Aleatory Architectures

TL;DR

Aleatory architectures investigate the use of stochastic configurations and material agency in structural design, proposing adaptive, disorder-based approaches that challenge traditional deterministic methods.

Contribution

This paper introduces the concept of aleatory architectures, emphasizing stochastic configurations and material agency as innovative design principles in architecture and engineering.

Findings

Exploration of stochastic re-configuration of structural elements

Discussion of material agency in architectural components

Proposal of a new vocabulary for interpreting order and disorder

Abstract

Aleatory architectures explore new approaches and concepts at the intersection of granular materials research and architecture/structural engineering. It explicitly includes stochastic (re-) configuration of individual structural elements and suggests that building materials and components can have their own agency - that they can be designed to adapt and to find their own responses to structural or spatial contexts. In this Guest Editorial we introduce some of the key ideas and ask: Can there be design by disorder? What are the possibilities of material agency? Can we develop a vocabulary of concepts to interpret various orderings of chance? Several papers in this special issue then investigate these questions in more detail from a range of different scientific and architectural perspectives.