Between The Continuous and The Discrete: The Digital In Architecture

The edition “Discrete: Reappraising the Digital in Architecture”, published by “Architectural Design”, aims to reassess the digital in architecture, suggesting a reevaluation of the paradigm of formal continuity and mass customization developed over the past two decades, resulting in unique volumetric forms with a wide variety of construction components. These projects exhibit a high level of personalization and incur significant costs due to their failure to address the scalability of production, which is considered a shortcoming in the economics of parametric design. Building on this premise, this article proposes to conceptualize and discuss the notion of "discrete" in the fields of mathematics, philosophy, and computing, in order to understand it in its essence and create a foundation for subsequent discussions about the digital in architecture. Additionally, it aims to identify and recognize the use of the term "discrete" in the field of architecture from 2016 to 2022.