Shape Computation: Fifty Years, 1972-2022

By Sotirios Kotsopoulos SM '00 (Springer Nature, 2025). chapter by Terry W. Knight, the William and Emma Rogers Professor of Design and Computation in the Department of Architecture This book provides a panorama of "shape computation" and "shape grammars," a computational theory that has, from its inception 50 years ago, been directed toward the "how" of design. Knight's chapter, "How is that? Computing the Temporality of Drawing," describes how process and time are key to studying, appreciating, designing, and making things. She notes that in creative production it is not only important to ask, "What is that?" but also "How is that?", in other words, how did or how can a thing come to be? As a process carried out over time, computation offers a means for rethinking, representing, and elevating the "how" in designing and making activities.