doi:10.
1093/jdh/epz042
Journal of Design History
© The Author(s) [2019]. Published
by Oxford University Press on
behalf of The Design History
Society. All rights reserved.
Measure, Modulation and
Metadesign: NC Fabrication in
Industrial Design and Architecture
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AnnMarie Brennan
Just as the capabilities of machine tool design influenced the aesthetic form of
streamlined industrial design products during the mechanical age, the embedded
curves and splines of digital software employed by architects today originated in
the offices of automobile and aeroplane manufacturers from the post-war era. The
use and reproduction of smooth, curvilinear forms would not appear in the field of
architecture until many decades after their development within industrial design. The
current relationship between architecture and industrial design is forged through
the innovative use of Computer Numerical Control fabrication and the parametric
procedures and software invented for its use. This article investigates the history of
designing and fabricating complex, curved surfaces in industrial design and architecture
in order to establish the technological and theoretical links between these two fields.
It involves the transfer of technological knowledge amongst a diverse cast of designers,
engineers and architects from multiple continents that took place over a period of
40 years. Moreover, this research claims that the origins of parametric architectural
design can be found in this moment of developing and programming numerically
controlled machines.
Keywords: Andries Van Onck—Olivetti—architecture—media—automobile design—numerical
control machine tools—CAD/CAM—digital fabrication—knowledge transfer—history of
technology—industrial design—machine tool design—Frank Gehry—Pierre Bezier—Greg Lynn
When we think of the prevalence of smooth surfaces and parametric curves in contem-
porary industrial design and architecture, we rarely imagine that their shared techno-
logical origins lay within the art of cutting and machining three-dimensional forms
using numerical control machine tools. For design and engineering offices of automo-
bile and airplane manufacturers in the post-war era, the greatest challenges involved:
the problem of accurately reproducing complex curved surfaces in full-scale models,
the precise transfer of these curves and surfaces to a blueprint and the translation of
this information into a programmable form.1 These problems would coalesce to form
what was known as the ‘blueprint-to-computer challenge’.
Many of the digital tools involving curves and surfaces embedded within con-
temporary design software are the outcome of this challenge. The transcribing of
complex smooth surfaces and their underlining algorithmic source within the field of
industrial design paralleled the emergence of the original technical ensemble of nu-
merical control (NC) machines which combined to resolve the blueprint-to-computer
problem.
Before the use of computers, complex curves were drawn with a tool called a spline: a
flexible strip of wood that was held in place on the drafting table with weights called
‘ducks’. Once the ducks were in order, the tracing of the spline, or ‘lofting’ could take
1
place. Splines were used in naval architecture to draw and cut the curved sections of
the ship hull and keel.2

In car design, the problem of copying, and translating a curve derived from a real,

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full-scale model to one that could be drawn and algorithmically calculated, pro-
grammed and then sent to NC machines was resolved by two engineers working
separately at two different automobile companies; Paul de Casteljau at Citroën and
Pierre Bezier at Renault. Their solution, the Bezier curve, is a computational curve
consisting of two end points attached at each node with control handles that de-
fine the shape of a curve. The important distinction between a spline and a Bezier
curve is that the latter solution is computational; meaning the curve was calculated
from a series of scripted parameters in a mathematical algorithm to create specific
graphic expressions to define objects.3 It is a parametric instrument that functions as
a crucial component in delineating contemporary digitally designed smooth curved
surfaces. It is ubiquitous in digital architectural design today and is considered the
de facto tool for the architectural profession in programs such as AutoCAD, Rhino
or Grasshopper.

The resolution of the blueprint-to-computer challenge by de Casteljau and

Bezier allowed for the precise reproduction and machining of curvilinear surfaces in
metalworking in the field of industrial design in the post-war era. By the 1990s, this
solution migrated to the field of architecture, allowing architects to accurately measure
and digitally reproduce smooth, curved surfaces and foster generative digital designs
of modularity and morphogenesis.

This article demonstrates how technical knowledge and methods from the discip-
line of industrial design were successfully adopted by the field of architecture. It is
premised on the notion that both industrial design and architecture share the in-
herent issue of working in various forms of representational media such as drawing
and models and both disciplines require the transfer of design intentions between
different forms of media. This necessity of transferring information between media
posed a problem, and ultimately an opportunity for both fields. This article presents
the cases of the blueprint-to-computer challenge in industrial design, its resolution
by engineers, and the moment when designers such as Andries Van Onck at the
Olivetti Company began to understand that communications between computers
and numerically controlled machines established a novel way to design using para-
metricism. It continues to connect these cases to a similar model-to-computer chal-
lenge which occured decades later within the architectural discipline, specifically at
the office of Frank O. Gehry. These ideas continue to develop in the theoretical work
of architect Greg Lynn, who seeks different software applications and fabrication
methods from other disciplines to create a type of architecture which anticipates
dynamic and animate forces. This design strategy is similar to that of post-war in-
dustrial designers who conceived of design, like Van Onck, as an environment of
motion, forces and effects arising from manufacturing with fabrication machines.
This article presents a techno-rational history that points to the origins of para-
metric architectural design in the history and development of representing complex
curves for use in automatic NC machine tools. The key, yet common, obstacle in
each of these case studies was the challenge of developing an algorithmic language
to accurately communicate complex curvilinear forms between humans, computers
and NC machines.

NC Fabrication in Industrial Design and Architecture

2
 The problem: blueprint-to-computer challenge
The blueprint-to-computer challenge necessitated the establishment of a mode of
communication for relaying complex instructions for manufacturing between humans

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and machines in the automotive and aeronautical industries. While physical drawings
were a main form of communicating a design through all stages of production, a phys-
ical, full-scale master model served as the standard reference throughout the entire
design and production of these machines.

Translating a preliminary design into a three-dimensional model was a time consum-

ing and labour intensive task that entailed many intuitive steps involving a series
of technical specialists such as stylists, body designers, plasters, tool designers, and
pattern makers. The body designer translated the shape dictated by the stylist into a
model of plywood cross-sections placed approximately 100 mm apart, with contours
made out of clay guided by the plywood contours.4 Despite the careful work directed
toward the creation of this model by technicians, these methods were inaccurate,
with many discussions, modifications, delays and expense in creating a final master
model. This task was followed by the issue of correctly measuring, accurately trans-
ferring, and drafting the curves of the model onto a blueprint however engineers
could not precisely describe a fully-dimensional curved surface with a set of line
drawings.

One of the most significant developments in manufacturing occurred during the late
1950s with the invention of numerically controlled machine tools. Referred to simply
as NC machines, these machines were able to cut complex three-dimensional shapes in
wood or foam using a program of instructions stored onto a punch card and fed into
the machine. These forms, in turn, would be used to machine the tools and dies for
stamping or moulding the bodywork components such as a car fender or aeroplane
fuselage.

The development of numerically controlled machines tools began with a proposal by

the Parson Corporation to the United States Air Force in 1949. The company proposed
to automatically manufacture the templates for the precise production of helicopter
rotor blades by outfitting milling machines with servomechanisms and programming
them using punched tape.5 This work (along with the military funding) would move
to the Servomechanism Lab at MIT, and evolve for the next 20 years into the Milling
Machine Project and other related developments researching numerical control hard-
ware, software, and adaptive control, followed by computer-aided design, graphics
hardware and engineering software.6 ([1]) Basic shapes such as planes, cylinders and
spheres were machined using Automatic Programmed Tooling (APT), a programming
language developed by the Computer Application Group of the Servomechanisms
Laboratory together with the US Air Force and Aircraft Industries Association in 1952.
The program was recorded onto metallic tape fed to the machine, which would then
drive the continuous path of a machine tool.7

Most of the knowledge regarding these technological operations involved break-

ing down the expertise of cutting and forming metal into small tasks; a skill trad-
itionally completed by patternmakers and die-setters.8 The greatest challenge in
this technical process arose when the components to be machined were complex
curved surfaces, for example, for the manufacturing of a fuselage of an aeroplane
that required an accurate, numerical description in which the NC machine could
understand.

AnnMarie Brennan
3
The solutions—De Casteljau and Bezier
The unscientific and arbitrary process of translating one
mode of communication (drawing and model) into a

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complex, curved three-dimensional digital form was
resolved by physicist Paul de Faget de Casteljau, whose
work at the Citroën automobile company in Paris in 1958
changed the manner in which car bodies were mod-
elled.9 At the time, car specialists believed most of the
electrical and mechanical problems of the automobile
were resolved, except for about 5 per cent, which com-
prised the difficult task of calculating the curved surfaces
of component parts.10

According to computer scientist Gerald Farin, the sig-

nificance of de Casteljau’s work was that it closed a
technological gap within NC technology by formulating
an algorithm that allowed for three-dimensional model-
ling capabilities, forming the basis of all Computer Aided
Design (CAD) graphics. It was founded upon the idea
of control points to create curves. His work eventually
evolved into the current standard of modelling creating
what is known today as B-splines, which are lines that
first define, then smooth and blend complex, freeform
curves that cannot be created by using simple geometric
curves such as circles, arcs, or ellipses. Today architects
use b-splines and a further iteration of curves called Non-Uniform Rational B-Splines Fig 1. Photograph of woman
or NURBS, which are surfaces created by a series of connected b-splines using speci- seated and man standing in
front of numerically controlled
fied points and weighted values.11 This process allowed for the total elimination of milling machine at MIT, circa
blueprints based on geometry as a means of communicating a design, and instead 1959. J. Francis Reintjes Papers,
implemented the mathematical configuration of an algorithm. However De Casteljau MC-0489, box 6, folder:
was never awarded recognition of his invention until the 1970s since Citroën did not Miscellaneous Pictures, DSR
allow his results to be published. In the meantime, mechanical and electrical engineer 6873. Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, Department
Pierre Bezier developed a similar solution a few years later at the Renault automobile of Distinctive Collections,
factory. MIT Libraries, Cambridge,
Massachusetts.
Bezier started at the car company in 1933 as a Tool Setter and would advance a year
later to Tool Designer. In 1962, he was appointed Director of the Tool Division where
he was responsible for designing and producing NC drilling and milling machines. It
was during this time that he developed what is known as the Bezier curve. It served as
the basis for an entire process that eliminated much of the time and money lost during
traditional methods of car body modelling and increased the accuracy and smooth-
ness of car body components. The Bezier curve was part of a language developed
for technicians to communicate instructions for the fabrication of complex, curved
surfaces using NC machines and it is still considered the most fundamental parametric
curve form.12

Bezier’s solution, called UNISURF, was an interactive process for numerically defining
space curves and surfaces for draughtsmen and designers. The heart of the UNISURF
system was Bezier’s initial idea to represent a ‘basic curve’ as the intersection of two
elliptic cylinders. The two cylinders were defined inside a parallelepiped, which is a
three-dimensional volume where each of the six faces are parallelograms, also known

NC Fabrication in Industrial Design and Architecture

4
 as a rhomboid. The Bezier curve is parametric, which means that it is formed relatively
and is totally dependent upon, and will change according to, the input of variable data
through the use of control points. Bezier describes how he first envisioned his solution
to the blueprint-to-computer problem in a 1988 article ‘How a simple system is born’.

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Here he equates the realization of the UNISURF solution to the process of rendering a
core or brick, using a technique of the foundry.

The basic idea of UNISURF came from a comparison with a process often used in
foundries to obtain a core: sand being compacted in a box. The shape of the upper
surface of the core is obtained by scraping off the surplus with a timber plank cut
as a template; of course, a shape obtained by such a method is relatively simple
since the shape of the plank is constant and that of the box edges is generally
simple. To make the system more flexible, one might change the shape of the
template at the same time as it is moved. In fact, this idea takes us back to a very
old, and sometimes forgotten, definition of a surface: it is a locus of a curve which
is at the same time moved and distorted.13

Accompanying Bezier’s description is a small sketch showing how a surface is created

by scraping off the excess material with wooden templates.

As the above processes of De Casteljau and Bezier reveal, the origin of smooth sur-
faces in CAD originated within a technical chain of operations for machining metal
into complex curved forms for the automotive industry. Yet the blueprint-to-computer
challenge should not be reduced to being understood as merely a process of cutting
metal. Indeed it was a significant moment in which we can understand UNISURF and
the realization of the Bezier curve as a new mode of information, of mathematical
algorithms which helped to communicate one form of two-dimensional representation
into three-dimensional form using a technological ensemble of machines.

Metadesign
Around the same time as Bezier’s development, the Dutch designer Andries Van Onck
published the 1964 article ‘Metadesign’.14 Van Onck understood the advantages of
NC manufacturing, and was perhaps one of the first designers to fully comprehend
the parametric rules and mathematics behind this method of NC production and the
direct effects and possibilities parametricism offered to form-generation in the design
process. As a student, Van Onck studied with Max Bill at the Hochschule für Gestaltung
(HfG) in Ulm. There he specialized in the field of precision mechanics; dealing with
problems of moving joints in precision engineering, the use of standardized, inter-
changeable parts, and the construction of modular systems.15 On the recommenda-
tion of Tomas Maldonado, Van Onck went to Italy to work as a draughtsman in the
Milanese studio of Ettore Sottsass on the development drawings for the Olivetti main-
frame computer, Elea 9003.16

Underlining Van Onck’s Metadesign theory is a comprehensive understanding of how

curves are created as part of the design and the need for precision in reproducing curves
and smooth surfaces in the manufacturing process. He gained this knowledge while at
the HfG Ulm completing his thesis, ‘Uebergangsbogen und uebergangsflaechen zum
praktischen gebrauch beim industrial design’ (Transition Curves and Transition Surface
Areas for Practical Use in Industrial Design) in June 1961.17 The thesis was intended to
serve as a pedagogical template for a future course on industrial design.

AnnMarie Brennan
5
The thesis consists of three parts: a written volume containing images and diagrams,
a photographic image volume, and a practical project. The first part presents com-
prehensive examples of how to construct transitional arcs and transitional surfaces
using various methods: mathematically, geometrically, mechanically, electronically and

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with the aid of models.18 Illustrations, drawings, formulas, diagrams, tables and pho-
tographs depict these arcs and surfaces as well as multiple types of drawing tools and
machines that reproduced curves including a precision pantograph, compass, ellipse
compass, ellipsograph, ikonograph, harmonic analyser, French curve, cathode ray os-
cilloscope and logarithmic paper.19 Along with a detailed description of the many ways
curves could be constructed, Van Onck listed the formulas to construct circles, ellipses,
parabolas, hyperbolas, catenary curves, sici spirals and Euler curves.20 Throughout the
text he cites various sources in English, German, and Italian, such as Curve e superficie
speciali (1925) by Gino Loria, A History of the Conic Sections and Quadric Surfaces
(1947) by Howell J Collidge, and Das haengende dach [The Hanging Roof] (1954) by
Frei Otto.

The second volume consists solely of black and white photographs illustrating the
problem of transition arcs and surfaces found in parts of classic automobile models.
Some examples include the front grille and top of a 1928 Ford, a window detail from
a 1933 Bentley, a front grille and top of a 1936 Mercedes Benz, the front grille and
headlight of a 1941 Ford Jeep, the front grille with headlight of a 1902 Fiat, and the
side window of a 1948 Cisitalia ([2]). The practical component of the thesis co the ana-
lysis and design of a slide projector and the construction of a full scale model.

In both the thesis and the Metadesign article, Van Onck encompassed cites the work
of W.H. Gres, Die geometrischen varhaeltnisse bei der hestellung unregelmaessiger
flaechen (1953) [The Geometric Conditions in the Production of Irregular Surfaces].
He explains how the mathematician developed a geometry of surfaces produced with
machine tools, serving as an important source relevant to the concept of Metadesign. Fig 2. Andries van Onck,
D’Arcy Thompson’s On Growth and Form (1917) is another important source mentioned Photograph of Cisitalia
in both texts. In a section titled, ‘Distortion of a Cartesian Rectangular Coordinate automobile demonstrating
transition arcs and curves
System’, Van Onck cites a direct quotation from the book, explaining Thompson’s from theoretical Ulm thesis.
means of mapping morphologies using a rectangular grid of equidistant coordinates, Uebergangsbogen und
which alters and deforms shapes of animals in various ways. Van Onck lists the third uebergangsflaechen zum
method described by Thompson, the ‘simple shear’: ‘where the rectangle co-ordinates praktischen gebrauch beim
become ‘oblique’, their axes being inclined to one another at a certain angle …’21 industrial design (Transition
Curves and Transition Surface
Areas for Practical Use in
In the introduction to ‘Metadesign’, Van Onck criticizes the design discipline and its
Industrial Design) June 1961.
focus on the arbitrary association with style and ‘good design,’ and lamenting how the Supervisor Horst Rittel. Photo
formal traits of industrial design projects are considered as either variants of applied credit: Inv.nr Diplom 62.7 ©
arts or the result of market research. He posits an alternative way to assess the success HfG-Archiv Ulm, Museum Ulm.
or failure of designed products based on a rationalized design method
combined with new modes of fabrication.22 Metadesign, according
to Van Onck, is kinematic, meaning it is similar to authentic versions
of streamlined industrial design objects, where its form is determined
according to optimal aerodynamic performance. An example of this is
seen in the shape of a car body or airplane fuselage designed for op-
timal speed, rather than for the simple purposes of styling, evidenced
in objects such as a ‘streamlined’ pencil sharpener. Metadesign is not
dependent on the motion or force of air or water that formed the
most optimized shape of a car, boat, or airplane; rather its kinematics
involved the rotation, smoothing and rounding operations which could
be carried out with NC fabrication machines, defined by Van Onck as:

NC Fabrication in Industrial Design and Architecture

6

Fig 3. Andries van Onck,
experiment using machine tools
to demonstrate the rounding of
quartz cube into a sphere. From
Ulm thesis Uebergangsbogen
und uebergangsflaechen zum
praktischen gebrauch beim
industrial design (Transition
Curves and Transition Surface
Areas for Practical Use in
Industrial Design,) June 1961.
Supervisor Horst Rittel. Photo
credit: Inv.nr Diplom 62.7 ©
HfG-Archiv Ulm, Museum Ulm.
AnnMarie Brennan
[…] the design of the parameters of a system composed of moving elements: be
these points, lines and planes or materials […] Within the limit of the possible
configuration of elements, the variation that best corresponds, according to the
designer, to the needs of the particular case is chosen. The design of this visual-
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formal language will be called metadesign.23
Van Onck was familiar with NC machine tools through his work in the Olivetti Research
Centre, where he conducted experiments on the NC machine tools at the Officina
Meccanica Olivetti in Ivrea. The Olivetti Company was known for its production of type-
writers and calculators; less well-known is the company’s machine tool division which
specialized in manufacturing NC machine tools and later, machining centres.24 The set-
ting of parameters using an algebraic formula became a prerequisite of designing with
computers and a necessity for utilizing NC machines, therefore the form, as Van Onck
claims, is a direct result of NC technology: ‘the NC tool tracked precise automorphisms
(the kinematic patterns related to formal transformations), so it would shift the field’s
understanding of form’.25 This line of thinking parallels that of Gres, who, as Van Onck
notes, contends that traditional projective geometry was not suitable for the system-
atic treatment of surfaces obtainable with the use of NC machine tools. In describing
this new way in which the field could understand form—as a state of becoming and
being formed by machines—Van Onck proposed a novel mode of designing accord-
ing to parametrics with an emphasis on topology. To demonstrate his argument in
the section ‘Metadesign Instruments’, he describes a project conducted at the Olivetti
Central Research Laboratory where a series of quartz cubes were exposed to a constant
abrasive action in a NC machine tool. Every twelve hours a cube was extracted and
replaced with a new one in order to keep constant the quality of cubes in the machine.
The amount of time each cube was inserted into the machine dictated the amount of
curvature on the surface of the cube. The last cube taken out of the machine after 290
hours was so rounded that it was almost spherical ([3]). The result was a iterative se-
quence of objects containing varying degrees of curves made by the machines, while
at the same time the curves were derived from the same family.
Van Onck describes a second experiment performed at Olivetti to discover a similar
‘family’ of curves created through gradations of machining a square form into a circular
one. The experiment demonstrates how ‘a surface of minimum extension, the mem-
brane’s curves are easily accessible to mathematical analysis. The surfaces of minimum
extension and the surfaces of bodies of minimum volume have a constant mean curva-
ture and are [the] subject of many experiments and calculations, especially in the field
of experimental physics and biology’.26 ([4]) Here, he refers to a diagram of Thompson’s
comparing a man’s skull with that of a chimpanzee and a baboon using a grid net,
illustrating how morphologies can be mapped and measured, and how an orthogonal
network of the grid can be effected by algebraic operations.
Van Onck attributed this
new rationalization of
form to the Olivetti system
for Continuous Numerical
Control of Machine Tools,
which ‘process[ed] geo-
metric and technological
information relative to a
work piece and translat[ed]
it into the movement of the
7
tool that executes it’.27 The importance of the Bezier curve and NC
machine tools for the designing and forming of material in industrial
design would continue with the development of more accurate and
powerful machines such as the Computer Numerical Machines (CNC),

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which allowed for programs to be entered and stored into the machine’s
computer using a keyboard rather than punch cards. CNC machines
could also run continuously for 24 hours unlike NC machines. The mass
customization offered by CNC machines tools, and the complex curved
surfaces they afforded, would not be introduced into the field of archi-
tecture until many decades later.

Walt Disney Concert Hall: a ‘model-to-computer’

challenge
Advances in NC machine tools and CAD/CAM technologies eventu-
ally found their way from industrial design and engineering into the
practice of architecture in order to resolve a model-to-computer problem. This paradig- Fig 4. Andries van Onck,
matic shift occurred in the Los Angeles architectural firm of Frank O. Gehry Associates experiment from Ulm theoretical
during the late 1990s. Best-known for his design of the Guggenheim Museum in thesis demonstrating numerical
control machine tool cutting
Bilbao, Gehry’s office would earn the global reputation for its innovative use of meld-
transition between square to
ing old practices of architectural model-making with the application of novel soft- circle form. Uebergangsbogen
ware previously used by the aeronautical industry to create complex and spectacular und uebergangsflaechen zum
building forms. praktischen gebrauch beim
industrial design (Transition
By the early 1990s, Gehry’s designs became so geometrically and structurally Curves and Transition Surface
Areas for Practical Use in
complex that the normal means of creating construction drawings needed to evolve
Industrial Design,) June 1961.
if his projects were to be built. His method of design was analogous to a multi- Supervisor Horst Rittel. Photo
media sculptor; using cardboard, paper and bits of metal to create a scaled model credit: Inv.nr Diplom 62.7 ©
of the design. Problems with this method occurred when the other architects in the HfG-Archiv Ulm, Museum Ulm.
firm attempted to translate Gehry’s three-dimensional physical model into the two-
dimensional form of orthographic plans and sections for construction. This problem
would come to a head with the commission of the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los
Angeles ([5]).

Emergence of digital computing in architecture

Despite the advent of digital computing in architecture at this time, many architects
held a conservative view of the advantages that computing offered. They believed that
CAD would primarily assist in cutting costs in the drafting phase by speeding up the
process and by making it easier to revise and store drawings. Few imagined how the
computer could be used to generate complex curved shapes and allow for the con-
struction of these new forms.28

In Gehry’s office, it soon became clear that digital computing afforded the opportunity
to use a whole new world of complex geometries which were previously prohibited
because they were too difficult to calculate and translate into construction documents,
and impossible to build with standard-sized materials. These advances in digital com-
puting were twofold. First, digital computing allowed the rendering of the building de-
sign in the form of a three-dimensional digital model to be created as a flexible, easily
changeable format available and accessible to a range of participants involved in the

NC Fabrication in Industrial Design and Architecture

8
 Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jdh/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/jdh/epz042/5644025 by University of Victoria user on 08 December 2019
Fig 5. Frank Gehry, Walt
Disney Concert Hall, Los
Angeles, CA., 2003. Photo:
John O’Neill. https://commons.
wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Walt_
Disney_Concert_Hall,_LA,_CA,_
jjron_22.03.2012.jpg.

design and building process. Second, the digital three-dimensional model permitted
the machine manufacture of customized materials to build complex forms using CAD/
CAM technology.

Some members of Gehry’s office set out to resolve this problem by abandoning trad-
itional drawings and substituting them with a digital three-dimensional model. This
model could be used as a general platform of information for all of the parties involved
to access sub-contractors, engineers and consultants. Moreover, the digitalization of
the design allowed for CAD/CAM production, meaning that the architect could send
Computer-Aided Drawings (CAD) directly to a Computer-Aided Manufacturing (CAM)
machine. The computer would then provide directions to a machine to manufacture
the material according to the numerical specifications, therefore bypassing the ne-
cessity for printed, two-dimensional shop drawings in this computer-to-computer
communication.

Despite the later success of Gehry’s office, the transition from hand-drawings to com-
puterized renderings was not an easy one. When Gehry was first awarded the commis-
sion to design the Walt Disney Concert Hall, the office, staffed with about 30 people,
was still using pencils, ink and paper on drafting boards to draw construction docu-
ments. James Glymph was hired as manager to assist in modernizing and reorganizing
the Gehry office. He realized that the basic computer programs of CAD, based on
Euclidean geometric shapes, were inadequate for representing Gehry’s distinctive style
of complex, curved surfaces of non-Euclidean geometries, and therefore the office
required a new type of software.

Gehry was finally coerced into adopting digital methods by the client, the Walt Disney
Concert management, to assure them that his design for the concert hall could be suc-
cessfully constructed. On the recommendation of Harvard Professor William J. Mitchell,
Glymph contacted IBM’s aerospace division where he met Rick Smith and invited him
to work at the Gehry office. Smith, an information technology consultant, was tasked
with the difficult job of introducing digital technology to the firm. With working ex-
perience at Lockheed Aircraft Corporation and IBM, Smith was familiar with the French
company Dassault Systemes; a spinoff of Dassault Aviation and developer of a software
program that would be crucial in the development of Gehry’s work. CATIA, a Computer
Aided Three-Dimensional Interactive Application, was a program which had its origins
in Bezier’s UNISURF NC program. Smith imported his knowledge in design and drafting

AnnMarie Brennan
9
aircraft forms and applied these same computer programs to render Gehry’s architec-
ture into a feasible three-dimensional computer model.

Ironically, Gehry was extremely resistant to embracing the digitalization of his work,

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thinking the computer could not properly copy his sculptural forms and, more import-
antly, he feared losing artistic control of his designs. This hesitation to digitize was not
simply the disposition adopted by an old-school architect; the defiance against the use
of computers was based on the strong disciplinary belief that architectural authority
was embedded within drawings. The young members of the office, fresh from their
university training, were afraid that the adoption of digital computing would auto-
mate their principal function of drafting, rendering their work as merely a technique
rather than the intellectual and artisanal exercise it was believed to be. One employee,
fearing the obsolescence of his drafting skills central to the discipline of architecture,
relayed to Smith the following: ‘The discipline of rolling a pencil in the hand properly
to produce high-quality line work on a drawing is artistic, individualistic and very ful-
filling. This skill is something the computer cannot replace and something we cannot
give up’.29

Despite the office’s resistance to change, the artistic expression of Gehry’s design
required a new, operative medium. Gehry’s usual sculptural method of designing
buildings included quick, preliminary sketches and large physical models. The Walt
Disney Concert Hall model consisted of shards of paper and was about two-feet
tall on a wooden base. Before Smith introduced digitizing techniques to the office,
the staff translated Gehry’s three-dimensional paper model into two-dimensional
drawings. Smith, to his amazement, witnessed the architects projecting a bright
light onto one side of the model which cast a shadow onto a pane of opaque
glass on the other side. A piece of tracing paper was attached to the glass, and an
architect traced the shadow outline with a pencil. This process of transferring three-
dimensional forms onto a two-dimensional surface is an old practice invented by the
Renaissance architect Leon Battista Alberti for the creation of drawing perspective
and the use of reproducing images with the camera obscura.30 The process was
illustrated by Albrecht Dürer in his 1535 book on the instruction of measurement,
and later depicted in an allegorical painting by Karl Friedrich Schinkel in his Origin
of Painting (1830).31

A second apparatus in the Gehry office was a sort of three-dimensional pantograph

implemented to gather dimensions from the model. First developed by Alberti to
measure three-dimensional sculptures in order to reproduce them, the Finitorium
consisted of a wood frame with a large, round measuring device placed over the
physical model.32 A plumb line with weighted pointer would then be lowered onto
key points on the physical model. In a similar manner using a grid frame hovering
above the model, the architects measured the dimensions using coordinates of the
grid and the length of the string in an attempt to map the form in three dimen-
sions.33 Since the sculptures Alberti was measuring were in-the-round, his device
had an arm rotating around a disc at measured intervals. Over 500 years old, these
same Renaissance methods were implemented in Gehry’s office to create a concert
hall project that, upon its completion in 2003, would cost an estimated US$274
million.

Smith, in his attempt to bring the office into the twenty-first century with the use
of computers, continually ran into resistance in the Gehry office. The architects

NC Fabrication in Industrial Design and Architecture

10
 experienced difficulty in imagining the building in three dimensions once the infor-
mation was ultimately translated into a three-dimensional digital model, and repeat-
edly asked to view the building using the orthographic plans and sections; a method
of understanding architecture that was ingrained through their tertiary training that

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remained into practice.34

Gehry continued to design using physical models, and eventually, Smith convinced the
architect to bring a FARO Digitizer into the studio; a technology primarily used in indus-
trial design that employs a mechanical arm to map coordinates projected onto an ac-
curate, physical comparison model overlaid with a laser grid. These digital coordinates
created a three-dimensional digital model, which would then be imported into the
CATIA software program. This information was used by subcontractors and CAD/CAM
fabricators to manufacture over 12,000 pieces of customized steel for the concert hall,
all differing in shape, size and weight. From the initial design to the completion of the
building, the entire process to complete the Walt Disney Hall took 16 years—yet this
episode marks the moment in which architecture finally adopted the design and fabri-
cating methods that were already a part of the industrial design industry for 30 years.

The anxiety of losing control of the design process and the authority of the architect
would eventually drive Gehry and his office to develop a form of CAD software called
Digital Project. It was a CATIA-based software application sold to architects as a user-
friendly interface to send information directly to the manufacturer.35 The software fully
exploited the advantages of using a digital three-dimensional model in lieu of draw-
ings, yet the power and control of the design would remain with the architect.

‘Continuous Differentiation’
While Gehry Architects was one of the first firms to exploit the opportunities presented
through the use of digital computing and the mass customization of building parts
manufactured using CAD/CAM technology, the architect who adopted and developed
the theories behind these technological developments, echoing many of Van Onck’s
earlier claims, is Greg Lynn.36 In 1992, he launched his architectural office FORM in Los
Angeles after working in New York. Lynn is more recently noted for curating the 2013
blockbuster exhibition at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Archaeology of the
Digital, which traces some key projects in the history of computing in architecture.37 His
office portfolio is a transdisciplinary range of work which includes buildings, furniture,
tea sets, environments and even a series of catamarans.

His interest in curves was fostered by an encounter with a fellow graduate student at
Princeton University, who introduced Lynn to German-manufactured splines made of
rubber strips and aluminium discs. During the late 1980s, this interest in splines trans-
lated into the digital when a spline tool was offered in Microstation software (CAD),
allowing him to model roadways and earthworks using splines.38 Soon after, he started
to experiment with film animation software such as Alias, Softimage and Maya since
these programs possessed similar geometric and calculus-based geometric models:

I realised that contemporary software packages could be animated because the

geometric engines such packages were using were calculus-based. You could
move an object and then interpolate a whole collection of variables into infini-
tesimally smaller steps. The points in space were fluid due to the calculus rela-
tionships of variables, and this was giving form and shape to the models…in [my
book] Animate Form, [I] focused my thinking on the revolution in motion, and only

AnnMarie Brennan
11
 later realised that the real revolution was in the use of a 300-year old invention:
calculus.39

Alias was of particular interest to Lynn, as well as industrial designers at General Motors

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and film animators at Universal Studios, since it was easy to use. By 1989, automo-
bile companies such as Honda, Volvo and BMW were designing cars using Alias.40
In 1996, Alias joined with another animation company called Wavefront, forming
AliasWavefront.

Lynn began to develop the concept of ‘blob’ architecture by using the Meta-Balls
program in the Explorer 3Design animation software by Wavefront Technologies.
He experimented with a type of geometry called isomorphic polysurfaces. Referred
to as ‘meta-clay’, ‘meta-balls’ or simply as ‘blobs’ in the animation industry, these
topological geometries contain surfaces that can be shaped and formed by various
local forces. These iterative, modulated series of curved blobs are similar to the
cubes that shared similar curves from the same family in Van Onck’s experiment at
Olivetti, exemplifying his theory of Metadesign. But rather than being formed by the
tumbling and machining of NC machines, Lynn’s blobs are shaped by film animation
software ([6]).

Lynn continued to discover the possibilities of other modelling programs by experi-

menting with Wavefront 3Design, Dynamation, Kinamation and Alais PowerAnimator;
technologies that originated from Silicon Graphic computer hardware.41 Yet Lynn’s
expertise does not lie with the attachment to one particular software, rather it is his
ability to integrate existing software packages with CNC machines that drives most
projects.

One of the first coherent designs to feature blobs and their transformation includes the
Embryological House; a project that originated from a discussion with an automobile
manufacturer on the possibility of mass producing bespoke-designed cars. Lynn’s office
had been working on designing a house that could be manufactured in a factory using
production methods from the auto industry. This line of thought resulted in a series of
houses that engages with the issues of ‘brand identity and variation, customization and
continuity, flexible manufacturing and assembly, and most importantly an unapologetic
investment in the contemporary beauty and voluptuous aesthetics of undulating sur-
faces rendered vividly in iridescent and opalescent colors’.42 The Embryological Houses

Fig 6. Greg Lynn, iterations

of forms for the mass-
customization project,
Embryological House, ca. 1999.
Lynn used Microsoft Station
software to establish the form
parameters. To blend and
smooth the surfaces, these
geometrical files were then
imported to Maya, a software
used by automotive and
aeronautic industries at the time.

NC Fabrication in Industrial Design and Architecture

12
 are iterative, unique blob-like forms defined by an envelope composed of 2,048 panels,
9 steel frames and 72 aluminium struts brought together with a monocoque shell.
These parts are manufactured with technologies borrowed from automotive, naval,
and aeronautical design industries. Each part of the house mutates, creating a scenario

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where no two panels are alike and are fabricated using computer-controlled robotic
processes.43 This entails ball hammered aluminium, high pressure water jet cutting,
plastic roto-molding, vacuum-formed PETG plastic and three axis CNC milling of wood
and composite board.

Similar to other projects designed in the FORM office, such as the Tongue machined
surfaces for a multi-functional furniture system, the volumes of the Alessi tea and cof-
fee sets, or the Pretty Good Life Showroom, the envelope of the Embryological Houses
are formed by a logic of the CNC machines and provide an artisanal, unique crafted
quality to surfaces. As Lynn claims, ‘the limits and numerical constraints of computer
controlled robots are also built into the software giving the panels their limit of size and
shape’.44 The result is a volume defined as a flexible surface that presents opportunities
for patterning, articulating and decorating.

A defining slogan of parametricism in architecture is the term ‘continuous differ-

entiation’. The phrase, originally derived from Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s A
Thousand Plateaus and reappropriated by Lynn, marks the distinction between what
the theorists deemed as smooth and striated space. Lynn defines continuous differenti-
ation by explaining the process in which the surface of a perfect digital sphere is also a
‘blob’or a non-standard form, without difference. While not specifically citing the work
of Van Onck and Metadesign, Lynn’s similar insights into the fluidity of parametricism,
motion, kinematics and non-Euclidian geometry informed a new approach to design
that allowed innovations in digital computing—hence the name of his book—Animate
Form.45

The meaning of ‘animate form’ for Lynn is the difference between the abstract space
of architectural design—which is ‘conceived as an ideal neutral space of Cartesian
coordinates’—to other design fields. For example in naval design, the ship hull is ‘con-
ceived as an environment of force and motion rather than as a neutral vacuum’.46
Unlike the static space of architecture, these abstract surfaces of design factor in dy-
namic properties such as movement, turbulence, flow, viscosity and drag. The surface
of a hull is designed to move through water; its curved smooth shape anticipates the
animate forces of water and wind. Moreover the hull, Lynn notes, ‘does not change
its shape when it changes its direction […] but variable points of sail are incorporated
into its surface’.47 Based on the optimized surfaces of ships, airplanes and automobiles,
Lynn proposes that architecture should begin to adopt this same strategy of designing
form—one that is dynamic, based on moving forces, optimal performance and located
in the field of industrial design.

These concepts are embodied in the way a curved line is drawn. In Animate Form,
Lynn demonstrates the difference between a traditional Cartesian-based curve and an
animate one by showing us two similar lines constructed by two different methods
([7]). The first line is a composite curve defined by a fixed radius with the connected
segments occurring at points of tangency delineated by a line connecting the radii.
A second curved line is similar, but constructed by using spline geometry, where the
radii are substituted with weighted control vertices through which the curved spline
flows.48 The lines and smooth surfaces that make up a continuous differentiation not
only appear fluid, but are values ‘composed of a continuous stream of relative values’.49

AnnMarie Brennan
13
This approach toward the generation of complex forms and surfaces in architecture is
not particular to this contemporary moment. As Van Onck pointed out in 1964, complex
surfaces and forms could be found in the pre-computing work of ‘Metadesigners’;
whether it was the catenary structures of Antonio Gaudi, the modulated forms of Le

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Corbusier, or the furniture designs of Gerrit Rietveld. These designers used innova-
tive modes of modulation and measurement to achieve the final outcome; construct-
ing families of geometric rules and parameters. What has changed throughout these
moments is the mode and medium of representation of complex geometries, specif-
ically curves. Today, the full digitalization of the design and fabrication process allows
for the generation of complex forms to be rapidly and precisely developed as an algo-
rithmic expression, and a reciprocal relationship with the final execution of these digital
designs in their precise and innovative fabrication.

Fig 7. Page from Greg Lynn’s

1999 book, Animate Form. It
illustrates two different methods
to construct the same curve. The
top composite curve is created
by the traditional geometrical
method of defining a fixed
radius. The bottom curve is
parametric, meaning that it is
drawn using spline geometry,
where radii are replaced with
control vertices containing
handles and weights.

NC Fabrication in Industrial Design and Architecture

14
 AnnMarie Brennan
Senior Lecturer of Design Theory, Melbourne School of Design, University of
Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, 3010, Australia
E-mail: brea@unimelb.edu.au

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AnnMarie Brennan is Senior Lecturer of Design Theory at the University of Melbourne.
Her teaching and research investigate the history and theory of twentieth- and twenty
first-century design and architecture, with focused interest into the political economy
of design, machine culture and the intersection of media and architecture. Some of
her publications include Perspecta 32: Resurfacing Modernism (MIT Press), Cold War
Hothouses: from Cockpit to Playboy (Princeton Architectural Press) and journal articles
in AA Files, Journal of Design History, Design and Culture, Candide, Inflection, Journal
of the Society of Architectural Historians and Interstices.

Acknowledgements: I would like to extend my gratitude to the editors and peer-reviewers of this
paper for their constructive insights, criticism, and encouragement. I thank Jasmin Al-Kuwaiti, Junior
Museum Assistant and Martin Mäntele, Director of the HfG Ulm-Archive for their assistance in
retrieving the Van Onck archival material and providing permission to publish his images. I am also
grateful for the assistance and image permissions provided by Nora Murphy, Archivist for Researcher
Services in the Department of Distinctive Collections at MIT Libraries.

Notes 9 Hanns Peter Bieri, Hartmut Prautzsch, ‘Preface’, Computer

1 The industries involved in the blueprint-to-computer chal-
lenge included companies such as the aircraft manufacturers
North American Aviation and Boeing, engineers at MIT, and
car manufacturers General Motors, Citroën and Renault.
Aided Geometric Design, 16 (1999), 580.
10 Paul de Faget de Casteljau, ‘De Casteljau’s autobiography:
My time at Citroën’, Computer Aided Geometric Design,
16 (1999), 583.

2 Gerald Farin, ‘A History of Curves and Surfaces in CAGD’,
in Handbook of Computer Aided Geometric Design, eds.
G. Farin, J. Hoschek and M.S. Kim (Boston, MA: North
Holland/Elsevier, 2002), 7.
3 For the history of the use of parametric algorithms in archi-
tectural design, see John Frazer, ‘Parametric Computation.
History and Future’, Architectural Design, vol. 86, no. 2,
2016: 18–23.
4 Pierre Bezier, ‘Style, Mathematics and NC’, Computer-
Aided Design, vol. 22, no. 9, Nov. 1990: 524.
5 John E. Ward, ‘Numerical Control of Machine Tools’, in
McGraw Hill Yearbook of Science and Technology (New
York: McGraw Hill: 1968), 58–65.
6 Douglas T. Ross, ‘Origins for the APT Language for
Automatically Programmed Tools’, Association for
Computing Machinery (ACM) SIGPLAN Notices, Vol. 13,
No. 8, August 1978: 65.
7 Douglas T. Ross, ‘Origins of the APT Language…’, 61–99.
8 Norman Saunders, ‘Computer-Aided Design (CAD) in the
Boeing Airplane Division in Renton’, in Reflections on the
History of Computing, ed. A. Tatnall, IFIP AICT 387 (Berlin:
Springer, e-book, 2012), pp. 49.
11 Paul de Faget de Casteljau, ‘De Casteljau’s autobiography:
My time at Citroën’, Computer Aided Geometric Design,
16 (1999), 583.
12 Farin, ‘A History of Curves and Surfaces in CAGD’, 7.
13 P. Bezier, ‘How a Simple System Was Born’, in Curves and
Surfaces for Computer Aided Geometric Design. A Practical
Guide, ed. Gerald Farin (Boston: Academic Press, [1988],
1993), 7.
14 Andries Van Onck, ‘Metadesign’, Edilizia Moderna, 85
(1964): 52–57.
15 Andries Van Onck, Letter from Van Onck to the Director
the the Durst AG Factory (a photomechanical equipment
company) dated 20/2/1959. PA 428, Brief 20/02.1959 van
Onck an Durst AG, HfG-Ulm Archive.
16 Andries Van Onck and H. Takeda, Adventures and
Misadventures of Design, (Florence: Alinea Editrice: 2005:
5–8, 170). On the collaboration between Olivetti and the
HfG Ulm school for the Elea computer, see Elisabetta Mori,
‘Ettore Sottsass jr. e il design dei primi computer Olivetti’,
AIS/Design, no. 1 March 2013. (Accessed 11 December
2015) http://www.aisdesign.org/aisd/ettore-sottsass-jr-e-
il-design-dei-primi-computer-olivetti. Also, see AnnMarie
Brennan, ‘The Work of Design and the Design of Work:

AnnMarie Brennan
15
 Olivetti and the political economy of its early computers’,
in Computer Architectures: Constructing the Common
Ground, 1945–1980, eds. Theodora Vardouli and Olga
Touloumi (Abington: Routledge, forthcoming 2019).
17 Andries Van Onck, ‘Uebergangsbogen und uebergangs-
flaechen zum praktischen gebrauch beim industrial de-
sign’, thesis, 1961. HfG Ulm archive.
18 Traditional arcs are curves that connect a straight line with
a circular arc or two circular arcs. These types of curves are
unique as they possess a different radius of curvature at
each point.
19 Invented in 1603 by Christoph Scheiner, the pantograph
is a tool, based on the geometry of the parallelogram,
used to mechanically reproduce and enlarge or reduce
an image or drawing. The tool became obsolescent with
the invention of blueprinting paper around 1900. See
Susan C. Piedmont-Palladino, ed. Tools of the Imagination:
Drawing Tools and Technologies from the Eighteenth
Century to the Present (New York: Princeton Architectural
Press, 2002), 81–83. An ellipsograph is a mechanical tool
used to accurately draw ellipses. Albrecht Dürer invented a
type of compass to draw ellipses in 1540. As there are mul-
tiple methods to draw an ellipse, Van Onck’s thesis includes
images of a few different types of elliptical drawing tools.
See: https://drawingmachines.org/category.php?id=32.
The harmonic analyser was a type of mechanical Fourier
analyzer, meaning a machine that originally examined and
charted the timbre of musical instruments using a pen
or stylus and sinusoidal waveforms. Van Onck pictured a
harmonic analyser made by the German brand Ott. See
Robert K. Otnes, ‘Notes on Mechanical Fourier analyz-
ers’, Journal of the Oughtred Society, vol. 7, no. 1, 2008:
37–39. A French curve also known as a ‘ship’s curve,’ or
the name of its German inventor, Ludwig Burmester, and
referred to simply as Burmester’s curves. He published a
set of French curve templates in his 1904 book Lexikon
der gesamten Tecnik. The French curve tool is a template,
originally made of wood, metal, or plastic, consisting of a
series of sici spirals and conics used for drafting free-form
curves. Logarithmic graph paper is a sheet of paper con-
taining a grid of horizontal and vertical linear scales in
order to plot curves using a set of data. Unlike the previous
mechanical drawing tools, the cathode ray oscilloscope
is an electronic machine implemented to visualize, using
waveforms on a screen, the changes in electrical signals
over time. See https://circuitglobe.com/cathode-ray-oscil-
loscope-cro.html.
20 Van Onck, citing Fritz Hohenberg, Konstruktive Geometrie in
der Technik, (Vienna: Springer, 1956), 44 and Karl Strubecker,
Einführung in die Höhere Mathematik. [Introduction to
Higher Mathematics] Band 1: Grundlagen. (Munch/Vienna:
R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1956), 350, defines a hyperbola as
16
a smooth curve lying in a plane formed by the intersection
of a rotary (double-inverted) cone with a flat surface that is
parallel to the cone axis. Van Onck, ‘Uebergangsbogen und
uebergangsflaechen …’, p. 22. Citing Strubecker, Van Onck
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describes a catenary curve as a ‘hyberbolic cosine line sym-
metrical to the y-axis’. The U-shaped curve is created by sus-
pending a rope or chain (which may be weighted) between
two points with only gravity acting on it and assumes its
shape when in equilibrium. Van Onck, ‘Uebergangsbogen
und uebergangsflaechen …’, p. 23. The most notable use
of catenary curves is in the model Antonio Gaudi built to
configure the arches for his Sagrada Familia Cathedral in
Barcelona. See http://dataphys.org/list/gaudis-hanging-
chain-models/. A sici spiral, which resembles the formation
of a nautilus shell, and the Euler curve/spiral (also known as
the Cornu spiral) are complex, antisymmetric spirals based
on the Fresnel integral. Van Onck, cites A. Cornu, and the
Ernesto Cesàro (1859–1906), the creator of the Cesàro
equation, which can express a curve in terms of its arc length
function and radius of curvature. He notes that Sici spirals,
also known as Cornu spirals, are used in road designs, such
as on/off-ramps that merge with a curved highway and can
be formed using parametric equations. See Raph Levien,
The Euler spiral: a mathematical history, Technical Report
No. UCB/EECS-2008–111, 2008, http://www.eecs.berkeley.
edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2008/EECS-2008–111.html.
21 D’Arcy Thompson, On Growth and Form (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press: 1917), 1040. Cited in Van Onck,
‘Uebergangsbogen und uebergangsflaechen…’, p. 2.06.
22 Van Onck, ‘Metadesign’, 52.
23 Van Onck, ‘Metadesign’, 57.
24 For a 1968 Italian documentary film directed by Aristide Bosio
and cinematography by Carlo Ventimiglia on the Numerical
Control Division for the Olivetti Marketing, see: https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWNdrm-TMFI&list=PL15B-
32H5GlL2MaHAbSzq5p802TPj46qI&index=53, accessed 18
August 2018.
25 Van Onck, ‘Metadesign’, 57.
26 Van Onck, ‘Metadesign’, 56.
27 Van Onck, ‘Metadesign’, 56.
28 William J. Mitchell, ‘Roll Over Euclid: How Frank Gehry
Designs and Builds’. Frank Gehry, Architect, eds. Mildred
Friedman and J. Fiona Ragheb (New York: Guggenheim
Museum Publications, 2001), 354.
29 Rick Smith, Fabricating the Frank Gehry Legacy. The Story
of the Evolution of Digital Practice in Frank Gehry’s Office,
2017, e-book, location 1194.
30 Leon Battista Alberti, On Painting and On Sculpture: the
Latin texts of De picture and De statua, Cecil Grayson,
trans. (London: Phaidon, [1464], 1972).
NC Fabrication in Industrial Design and Architecture
31 Albrecht Dürer, Underweysung der Messung [Instruction of 39 Ingebord, Rocker, ‘Calculus-Based Form: An Interview with
the Measurement], (Portland, OR.: Collegium Graphicum, Greg Lynn’, AD 76, no. 4, July/August 2006: 89–90.
[1525], 1972), 180–181. Also see: https://commons.
40 Ingebord, Rocker, ‘Calculus-Based Form: An Interview with
wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Underweysung_der_

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Greg Lynn’, AD 76, no. 4, July/August 2006: 89–90, 95.
Messung. A digital image of Schinkel’s Origin of Painting,
1830 can be viewed at: https://theartstack.com/artist/ 41 Greg Lynn, Folds, Bodies & Blobs: Collected Essays (Brussels:
karl-friedrich-schinkel/origin-of-painting-1830. La letter volée: 1998), 163–164.
32 Leon Battista Alberti, De Statua, 1464. Plate 69, https:// 42 Greg Lynn and Hani Rashid, Architectural Laboratories
archive.org/details/dellaarchitettur00albe_665/page/n483 (Rotterdam: NAi Publishers, 2002), 11.
33 Smith, Fabricating the Legacy…,1221. 43 Greg Lynn and Hani Rashid, Architectural Laboratories
(Rotterdam: NAi Publishers, 2002), 12.
34 Smith, Fabricating the Legacy…, 1245.
44 Greg Lynn and Hani Rashid, Architectural Laboratories
35 In 2014 Gehry Technologies was acquired by Trimble. Their
(Rotterdam: NAi Publishers, 2002), 13.
software is available as a free download.
45 Greg Lynn, Animate Form (New York: Princeton
36 Patrik Schumacher, ‘Parametricism as Style – Parametricist
Architectural Press, 2000).
Manifesto’, presented and discussed at the Dark Side Club,
11th Architecture Biennale, Venice, 2008. www.patrikschu- 46 Greg Lynn, Animate Form (New York: Princeton
macher.com/Texts/Parametricism Architectural Press, 2000), 10.
37 A comprehensive website containing interviews, videos, and 47 Greg Lynn, Animate Form (New York: Princeton
articles from the CCA exhibition can be found at: https:// Architectural Press, 2000).
www.cca.qc.ca/en/events/38273/archaeology-of-the- 48 Greg Lynn, Animate Form (New York: Princeton
digital-complexity-and-convention. Architectural Press, 2000), 21.
38 Ingebord, Rocker, ‘Calculus-Based Form: An Interview with 49 Greg Lynn, Animate Form (New York: Princeton
Greg Lynn’, AD 76, no. 4, July/August 2006: 89–90. Architectural Press, 2000), 20.

AnnMarie Brennan
17