Yasser Zarei
Email: yasser.zarei@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk
2002-2004: Master in architectural engineering, IUST, Iran.
1998-2002: Undergraduate at IUST (Iran University of Science and Technology), Tehran, Iran.
Architecture through the looking glass: In search of a new epistemology of design process.
Supervisors: Albena Yaneva and Isabelle Doucet.
Research interests
Design Thinking, Methods of Problem-Solving in Design, Man-Machine Interactions, Fractal Theory and Chaotic Architecture, Philosophy of Science, Aesthetics Theories.
This research explores the nature of design in architecture in the context of digitalization. The aim is to investigate the role of computer in the design process by qualitative evaluation of practitioners’ thoughts about the specificity of computer in design. The research is constructed on the study of sixty years of contemplations on the process of design started in 1950 and ended in 2010 and then accompanying it with empirical investigations on the studios of architecture in the UK. At first, the role of computer was not more than a drawing tool. Now, digital culture and especially computer are an urgent medium in the process of design and the question of computer in design has changed from ontological to epistemological and methodological domain. So this research aims to answer this question: “How did the computer change design practice and how do the architects think about it now?”