… part of which deserves a closer look

Abstract

It is refreshing to see yet another take on shape grammars and their representations from Knight and Stiny (arq 5/4, pp 355–372), in particular, the distinction made between process and representation, thus facilitating further categorization of a variety of generative design paradigms. The term ‘shape grammar’ as used here refers to very specific representations of shape and computational processes and is often misused. A brief web search turns up many references to shape grammars. Some are unrelated to the work described here; others reference the shape grammarians but describe paradigms which are either not grammars or utilize different representations of shape.