Collective Intelligence as Responsive Design

Parametric design environments (Building Information Modeling) are transforming architects into agents of their own systems, at the expense of systemic logics too complex for us to control. This agency is often defined by a system devoid of adaptive or responsive tools. The work in this paper proposes a hypothetical response to this condition by designing ‘glue’ for components of software to integrate new forms of information for a user. Author Mario Carpo has recently outlined three-scenarios for these types of parametric inputs through the idea of ‘split agency’ (Carpo 2011).