Date of Submission
Spring 5-12-2026
Degree Type
Dissertation/Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Architecture
Department
Architecture
Committee Chair/First Advisor
Christopher Welty
Abstract
In Search of Design Process : A Computational Framework for Meaningful Form
Imagine walking through your hometown, a place where identity, culture, memory, and collective resilience should be visible within the built environment. As cities continue to develop, new buildings rise from the ground, yet many remain indistinguishable glass boxes. They are efficient and visually neutral, but they fail to reflect the depth of culture, the struggles of communities, or the meaning embedded within place. These buildings fulfill functional requirements, but they often lack intentional expression. They exist, but they do not speak.
In Search of the Design Process begins from that observation. The thesis questions whether contemporary architecture has become detached from meaningful form and investigates whether the recovery of process can restore intention, identity, and cultural resonance to architecture. Rather than searching for a singular style or formal language, the research searches for a disciplined methodology capable of generating meaningful form through logic, translation, and systematic transformation. The investigation proposes architecture as a process in which logic is extracted from an artifact, mediated through geometric and computational operations, and transformed into architectural form. This methodology is organized through the framework of artifact, mediator, and architecture.
Through the comparative study of the formal methodologies of Zaha Hadid, Frank Gehry, and Thom Mayne, the investigation analyzes three distinct approaches to form generation: fluid continuity, container based form, and systematic collision. Rather than reproducing stylistic outcomes, the research extracts underlying operational principles such as radial rhythm, tangential continuity, structural wrapping, fragmentation, grid collision, directional force systems, surface manipulation, and spatial negotiation. These principles are studied not as visual effects, but as repeatable geometric logics capable of generating architectural consequences.
The research develops these investigations through diagrammatic studies, computational synthesis, physical modeling, and iterative geometric testing. Artificial intelligence became an important source of aid throughout the process, assisting in the analysis, interpretation, and operationalization of formal systems. AI tools were not used to replace authorship or autonomously generate architecture, but to support the extraction of relationships, reveal hidden geometric patterns, assist scripting workflows, and accelerate iterative exploration. Through platforms such as OpenAI ChatGPT, Raven, Python scripting, and Grasshopper, the research established a computational workflow capable of translating conceptual operations into executable systems.
A series of custom parametric widgets were developed as repeatable geometric instructions capable of producing attraction, repulsion, multiple attractors, force fields, radial distribution, shell variation, rib generation, falloff gradients, and spatial manipulation within a regulated framework. These widgets transformed abstract formal ideas into operational systems that could be tested, modified, and reconstructed systematically. Through this process, form is no longer composed arbitrarily or imitated stylistically, but generated through interaction, influence, negotiation, and controlled transformation.
Ultimately, In Search of the Design Process argues that meaningful architecture does not emerge from isolated aesthetic decisions, but from intentional systems of translation, mediation, and construction. By grounding architecture in extracted logic derived from cultural artifacts, geometric behaviors, and computational processes, the thesis seeks to recover form as an expressive and communicative act. The goal is not to create objects that simply occupy space, but to construct architecture capable of speaking through form itself.