Authorship and automation in digital design culture

The nature of the transformations produced by the diffusion of digital technologies within design, production and construction in architecture is radically reconfiguring the architect’s role as “author”. The contribution aims to analyze the cultural implications of this assumption, examining the consequences that both building process management systems, such as Building Information Modeling, and parametric form-finding strategies by algorithm- based technologies are affecting the traditional authorial model in architectural practice. The text compares some significant theoretical positions and design experiences to highlight the epistemological changes in contemporary approaches to design process which, from an eminently intellectual activity that can be traced back to the work of a single defined author, is seemingly shifting to a different authorship that operates in a collaborative environment, thus determining a co-evolutive relationship between man and computer, to which is delegated an increasingly wide range of autonomy.