href="http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2009/10/26/419-france-reconstructed-from-apparently-inadequate-data/">
The use of data (and lots of it) to legitimize design decisions is a widespread practice in the field of architecture. Yet data collection, while certainly advisable, may or may not lead to quality design, and may, in fact, lead to pseudo-scientific justification for primarily artistic, or aesthetic, decisions on the part of the designer. On the other hand, evidence in this blog about different ways of generating a map of France "reconstructed from apparently inadequate data," shows that less data can generate accurate form. I would argue, more data may or may not improve form, but said data should only be used for justification of form insofar as it correlates in reality (and this can be done with data than we may previously have thought necessary) and the guise of pseudo-scientificism dropped and artistic license acknowledged.
All architectural projects are involved in process in some capacity. Architecture is simply too complex to be conceived of in any other way. Agency, as opposed to artistic license which I would leave to artists as the name suggests, may be related to process in a number of ways. Certainly one way of authoring a project is by designing the data set, the material that one begins with, or context. Acknowledging that every translation is a creative if not a reductive act, we may understand that context is always contingent on the designer. You suggest that quality design is something to aspire too. What is quality design and why could data be irrelevant to it?
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