Before anything I conjured up abt what I wanted this project to be, there was one idea. The idea of generating code that could create beautiful organic visual compositions using agents that eventually could become architectural designs. But the fact of the matter is that as someone interested in architectural design, I have a very practical mind. I am very much concerned with form, with tectonics, with sensible spatial configuration that humans could use to live in. At first I thought it was possible to go directly from code to design, but I was very disappointed to find out that that was not the case.

Often times, what you produce with agent code is so erratic and impractical that it would never become architecture on its own without personal editing. The concepts generated by codes and agents are just that, concepts, and may very well serve as inspiration for doable design but it will always need to be challenged by the personal input of the designer in order to become clear and purposeful. In reality, what happens is that the designer creates a sketch using Processing, then exports lines (if the sketch is in 3D) or images to a CAD program to be cleaned up, or traced, sometime completely doing something else on top of it. With Processing you are also able to export meshes, but the meshes themselves need to be cleaned and expanded to resemble anything close to architecture. This limitation made it seem a bit less magical at first, so I almost completely abandoned this idea of using agents and looked at other things that could serve a more practical purpose to my learning of architecture. And this is how I went back to trying to realize something in Unreal and Unity. I am always struggling with self-doubt so I had to ask if it was indeed worth it.

After much reflection on the workflow, I came to the conclusion that creating sketches in Processing is a novel way of finding inspiration for architectural forms, as long as it is clear that a sketch in Processing is just part of the concept stage and that a lot of work will need to be done in order to translate the visuals into tangible 3D forms that could be used as part of an architectural project.

So I’ve decided to finish what I started and go back to the roots of my project for the next few days. After some early experimentation with Agents and Geometrical Forms, while I was still trying to get my game engine part of the project done and failing miserably, I think this will do.

There are a few things that I am going to do. First I am going to lay down the theoretical framework for autonomous agents in 2D and 3D and create three unique sketches.