Over the last 15 years, contemporary architecture has been profoundly altered by the advent of computation and information technology. The ubiquitous dissemination of design software and numerical fabrication machinery have re-actualised the traditional role of geometry in architecture and opened it up to the wondrous possibilities afforded by topology, non-Euclidean geometry, parametric surface design and other areas of mathematics. From the technical aspects of scripting code to the biomorphic paradigms of form and its associations with genetics, the impact of computation on the discipline has been widely documented. What is less clear, and has largely escaped scrutiny so far, is the role mathematics itself has played in this revolution. Hence the time has come for designers, computational designers and engineers to tease the mathematics out of their respective works, not to merely show how it is done – a hard and futile challenge for the audience – but to reflect on the roots of the process and the way it shapes practices and intellectual agendas, while helping define new directions. This issue of AD asks: Where do we stand today? What is up with mathematics in design? Who is doing the most interesting work? The impact of mathematics on contemporary creativity is effectively explored on its own terms.

Over the last 15 years, contemporary architecture has been profoundly altered by the advent of computation and information technology. The ubiquitous dissemination of design software and numerical fabrication machinery have re-actualised the traditional role of geometry in architecture and opened it up to the wondrous possibilities afforded by topology, non-Euclidean geometry, parametric surface design and other areas of mathematics. From the technical aspects of scripting code to the biomorphic paradigms of form and its associations with genetics, the impact of computation on the discipline has been widely documented. What is less clear, and has largely escaped scrutiny so far, is the role mathematics itself has played in this revolution. Hence the time has come for designers, computational designers and engineers to tease the mathematics out of their respective works, not to merely show how it is done – a hard and futile challenge for the audience – but to reflect on the roots of the process and the way it shapes practices and intellectual agendas, while helping define new directions. This issue of AD asks: Where do we stand today? What is up with mathematics in design? Who is doing the most interesting work? The impact of mathematics on contemporary creativity is effectively explored on its own terms.

Contributors include: Mark Burry, Bernard Cache, Philippe Morel, Antoine Picon, Dennis Shelden, Fabien Scheurer and Michael Weinstock.