The city as an element of architecture - Discrete automata as an outlook beyond bureaucratic means
Daniel Koehler · eCAADe proceedings · 2017
This paper contributes to investigations in the field of aggregative architecture, discrete material assemblies, combinatorial ontologies and their possible up-scaling and implications on urban design. It argues that the digital definition of being discrete is not compatible with earlier, semantic definitions and their connotations on larger scales. Comparable to the breakthroughs in additive assembly by the use of discrete computation this paper demonstrates that the upscaling of discrete notions leads to considerations on the nesting and grouping of parts, here referred to as mereology. Via the means of an exemplary study it introduces the vocabulary of mereology and shows how complex compositions can be articulated with a collection of part-to-whole relations.