Form-finding in digital architecture : a case study of tower designs

Abstract EN

Form-finding has been facilitated by the rapid development in digital modeling and simulation, leading to unexpected geometries.

The paper aims to identify how the digital computation can assist form-finding at the conceptual stage of tower design.

A review of published works on form-finding in virtual and real practices was conducted.

A framework for form-finding in digital design was developed including methods, the sources of decision making, processes, and techniques.

Digital form-finding is investigated in five contemporary tower designs which showed that form-finding method is a process-oriented or (and) outcome-oriented, guided by intuition or (and) rationality, acting dually as generative and modification processes, and using simulation for testing and verification besides other form-finding techniques.