This issue of dearq seeks to shed light on a spectrum of spatial, material, and research practices intertwining architecture, design, and computation. We welcome contributions that address these from critical, de-colonial, and local perspectives, with a non-exclusive focus on Latin America and the rest of the “Global South”.
Recent debates on the role of computation in architectural practice and education tend to be framed within theoretical armatures that originate in the global centers of knowledge and economy. Likewise, dominant discourses on computation in architecture and design often normalize technologies
as autonomous forces that trigger inextricable historical ‘turns.’ It is thus tempting, but questionable, to understand the adoption of these technologies —software, hardware, simulations, algorithms, formal systems, digital fabrication, robotics, etc.— as a one-way process; a linear path between ‘past’ and ‘future’; and, at the same time, between ‘province’ and ‘metropolis’.
