Rules have always played a paramount role in architectural theory and practice. Quite often, explicit and articulate as in sets of instructions in urban codes, and other times hidden and disguised in habits of actions, rules dominate design processes. Simple design preferences or critical choices among alternatives are often based on intricate webs of encoded rules. Paramount in this world making is the notion of rule as a construct that allows multiplicity of interpretations, welcomes ambiguity and facilitates emergence in design understanding.

This series of graduate elective studios is structured around the notions of complexity, ambiguity and emergence and the ways both can inform design computation, that is, seeing and doing in design. Within a common boundary of inquiry existing key theories of centrality, linearity, growth, and order are questioned and juxtaposed to constructive, generative alternatives. Within the same context parallel compositional processes in music are brought forward to inform design inquiry and form making.