The current state of architectural design incorporates many contemporary ideas of what defines unique geometry. With the advent of strong computer software at the early 21st century, an expected level of experimentation has overtaken our profession and our academic realms to explore purposeful architecture through various techniques, delivering meaningful buildings that each exhibit a message of cultural relevancy.
These new movements are not distinct stylistic trends, but modes of approaching concept design. They often combine with each other, or with stylistic movements, to create complete designs. Outlined within this essay are five movements, each with varying degrees of success creating purposeful buildings: Diagramism, Neo-Brutalism, Revitism, Scriptism, and Subdivisionism.
It is understood that there are many other concurrent architectural movements not mentioned here, most of those attributable as stylistic in nature. Such movements contain either a decorative, minimalist, or sculptural approach to design, where design is applied manually through aesthetic decisions. Such styles do not have as their identifying focus to create an architecture that is more responsive or adaptive to the users, site, context, environment, etc.
