The introduction sets out the initial position of text as
design representation. Fundamentally the proposition
is that Chomsky’s dictum – that finite syntax and lexicon
can nevertheless generate an infinite number of useful
(well-formed) structures – can be applied to artificial
languages, and that texts can be written in those
languages to generate architectural objects, taken to
mean ‘well-formed’ configurations of space and form.
This is the generative algorithm and the idea is that
a generative algorithm is a description of the object
just as much as the measurement and analysis of the
object, the illustration of the object and the fact of its
embodiment in the world. Introductory chapter: Coates, P. (2004) ‘Rethinking representation’ in Coates, P. Programming.Architecture. London: Routledge, pp.6-23
