The flexibility of logic programming: Parametrically regenerating the Sagrada Familia

Flexibility is a major attribute of parametric modelling, however designers find it hard to maintain flexibility throughout their projects. One cause may be the programming paradigm of the parametric model. Currently this is dataflow programming, which makes it easy to create and flex parameters, but difficult to modify relationships. This paper investigates the implications of changing the programming paradigm in a parametric model to logic programming. A qualitative account is given of using dataflow programming and logic programming to generate a portion of the Sagrada Família church. It finds logic programming adept at translating explicit models into parametric models, but lacking continuous flexibility. This research demonstrates there are different types of flexibility within the model and architects can privilege certain flexibility types by selecting the programming paradigm of the model.