I fell down the proverbial rabbit hole when I came across Kostas Terzidis words framing an etymology of ‘design’ in his 2006 published work “Algorithmic Architecture” by Architectural Press. My journey started in chapter one as he explained origins for design, innovation, novelty, and originality as a preservation of their meaning from often abused reference by practitioners discussing their design process. I became intrigued by the end of the chapter when Kostas argues that the investigative nature of design requires a forgetting, to see things as they really are; to erase false connections and return to the origin. This sets the stage as he discussed the potential of algorithms, when solutions are unknown or forgotten, for exploring (problem-addressing) versus its association with a logical mechanism for problem-solving (tied to memory).
With this mindset an algorithmic process could be freed to explore with heuristic and adaptive decision procedures. This embraces the unpredictable, impossible or unknown so they are not feared but can be a launching point for exploration.
