Computational design in architecture: Defining parametric, generative, and algorithmic design

Abstract Computation-based approaches in design have emerged in the last decades and rapidly became popular among architects and other designers. Design professionals and researchers adopted different terminologies to address these approaches. However, some terms are used ambiguously and inconsistently, and different terms are commonly used to express the same concept. This paper discusses computational design (CD) and proposes an improved and sound taxonomy for a set of key CD terms, namely, parametric, generative, and algorithmic design, based on an extensive literature review from which different definitions by various authors were collected, analyzed, and compared.