Glitch: practising improper production in architecture

Glitch is a process that disrupts the conventional production of information. Glitches are usually accidental variations of digital processes, creating unexpected and often destructive outcomes. My creative practice explores the way that glitches can be deliberately and methodically integrated into a design process in order to produce unexpected and unconventional outcomes, and to question the centrality of form and program in contemporary architecture. I have explored the use of glitches in my design process across a range of scales and complexities, from the personal to the residential, the urban, the communal and the hypothetical. This body of research, as well as establishing a new process of architectural production, challenges the conventional processes of architectural practice, which are increasingly complicit with regulatory, and often software-driven, compliance. The primary contribution that this research makes is in reframing the role of glitches as a deliberate, and reproducible, architectural design process with an endless array of possibilities that question the prevalent modes of architectural production and regulation. While the use of glitches has been an important creative process in adjacent fields like art and music, its systematic use in architecture is relatively new. The thesis explores this new terrain through a combination of theoretical research, built projects and speculative design to build an integrated body of creative knowledge in this emerging field.