Your description of Catalytic Design reminds me of Norman Crowe's Nature and the Idea of a Man-Made World. I believe it is in this book where the author describes the fractal nature of a seashore: green-to-blue; land-to-water; wave-to-ripples in the sand; grain of sand-to-water drop; sand molecule-to-water molecule.

Perhaps Genius Loci: Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture is another resource, although I personally have never read it.

Yona Friedman's Towards a scientific architecture could be a good example of what you are calling algorithmic.

Id love to know what you think rational design is.

rational design is a mix of McHargian principals with a mix of modernist (a la Rowe) formal movements that attempt to base each design move on specific requirements/inputs/results. much of the 'sustainable' design stuff is quasi rational. its easier to be 'rational' when you are dealing with planning and ecology (ie McHarg).

The Rational Design Process

As A Paradigm this Philosophy:
-assumes the fundamental significance of though and reason
-represents a belief in reality embedded in pure logic and sicence
-explicitly relates all the operating factors into a comprehensive whole including the factors fo cost and effect

The Rational Design Process Approach to Problem Solving
-based on critical thinking founded in research, analysis and synthesis
-is focused on problem solving
-it relates form to function [ie the modernist credo]
it can be predictable and duplicated

The Essences of the Rational Approach to Design
-Experiential via Critical Observation and evaluation
-Based on an understanding of Pure Design of Form, Color, Texture and Space Relationships
-It Is Researched, Analyzed and Synthesized

Is Fundamentally a Left Brain Function
- Prof. David Pitt

what about metabolic, but perhaps that could catalytic? i actually like the Neri Oxman, Neil Spiller, Rachel Armstrong approach...even though it's been getting hammered here lately.

http://www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/people/A_armstrong_rachel.htm

i guess i am curious about these processes and what happens when processes are disrupted by another process...

just found out that my citation above is incorrect - the original design paradigms lecture was written by Steven Roos, not Dave Pitt.

Beta, that is an interesting twist. I don't think there is such a thing as a pure design process outside of school.

Lecture sounds really interesting.

A lot of schools focus (often militantly) on one process and fail to explain that there are different ways to go about designing.

Traditional schools seem to stick with the first two paradigms while giving a little bit of time to the third. A lot of stuff I see at, say Columbia, tips more towards "Catalytic" & "Algorithmic" design.

I come at this from a pretty isolated place, but it seems to me that algorithmic design relies on devices of the older paradigms in order to come to fruition. We create an algorithm based off our intuition (this will make some pretty cool geometry) or a rational set of conditions (this will cut sunlight on this side or make every piece of the structure identical) or even typology (I want it to look biological).

Does anyone go beyond that and say, use a program to determine a set of abstract conditions that must be met and then code to what the computer itself generates? Thinking beyond this type of (maybe?) worthless abstraction, what if you had a BIM model of a city or building that actually gave you conditions to design to. Would this be, or could it lead to, a new type of paradigm?

Also, with algorithmic design, does anyone ever critique the final design (success) based purely on the elegance of the code or its processing efficiency? Would this be more appropriate if we wanted to work exclusively within the algorithmic paradigm? And again, is this a useful path for architects to pursue? It seems like, at the end of the day, we still evaluate this success based off the expressive form created (the critique of which is often intuitive or philosophical in nature) or how it addresses the function and site (tending towards the "rational"). Is this appropriate in all situations?

I'm really interested in what you're calling "catalytic" design as well. I am weary of the possibility of seeing architects turn into programmers who enter data-sets into the computer and spit out designs without really thinking about what they're doing. On the other hand, there’s a potential to really revolutionize the field and make us more relevant to people outside the profession.

Also, there’s the play between each of these types of thinking. There's a lot of overlap.

Personally, sitting down and coding just feels really different from the way I was taught to design. At the same time, I can see how it can be really useful for rapid prototyping or for seeing long-term repercussions of a design move. If you've got a good grasp of coding, plus a solid traditional design background, you've got a larger tool box from which to work.

Sorry for the rambling post... Just thinking out loud. Your paradigms sound like a good start to me!

Minimal, if we're going to go with the whole classifications deal...

Having floundered in the world of phenomenology for awhile now, I think you could put it in the more intuitive realm of design. Catalytic, as Barry is describing it, is a different animal altogether.

patrick shumacker has theorized "parametricism" and recently at UCLA there was an amazing lecture line up about this realm of work, i think you should most certainly look up those lectures online to be aware of the current thinking on this topic, which has in fact been discussed in depth.