Analysis and synthesis

Analysis and synthesis 

I've always been fascinated by analysis, by the means that help explain something and the insights they produce. Especially with computers, their ability to calculate large quantities of complex data in quite short times made me believe that computer simulations are the most important contribution of digital means to designing. When it comes to synthesis, however conceptually elegant, automatic generative systems are no match to human creativity yet.

The problem is that the promise of computerised analysis has yet to be fulfilled. Technical progress seems to be limited by the lack of serious interest by those who would benefit from analyses that go beyond the capacities of rules of thumb, normative abstractions and the usual conventional stuff that serves as alibi in architectural design. I spend days in meetings on computational and data-driven approaches that are mostly about decision support but it's unclear where the support is founded on; it's all about the decisions. Well, as far as I'm concerned, analysis is the foundation of any decision, any design action, as well as most communication. Unfortunately, there seems to be an important prerequisite: some goal to be achieved, some constraint to be met, something that requires transparent, effective and reliable reasoning. If synthesis is about other matters, a self-contained exercise, then analysis is a just formality.