The actual form is achieved by arresting the process at a specific point and “freezing" the form. Franken describes the "freeze problem"--that is, "When do I say 'Stop' and freeze the process?"—as the key factor in this design method, for the process is launched without any specific idea of form, merely an idea of process, and then, as Franken puts it: “you wait for the form." 'This “subjective reality" generates a data record that defines only the external skin, which is fixed as a result of the design method. The consequences for the design of the structure are twofold. Firstly, the structure becomes formally an elemental component, because it constitutes either the internal spatial enclosure beneath the skin created by Franken or the skin itself becomes the structure, that is, external layer and internal layer are identical and only defined by the material thickness. Secondly, since the master form is fixed, optimizations to the structure cannot be implemented by means of changing the form. (Harald Kloft, "Structural Engineering in the Digital Workflow," in Digitalreal: Blobmeister, First Built Projects, 203).
By stripping formal genesis of any manual dimension and by rendering it a “qualitative multiplicity” (Deleuze), Franken's parameter-driven design technique successfully liberates architecture from the preinscription of form. Yet, as Andreas Ruby astutely points out, such liberation remains in force—at least in reference to digital architecture in its current state—only at the conceptual level, where architecture need not grapple with the material constraints of production and use. To his mind, the potential for digital design to stimulate a “new paradigm” remains largely unrealized:
What is currently promoted as “digital" architecture is marred by the fatal assumption that innovation in architecture is today mainly expressed through form.... With unrelenting eloquence, somewhat like an adolescent rebellion against the formal dogmatism of Modernism, the focus has been on visualizing what is believed to be its greatest asset—the extravagance of form—thereby ending up with a new dogmatism that is no less rigid. The fascination with the new digital processes for the creation of architectonic form is certainly understandable. But it is equally obvious that the formal experimentation they permit cannot by itself lead to a new architecture. (Andreas
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