Dr Ana Cocho-Bermejo, assistant director of the UIC Barcelona School of Architecture and member of the UIC Barcelona Genetic Architectures Research Group (GERNARQ), has, alongside Dr Ramón Sastre from the Architectural Innovation and Technology Laboratory (LITA; Barcelona Tech), coordinated the most recent issue of the e-journal archiDOCT, which features articles that explore the idea of relational thinking in architectural design.
The main aim of this issue is to highlight the doctoral research that deals with design processes of open-ended scenarios in which technology plays a major role, as nowadays there seems to be a consensus about current design issues, which emerge towards variability that is explored through computation .
The authors of the articles are not only engaged with concepts such as variability, parametric design, digital media, algorithmic design, continuity and digital materialisation and fabrication techniques, but also concepts within the post-parametrics era and the definition of the respective discourse. Contemporary advances in systems based on continuous variation triggered by the intelligence of their components interacting with each other are currently proposed as the cause for the emergent properties that will shape architectural design.
ArchiDOCT is a peer-reviewed e-journal that aims to foster, improve and promote doctoral research in architecture. The originality of this endeavour resides in the fact that the authors of the published essays are doctoral students in architecture and that the journal is an educational mentoring tool which aims to improve the writing skills of the authors through peer review, in efforts to produce academically coherent, meticulous texts.
