Design Ecosystems: Customising the Architectural Design Environment with Software Plug-ins

As a preface to this section dedicated to the rise of plug-ins, Daniel Davis and Guest-Editor Brady Peters describe the shift in architectural culture that has seen the adoption of scripting interfaces - once the preserve of CAD specialists - spread to designers using code to create geometry and find form. They explain how this defines an entirely new landscape in which ‘cathedrals’ (monolithic applications) are challenged by ‘bazaars’ (generative-modelling editors) populated by animal-named plug-ins, where architects become the formulators rather than just the end users of programs.