The Structural Conception in Architecture in the Digital Era, Between Aesthetics and Ethics

In the past the technological invention has often governed the creation of innovative forms (Roman concrete, steel, reinforced concrete, etc.), with the result of a substantial correspondence between conception and realisation. In the electronic and digital era, this role seems to be entrusted to the mathematical-numerical instrumentation offered by software. With the evolution of computational tools and numerical skills, the ability to design structural shapes has also become extremely refined, often in a direction that transcends the requirements of optimal mechanical performance, thanks to algorithms for generating purely geometric shapes. With the widespread of ‘deconstructed’, ‘non-linear’, ‘virtual’ architectures, the invention of new shapes seems to want to be free from the need to contemplate the various components of the design process, and in particular from the constructive one, often generating a dichotomy between represented and conformed architecture. In this context, it seems interesting to understand, with the help of some examples, how architecture can preserve a tectonic ethic ( firmitas) in the digital age. Is it possible to exploit structural optimisation algorithms or artificial intelligence software for generating new forms in which the structural component maintains a significant role (with undoubted practical advantages)? Is it possible, albeit in a completely transformed formal context, to contribute to recovering a unitary conception of the design process, still conceived as a synthesis of all the Vitruvian components, which makes it possible to finalize the design towards effectively buildable forms, that do not fall, as paradoxically often happens, into automatisms of repetitive figurativeness?