From Simple To Complex Configuration: Sustainability Of Gestalt Principles Of Visual Perception Within The Complexity Paradigm

Abstract

The paper presents a design research project developed in 2006 and in 2007 at the Computational Design Research Lab (C o D e R e L)(1). C o D e R e L isan elective graduate design research studio initiated in 2005 at the Middle East Technical University, Department of Architecture (2), to function as an integrated research and teaching structure. The double educational and research agenda of the studio aims at enhancing intellectual infrastructure for research and design in the architecture/technology interface and adresses various issues and problematics detected in the field of computational design research. One of the main objectives of the studio is to position computational design research in its current theoretical and epistemic context and to develop a consciousness of historical continuity within the disciplinary field of architecture. To this aim, design experiments at C o D e R e L attempt to draw together contemporary and historical problem situations for the production of new and creative linkages fostering new knowledges and understandings of architectural evolution.The design research presented here is an attempt to re-contextualize and re-problematize the premises of the Gestalt theory of visual perception in the context of complex and unstable forms that now populate a new formal and plastic catalogue. Increasingly predictive and accurate formalist procedures set forth by diverse morphological theories in the rationalization of complex form seem unable to remedy for the challenge these forms pose to the limits of spontaneous intuition and visual perception. This challenge that would require a sharpening and augmentation of intuitionist and perceptual abilities in the apprehension of complex form is a rarely adressed problem in recent formal research. The absence of a new theory of visual perception brings to the fore a long trusted resource in the field; the gestalt principles of visual perception. These basic principles now call for a reconsideration as they are confronting challenges posed by geometric and conceptual developments in the complexity paradigm, and that need to be adressed in terms of the

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Bridging the Gap: A Manual Primer into Design Computing in the Context of Basic Design Education

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“…Some draw attention to the varying relative importance of the three major components of the Bauhaus model – art, science and technology – and the need for a rethinking of their content and function as well as their sufficient articulation (Findeli, ). Others problematise, if not reject downright, one of the most central tenets of the Bauhaus vision, that is, Gestalt principles, which are still deemed valuable but found wanting because of the challenges posed by the present complexity paradigm, together with the development of tools and technologies that allow the generation of increasingly complex forms that surpass analysis and organisation based on Gestalt principles (Mennan ). Whatever the criticisms and pedagogical propositions may be regarding the Bauhaus legacy, they all point to the long‐awaited need for an ‘updating of the Bauhaus heritage’ (Findeli, , 6) in order to incorporate contemporary requirements and challenges – in other words, the need for a ‘digital Bauhaus’ (Ehn ) or an ‘information age Bauhaus’ (Broadbent & Cross ).…”