Ethics and the auto-generative design process

In the last decade, the rise of sophisticated software tools has enabled a growing number of designers to experiment with new processes for the creation of architectural form. Several of these processes, which are loosely grouped under the rubric ‘auto-generative’, rely on the computer to evolve extraordinary biomorphic or topographic forms. In the years since the rise of this approach, prominent members of the architectural community have embraced the computer-generated buildings produced in this way and praised them as being the products of an innately ethical or moral design process. This supposition is tested through a critical textual analysis of several high-profile architects' statements and is focused exclusively on accounts of the design process and not on the buildings that are produced in this way. A three-part conceptual framework is developed for the ethical analysis of a creative or constructive process. Evidence is used selectively to interrogate the claims made about this movement from a moral or an ethical standpoint.