I began my architectural education in 2014, at the height of the discipline’s Digital Turn. I had the honour of being offered a place at The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL - widely regarded as one of the world’s leading schools of architectural design. At the time, in both academia and industry, tools such as Rhino, Grasshopper and Maya offered extraordinary possibilities for generative form, algorithmic patterning and digital fabrication. For many of us technophiles, the excitement lay in discovering what these tools could produce, spurred on by the creative ambition and technical complexity of projects emerging across the Middle East and China. New subcultures of parametric and biomorphic design emerged, inspired by designers such as Zaha Hadid, Patrick Schumacher and Ross Lovegrove.

Yet as my technical abilities expanded, I found myself drawn to a more poignant question: not what digital design tools could make possible, but why we were using them in the first place. My thinking on this topic took a decisive turn when I encountered the November 2016 issue of Architectural Design (AD) magazine entitled Evoking Through Design: Contemporary Moods in Architecture.
The collection of essays introduced me to discussions around aesthetic perception and atmospheric experience, providing the backdrop to my BSc history and theory thesis, aptly entitled: The Algorithmic Craftsman.

Upon graduation, I moved to New York to work for Mark Foster Gage, one of the AD issue’s key contributors - and an advocate of digitally ‘kit-bashed’ ornamentation – before being hired as a workshop fabricator for Morphosis Architects in Los Angeles. These studios became formative environments as I searched for ways advanced computational design could translate into meaningful built work.

‍

My most formative professional experience came during my time at Zaha Hadid Architects in London shortly after completing my Master of Architecture. There, my understanding of design process, legibility and criticism was refined under the guidance of many generous and talented senior architects. In the wake of the Covid pandemic, reduced physical interaction accelerated conversations around the creative potential of virtual environments, AR/VR experiences and the emerging idea of the metaverse. Like many forward-thinking studios, ZHA began exploring these possibilities, drawing on its long-standing relationship with software developer Epic Games. While these developments were fascinating, they reinforced a question that had been growing in my mind: as our digital capabilities expand, what becomes of the human experience of the work itself?

‍

While digital tools allowed almost infinite variation and complexity, the question of how something feels to the body - its atmosphere, material presence and tactile character - often seemed secondary to iconic visual impact.

This realisation led me to consider what a truly Post-Digital, humanistic approach to design might look like. The tension between immense computational possibility and the simplicity of human sensory experience became the starting point for my work; a line of inquiry I eventually began testing through the design of tactile, small-scale objects.

‍

Ongoing thread. More from Rory Noble-Turner to follow.