The increasing emphasis on building performance
and the underlying digital simulation technologies
are fundamentally redefining expectations
of the building design, its processes, and
practices. Performative architecture is emerging
in such context as a design paradigm in which
building performance, broadly understood in
financial, social, cultural, spatial, physical and
material terms, becomes a guiding design principle.
This shift from pure form-making to what
could be described as “performative formalism”
requires, at a purely instrumental level, yet-to-bemade
digital design tools that can provide dynamic
processes of formation based on specific performative
aspects of design. There is a currently
an abundance of digital analytical tools that can
help designers assess certain performative
aspects of their projects post-facto, i.e. after an
initial design is developed, but none of them provide
dynamic generative capabilities that could
open up new territories for conceptual exploration
in architectural design.