Doubtless the nature of such collaboration, and the resulting architecture, is best addressed at interview. But I feel that there have been several occasions when our work has genuinely broken new ground in announcing potential, and demonstrating it as a somewhat elegant, if latent, architectural form. The Pallas House, with Bernard Cache, demonstrated the possibility of algorithmically-generated components, and linked this creative process to the fabrication potential of numeric command machines. The Paramorph Gateway competition, with Mark Burry, attained a virtuosity in the parametric constraint of an apparently fluid sculptural form, and also in its social reciprocity (a sort of electronic aural canal). The Aegis Hyposurface, bursting the static logic of architecture through the intersection of information and form, is the harbinger of a profound revolution for tectonics in all fields. The recent Excideuil Folly and the Handlesman Apparment shift the structuring of space into fully 3-dimensions, working parametrically with Ove Arup engineers to deploy material efficiently in space to offer compelling new architectural/spatial possibilities with low budgets. The Haddad Residence, currently under construction, begins to attain an almost entirely non-standard character, in that we are modelling and directly fabricating all components (basins, light-switches, door handles): a model for an enriched architectural materiality.

All such projects, I believe, spring not from a mastery of digital technique, but from an attempt to think digital technology in a broad sense. The Aegis Hyposurface, for instance, developed as a rumination on the apparent shift from a cultural mode of shock to that of trauma, which seems concomitant (to me) with patterns of digital cognition. This I emphasize to make the point that myopic fascination with a utilitarian tool will result in nothing but a heightened scientific rationalism, and not in an intellect capable of comprehending and effectively deploying digital technologies in a culturally felicitous manner. I feel that after a long series of experimental projects, we have assimilated enough knowledge to begin to offer a somewhat adequate architecture for a digital age, which I see clearly requires an entirely reconfigured architectural praxis.

I have been fortunate enough to work with Professor Mark Burry and his post-graduate students at Deakin University and latterly RMIT, where his work on Gaudi`s Sagrada Familia seems to have allowed the cogent development of a digital architecture program (as if legitimated by its very histoicity!) The series of collaborations that I have instigated with Mark`s digital group (Paramorph, Aegis, Excideuil, etc) have made me realize the vital role that the university must play in the current transformation of the architectural field to a digital medium. Undoubtedly such collaboration has allowed dECOi to rapidly explore and assimilate a broad range of digital methodologies, which the exigencies of practice would otherwise have disallowed. This experience leads me to insist on the vital role of the university in the current transitional period, and the necessity for the earnest development of centres of excellence that pit themselves against the evident tendency for digital methodologies to replicate extant modes of practice. A brief collaboration with Norman Foster as an independent consultant corroborated this necessity, in my ability to effectively critique their working practice, and to instigate a marked realignment of their digital practices.