Algorithmic transformation between heritage and design innovation. In in Heritage and tecnhology.

In the introduction to Machining Architecture, L. Spuybroek states that: “The computer has reached a cultural stage, finally. The years that it was used for dreaming of perfect shape grammars and design automation (...) or, worse, used for dreaming disembodied dreams of an architecture floating in cyberspace – those tears are over. Also finally and especially important for the architectural profession, computers have outgrown their servile function in the digital drawing room, where the real design was still done far away from the machines, sketched by hand, guided by genius.” "The last few years revealed the effect of the information revolution on the project. The new generation grow up together with digital technologies, developing a different approach, which is apparently free from the cultural conditioning of the past. The professional maturity of digital natives matches the transition to a new concept, in which the design is no longer an addition of parts and phases hierarchically ordered and/or subordinate each other, but it is the concept of a developing form. This is governed by rules that are implicit in the process itself, as well as in the organic model. Digital technology adapted to designers’ needs: direct interaction systems facilitate the access to the scripting, which is the information code that define the shape. The easy interface with the computer reference facilitates the evolution of Computer Graphics in Digital Design, reconstructing the identity between Drawing and Design. The computing controls the complexity of the Design, by the application of dynamic systems that are inspired by the Mathematics. Actually this science developed its models in the attempt to find a recognizable to explain chaotic systems that govern natural phenomena. The tools of the digital representation encouraged the development of complex forms just by organic inspiration. They are characterized by the reference to movement and transformation. These concepts are extraneous to Architecture’s mood. The dynamic articulation of Deconstructivist Architecture, which refers to the mathematical concepts algebra and to the relational geometry of graph, involves three different innovation levels: conceptual, geometric and material. The first two ones are directly related to the mathematical process that controls the design to the final form. The third is an indirect consequence of the research on geometric properties of shapes, in its creative application to the development of new materials and/or their innovative uses. This paper aims to reconstruct the historical roots of the Generative Design. The goal is to identify its disciplinary matrices, as an essential contribution to the renewal of the Design teaching. Only the knowledge of the rules of the form allows the management of the digital project without falling into formalism. In fact, the awareness of scientific references and cultural roots of digital tools helps the definition of formal parameters and transformation codes that rule the digital Design.