The related terms of Randomness

Pseudorandom: The fake random, or the controlled random

I found this is important to have the pseudorandom, in the desing process for architecture for pseudorandom give us the guarantee of the repeatness in the design process. So this means that we can always refer back to the certain stage of the design process and restart there.


Stochastic: Random or probabilistic but with some direction. For example the arrival of people at a post office might be random but average properties (such as the queue length) can be predicted / A random variable, or referring to patterns resulting from random effects

Stochastic is an important attitude, architecture design is about problem solving, means that applying randomness in the design process should have the stochastic character becasue we are using randomness to solve the problem. So we should be able to predict the outcome, but yet the outcome is still not exactly what we can control or expected.

Pertubation: A non-random disturbance.

Mutation: A permanent change, a structural alteration, in the DNA or RNA. Mutations happened randomly, and the resulting evolution is the natural selection of that random mutation.

Mutation is randomly happened, this term is imaginative for architecture design as well. If we think that we get a pool of Urban DNA or Building DNA in hand, and let them randomly change or mutate within the pool and then the final outcome will be selected according to the most suitable to the existing situation, that is the site situation and the building programme and functionality.

Sampling: A way to obtain information about a large group by examining a smaller, randomly chosen selection (the sample) of group members. If the sampling is conducted correctly, the results will be representative of the group as a whole.

Aleatory: Improvisation or random in character. Aleatory (or aleatoric) means "pertaining to luck", and derives from the Latin word alea, the rolling die. Aleatoric art is that which exploits the principle of randomness. One of the most ambitious aleatory projects in poetry is Raymond
Queneau's Cent Mille Milliards de Poèmes (Hundred Thousand Billion Poems).

Aleatory is something completely random in my mind, although we choose a top down situation to start in the very beginning, that is we choose to use which method to generate the randomness, but it still guarantee the random outcome in certain extent.

Formless: the unmanifest, that which encompasses the form within itself; it coexists with all forms on the earth plane. Form cannot exist without the Formless. (see Inner Planes)

The coexisting of formless and form remind me the coexisting of the solid and void, the programme and non programme and the situation of chaos and order / random and order. This is important that I will bare in mind that the randomness should be shown together with order inorder to emphasize the existance of randoness.