Making the Case for ”Architectural Informatics”: A New Research Horizon for Ambient Computing?

Society is undergoing a major digitalization - not at least in the field of architecture. The digitalization of our built environment has also begun to reflect itself in research (see e.g., Cai & Abascal, 2006; Margolis & Robinson, 2007; Greenfield, 2006). At the cross point in-between architecture, urban development, and the digitalization of modern society, there is a major research potential – untapped and ready to be explored. This paper initiates an “architectural informatics” perspective and outlines a research agenda as to address questions of how to better integrate our built environment and digital world. This paper outlines three research themes including: 1) Architectural composition with digital materials (theory development), 2) Architecture for sustainable digitization (development of value ground), and 3) Digitization processes & architecture as social intervention processes (methodology development). Common to these three areas is the overall aim to develop architectural and computational concepts and theories as to address this common area, to find new practice based methods to facilitate new forms of cooperation between engineers, architects and the inhabitants of our built environment, as well as to explore architectural informatics as a phenomenon and opportunity.