We have reached the end of a decade and a half in which digital computation has given architects new creative opportunities to access the geometrical space opened up by post-17th-century mathematicians. The resulting new wave of interest in the relationship of mathematics to space-making has been aesthetically driven, and yet its expression has transcended the metaphorical. It has found expression from within the process of making as a new species of architecture, and has infiltrated architecture in ways that have forged radical change. What are the philosophical impulses that have led architecture to embrace mathematical thought anew?
Jane Burry is an architect and Senior Research Fellow in the Spatial Information Architecture Laboratory (SIAL) at RMIT University, Melbourne and visiting Senior Research Fellow at QUT, Brisbane. She is lead author of the book The New Mathematics of Architecture, co-authored with Mark Burry, Thames & Hudson, 2010 as part of an Australian Research Council-funded project.