistic global organization, a quality only discernible on a scale larger than the immediate intervention one. One can easily discern a process of applying rules repeatedly by normal actors, who are the users or occupants of the space, and the emergence of variant and complex products. Therefore, the underlying processes and involved actors are highlighted as the main components of the bottom-up approach, and the analysis of these components is considered essential in incorporating such approach. In relation to the underlying processes, the emergence of system thinking established an important understanding for them in terms of their generating rules. This follows that a rule-based design system can be used to structure the processes of the bottom- up approach. Systems thinking has also a lot to do with the emergence of computational thinking in architecture and the use of digital design tools. The use of these digital tools, based on the theory of objectile, allows for splitting the authorship of the architectural forms between different agents, including the designer and the user. This shared authorship is highlighted as a great opportunity to activate the contribution of multiple actors in the process, which is the second essential component in the bottom-up approach. The relation between the actors and authorship in architecture is argued to be dependent on the tools used by the architects. The use of orthogonal drawing as a medium to externalize design intentions to others was essential in recognizing architecture as a separate professions, starting from the Renaissance. The digital tools available today, is argued to have the opposite opportunity of internalizing the design intentions of other actors in the process, like the users or clients. Therefore, the use of computational design systems is argued to provide a vehicle for representing other actors in the designing/building process, which is referred to as the agency of the design system. Therefore, a parallel is established between the underlying processes of the bottom-up approach and rule-based computational systems on one hand, and the multiple actors of this approach with the possibility of sharing authorship provided by the use of computational systems and digital tools, on the other hand. This renders computational design systems as viable tools for enabling the bottom-up approach, both in terms of its generating processes and involved actors. It is argued that the understanding and incorporation of these two aspects of the bottom-up approach is essential in providing alternatives to the modernist top-down model, which are more viable in dealing with large-scale design problems. The use of rule-based computational model to enable a bottom-up approach in investigated by developing a computational model. The model follows a grid-based organizational logic that uses numeric matrices to evaluate the occupational status of every cell in the grid and control the positions of the different spaces as 'agents' roaming the space. The interaction between the different spaces is governed by grammar rules which defines how different spaces should be connected and positioned in relation to each other. These rules are defined by the analysis of vernacular architecture example in the middle-east, especially cities like Damascus and Marrakech. The model provides an example of a bottom-up workflow based on the use of computational systems. Besides, it provides insights into the morphological processes behind the evolution of the old city of Damascus, which highlights the potential of the use of the proposed model as an urban analysis and design tool.