Shape gram­mars, a pow­er­ful for­mal sys­tem for the descrip­tion and gen­er­a­tion of designs will be pre­sent­ed in detail. Shape gram­mars have been devel­oped to gen­er­ate a vari­ety of archi­tec­tur­al lan­guages includ­ing Pal­la­di­an Vil­las, Frank Lloyd Wright Prairie Hous­es, Queen Ann hous­es, Christo­pher Wren church­es, Giuseppe Ter­rag­ni apart­ments, Alvaro Siza hous­ing schemes, and many oth­ers. And still oth­er gram­mars have been devel­oped to gen­er­ate designs from scratch. This class will dis­cuss the foun­da­tions of shape gram­mar for­mal­ism and it will pro­vide a gen­er­ous overview of the his­to­ry and log­ic of sev­er­al of its appli­ca­tions in design research. The course is struc­tured around a shape gram­mar work­shop Prof. Economou (Geor­gia Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy, USA) will hold dai­ly from the 17th to the 20th of May. Lead­ing up to this event a num­ber of class­es intro­duc­ing the stu­dents to the the­o­ry of gram­mars are giv­en (Tues­days 3pm to 6pm). Each stu­dent is expect­ed to work on an indi­vid­ual project due at the end of the semester.