[elihu]

> The flawed output here, and the comments, help us point out what some of the missing variables are: egress, airflow, construction cost, etc.

...or maybe illustrate that some of the existing external constraints are stifling architecture as a useful art form?

Modern structures have to be fully designed before they are built, whereas most traditional structures were designed and built at the same time, and the design could evolve as needed to fit the environment. Now, we do everything with straight lines because it's easier to make plans and estimate materials and communicate with builders and file for permits and verify code compliance and so on, but you can do much more interesting and complicated designs if you don't have to communicate the design with a human at every step.

I think sometime in the not-too-distant future we'll have practical machines that can construct buildings designed by software to conform to the features and limitations of the building site and the desires of the future owners. If there's no need to communicate the design to a human other than "does this rendering look good?" then we don't need right angles everywhere just to make life easy for the draftsmen and carpenters.

This seems kind of related to something Christopher Alexander said about twenty years ago (which was linked from HN recently [1]), that current design and construction methods and business models have basically made good architecture well-nigh impossible to achieve on a wide scale. I don't know what he would think of using his architectural pattern language as a set of algorithm heuristics, but it's one possible way forward.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17480178