Abstract
This paper reframes computation as a design practice rather than a technological application. Through the construction of mechanical computing artifacts that harness environmental energy and material constraints, it demonstrates how designing can become a form of computational inquiry. The work positions architecture as a discipline capable of foundational contributions to computation by treating material, geometry, and energy as active agents of logic and memory. The study advances two main contributions: 1) It reconceptualizes computation as a physical and architectural phenomenon rather than a symbolic or digital one. 2) It demonstrates, through a pedagogical experiment, that computation can be enacted and understood through material and tectonic design, making it a foundational mode of architectural reasoning.
Keywords
tectonic computation; mechanical logic; computational craft; design pedagogy; physical information
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.2908
Citation
Papanikolaou, D. (2026) Tectonic Computation: Crafting Logic through Material and Geometry, in Simeone, L., Gray, C. M., Verhoeven, A., de Götzen, A., Bakırlıoğlu, Y., Zohar, H., Stead, M., and Buwert, P. (eds.), DRS2026: Edinburgh, 8–12 June, Edinburgh, United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.2908
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Included in
Tectonic Computation: Crafting Logic through Material and Geometry
This paper reframes computation as a design practice rather than a technological application. Through the construction of mechanical computing artifacts that harness environmental energy and material constraints, it demonstrates how designing can become a form of computational inquiry. The work positions architecture as a discipline capable of foundational contributions to computation by treating material, geometry, and energy as active agents of logic and memory. The study advances two main contributions: 1) It reconceptualizes computation as a physical and architectural phenomenon rather than a symbolic or digital one. 2) It demonstrates, through a pedagogical experiment, that computation can be enacted and understood through material and tectonic design, making it a foundational mode of architectural reasoning.