You may have encountered the term generative design in the context of producing design permutations, creating geometry from some simple inputs or even just building computational graphs using Dynamo or Grasshopper.
We see generative design as:
/ gen·er·a·tive de·sign / noun
a collaborative design process between humans and machines. During this process, the designer defines the design parameters and the computer produces design studies (alternatives), evaluates them against quantifiable goals set by the designer, improves the studies by using results from previous ones and feedback from the designer, and ranks the results based on how well they achieve the designer’s original goals.
Generative design is a specific application of the computational design approach, with the following distinctions:
- the designer defines goals to achieve a design (rather than the exact steps)
- the computer generates many designs (not just one)
- the computer finds the optimal solution that satisfies the designer’s multiple competing goals, amongst all generated designs