Jean-Nicolas-Louis Durand’s Clockwork
Full Title: Jean-Nicolas-Louis Durand’s Clockwork: Computational Magnification of a 19th Century Procedural Design Mechanism
Contribution to the 2018 Design Communication Association Conference (DCA): Virtual + Actual: Process and Product of Design, Ithaca NY: Cornell University, October 2018.
Abstract:
This article investigates some antecedents of contemporary virtual design processes by translating into a digital procedural model the rules of the composition mechanism of 19th Century French architect Jean-Nicolas-LouisDurand (1760 – 1834). Albeit the existing research, Durand’s lessons and their original compositional techniques have not yet been regarded as a genuine research corpus. Durand centers his teaching on the instruction of what is commonly called the mécanisme – which is a generic and procedural design method articulated in a stepwise procedure directing the architect’s hand in the composition of a project requiring whatever program. This research will analyze and extend the application of the mécanisme. First, it will highlight the original representational setup. Secondly, the research will perform a translation of the mécanisme into a Python script generating 3D models. This allows an execution of the mécanisme in a new context and under (almost) unlimited conditions. The numerous situations generate actual models to confirm the virtual kernel of an analog design system. The research intends to elicit the abstract and generic in Durand’s research object, expand it by pushing beyond what Durand could have imagined in order to suggest a historical background for some aspects of contemporary parametric architecture.
