Construction at Carnegie Mellon University

Has architecture ever existed with out mechanical access? Recently after reading Carpo’s Architecture in the Age of Printing; It becomes almost blatantly clear that maybe it hasn’t– the creation of the printing press not only created design guide books, but, as a sub-creation, manifested an architectural community, where all were reading and design not only according to the content of the design books– but also to their standardization, a complete convergence of medium from printed material to architectural design. While this convergence of media lay in the depths of history, it could be an exemplar for the current tech/architecture debate which is more suited to the 21st century– parametric and algorithmic architecture. While different from the printing press in actual tool or technique, there is a certain osmosis which occurs between designer and computation, affecting one another maybe in unforeseen ways. While this is only a shallow inspection of the current state of parametric design, I thought it important address the parallel[s].